Elizabeth swallowed. “F-Fitzwilliam, I hesitate to bring this up, but you did tell me you spoke to him about it, so I suppose we are all apprised, so, perhaps it is all right to say aloud, but if you are feeling, erm, jealous, should we have him so close?”
“Youtoldher that?” said Richard to me.
“It’s better to have it in the open,” I said, and it was. “I have no reason to be jealous, correct?”
“No,” they both said, at almost exactly the same time, quite quickly.
I blinked at them. “Well, then.” I shrugged, spreading my hands. “It’s settled.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“So,” said Richard, holding a glass aloft, “I had quite a different picture in mind when I met my cousin’s new bride, of course.”
“Yes,” rejoined Elizabeth, “he was quite remiss in repressing his reaction to how entirely unappealing I was. He had expected me to be Helen of Troy, and here I was, this.”
Those gathered all laughed at Elizabeth’s witty self-deprecation.
We were at the ball. Elizabeth had worn the dress that my aunt had recommended, but she had not been silent, not at all. She had danced with me once, but then had said her ankle was not as healed as she had surmised, and there would be no more dancing at all.
The ankle itself seemed quite all right on a day-to-day basis. She no longer had trouble with stairs or anything of that nature. Of course she was not taking daily walks as she may have in the country, something I think she may have missed. Still, had she been attempting such a thing, we likely would have realized her ankle was still in need of some time to rest.
“You are quite Helen of Troy,” I broke in.
“Oh, yes?” she said, turning to me. “And then are you Paris, then, stealing me away?”
“I should hope so,” I said. “If I am not Paris, who is?”
“Well, I came quite willingly with you, Mr. Darcy,” she said, giving me a dazzling smile all my own. “I was not abducted.”
“Anyway, she is not quite fair to herself, of course,” said Richard. “What I meant was not that you were not attractive enough to have snared my cousin, but that you were not a snare at all. She is utterly artless, of course, not at all the sort who was trying to employ some cunning trap on Darcy here.”
“Though I suppose I was,” I said, holding her gaze. “Trapped.”
“We were in a house,” she said, giggling. She turned back to those gathered. “But I understand this dreadful rumor precedes us.”
“It’s true, then?” spoke up someone.
“Yes, this great lout of a man broke the stairwell,” said Elizabeth.
And everyone laughed again.
It was all going rather well, I thought. My aunt was across the room glaring daggers at us for holding court in this manner, for Elizabeth was quite popular. Everyone had come by to be introduced, and once they began speaking to her, they stayed, and they seemed to enjoy themselves. But then, Elizabeth and Richard were rather master conversationalists, I had to admit. It was pleasant to watch them volley things back and forth.
I only spoke up now and again, but I thought I was holding my own. Perhaps I set her up as well as Richard did?
Whatever the case, she seemed alive in that way that Richard had described before, positively lit up like the sun itself. She was the bright center of this dull and dreary evening in December, and anyone who came near her could see that.
At some point, however, I ended up dancing.
Elizabeth teased me, well, and Richard, too, saying that we must not be the sort who sat out while there were young ladies who wished to dance and were in want of a partner. She shooedus both off to dance on more than one occasion, though Richard and I tried to stagger this so that she did not end up alone, just in case she might be in need of us.
But at some point, I looked up and saw neither of them, not on the dance floor, not in the periphery of the room talking to others, nowhere.
Alarm went through me, though I told myself that it was not warranted.
I went out of the ballroom and went to the tea room, where I thought perhaps I might find them, but they were not there. As I was coming out of the tea room, however, Richard was there, his face a mask of pure fury.
“Darcy, there you are,” he said, and he beckoned for me to come with him.
