“Something is the matter,” I said, going to him immediately.
“Oh, indeed,” he said, “something is quite the matter.”
My alarm now spread through me in a way that made my fingers feel cold and my heart pound too quickly. “What is it? What is going on?”
“No, no, Darcy, you must keep yourself in check as we walk together, and we must not walk too quickly. Smile at me. Laugh.”
“What are you going on about?”
“It will all be very bad for you, regardless, but it is going to be far worse if everyone in the ball knows about it,” he said firmly. “Now, laugh.” He broke into laughter himself, the fury that was all over him disappearing.
I did not laugh. I was seized him by the arm and dragged him through the ballroom. “You shall explain yourself this instant,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Slower,” he said, wrenching his arm out of mine.
So, it was torture getting out of the ballroom, sheer torture. But once we were free, he moved more quickly, and he led me down the stairs, talking in a low voice the entire way.
“I have them shut away here in a room with a servant guarding the door, and we shall pay the servant handsomely to keep his mouth shut, of course. I had no notion she would do something like this, Darcy. I am absolutely astonished, and I am—oh, God, I know not what to say.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, trepidation rising in me like a live thing with claws.
“All right, here is what happened. I was coming back from a dance, and she was speaking to a servant. I approached her—”
“This is Elizabeth?”
“Obviously,” he said. “And she said that the servant had summoned her to speak to someone, that it was important, and it would not take long but that she must speak with this person.”
“Who?” I said.
“I asked that, too, and she said it was of no consequence, and then she left. Well, Darcy, I followed.”
“I see,” I said. “Who was it?”
“Oh, God,” he said, shaking his head. “Oh, God.”
I knew it, then. I just knew it. Odd how I had misplaced my jealousy in such a strange and stupid way, but I had still been jealous, had still known to be jealous.
“Here,” said Richard, gesturing towards a door where a servant was standing guard. “She is in there even now, Darcy. I caught her with him. With George Wickham.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I stepped into the room, which was a small room containing only two chairs and a writing desk. The fire wasn’t even built up in its fireplace. It was cold.
She was standing over in the corner, but he was sprawled out in one of the chairs. He smirked up at me, looking just the way he had in Meryton when he’d touched his hat to greet me.
I clenched my hands into fists.
“Fitzwilliam, it is not as you are thinking,” said Elizabeth from the corner, coming across the room towards me. “I can explain it all. It started when my sister Jane sent me a letter, you see, and I have had little choice since then—”
“Stop,” I said, shaking my head at her. Lord in heaven, I could not quite look at her.
I thought back over it all.
I do wonder if there is some way I could prevail upon you, with my fine eyes, to be a bit more charitable towards him.
God, had she played me like the keys of a piano-forte? Right after that conversation was when she suggested I should marry her soon.
Do you like mebecauseI’m a scandal? What’s more scandalous than a frightfully short engagement?
