I wanted Kitty to think me refined and elegant, but turning up dressed as if for my debut in society meant I had inadvertently presented myself as a potential wife. I had money and my family had influence—it would be foolish for me not to recognise how powerful a match I would make. I could have been the plainest woman in the country and I would still have had my pick of suitors, but I didn’t want any of them.
Longing to be out of the spotlight, I elected to sit myselfamongst the chaperones and overdanced ladies already nursing pinched toes. Only the most forward of men would dare to approach, and I was hoping the presence of my brother would dissuade even them. Dancing meant courting, and courting meant proposals, and I was not inclined to encourage any of it. The further down that path I got with anyone, the harder it would be to rescue myself, and I had already been at the mercy of one man manipulating me into marriage; I would not allow another to use etiquette and propriety to do the same.
When I settled down onto one of the overstuffed chairs arranged around the fire, the abrupt change of conversation made it clear they had been talking about me. Thin-lipped smiles adorned the faces of mothers hoping I wouldn’t steal their daughters’ first choice of husbands. If they knew the kind of thoughts that plagued me, I wondered if they would be relieved or disgusted. Perhaps both.
The topic of discussion settled on the new modiste setting up shop in town. My usual lack of need for new dresses for balls meant I could afford to focus on something far more intriguing. Kitty. A room full of blind men would still have been drawn to her, and with the addition of her looks, she had no shortage of suitors requesting space on her dance card. I wondered which dance she would have saved for me, and what people would have whispered when we stood up together. My skin prickled at the thought. It would take one word from Darcy to have me sent away if he suspected me for even a moment.
Kitty was born to step out onto a dance floor. Her steps weren’t always perfect, but her enthusiasm and her joy were evident from across the room. She took such pleasure in the twist of her skirts around her legs and in matching her movements to the music. I couldn’t look away. With the fire heating my cheeks and the beat of my heart in my throat, I realised I wanted to spend every evening for the rest of my life watching Kitty Bennet smile. Even if I didn’t get to be the one to cause it.
I did not recognise the man she was dancing with, but I could not admit to paying him much attention. Kitty’s focus didn’t seem to be on her partner, either. She smiled at him and made what appeared to be polite conversation as they waited to go down a line, but she seemed distracted. Her gaze wandered the ballroom in search of someone. Her sister, I presumed, or perhaps the man she’d promised the next dance to. Only then her eyes found me and she glowed, her smile even brighter before the next turn of the dance took her away.
The passing of time seemed of no consequence as I watched Kitty dance her night away. She honoured no man with more than one number, showing no particular favour for any of her partners. I found some comfort in the knowledge that, while she could not be mine, she did not seem particularly inclined to be anyone else’s, either.
When Elizabeth dropped into the chair beside me, she startled me away from my staring. I hoped desperately that she had not noticed whom my gaze had been following.
“I should warn you, before you start to worry every manin the room is spurning you, that your brother has met every request to be introduced to you with a glare that could melt metal,” she said, barely concealing her amusement. “If someone has caught your eye, you would be wise to mention it before he is sent running for the hills.”
“No!” I insisted. It was an intervention I was glad of if it kept me off the dance floor and away from men who thought they were charming. The only person who had caught my eye had already made my acquaintance. It was not lack of an introduction that kept us apart. “If I cannot sequester myself away in the hills for the evening, then the next-best option is to have everyone else sent there while I stay here.”
Elizabeth’s smile dropped from her lips, and her forehead creased with worry. I had tried to make my words light, but the truth behind them was too deep to be so easily concealed.
“If you hate it that much, neither Darcy nor I would be offended if you retired for the evening,” she assured me, her voice low as she took my hand and squeezed my fingers.
For a moment, I considered it. Only then I caught sight of Kitty over her shoulder, grinning as she danced a particularly complicated step, and I didn’t want to be out of sight of that smile for even a moment.
“Thank you, but I think I will stay at least a little while longer,” I said, the unstoppable softness of my voice surely betraying my fondness for something beyond the dancing and fireside gossip. I resolved to say nothing more.
If Elizabeth noticed, she did not mention it. She sat with me awhile, sharing idle talk and pointing out various guestsI should know of, but I could tell the Bennet-sister inclination to revel in the centre of the action did not stop with Kitty. Elizabeth was soon summoned away to walk the room, blessed with far more friends than I.
I watched as the current dance came to a close, the musicians settling to take a short break before striking up another tune. Kitty’s cheeks were flushed as she curtsied her farewell to her partner, and I found myself on my feet, keen to fetch her a drink. I had taken barely three steps before I was intercepted by a painfully familiar figure. Mr. Honeyfield stepped into my path and bowed, giving me no choice but to stop.
“How lovely to see you again, Miss Darcy,” he said. “I trust you have nowhere else to rush off to tonight. May I beg your next dance?”
The question had sounded so much more appealing coming from Kitty. I knew I couldn’t refuse Mr. Honeyfield without surrendering my participation in all further dances for the evening. It was considered rude to reject one man only to then partner with another, but I had no intentions of partnering with any man, so the opportunity was a welcome one. I wished only that turning down the offer of one dance allowed me to turn down all offers of dances, courtship, and marriage for the rest of my life.
“Thank you, but I think I ought to rest my feet,” I said as demurely as I could manage.
Etiquette dictated Mr. Honeyfield should escort me to a chair, wish me well, and take his leave of my company. Wherever he had studied the finer points of social interactions, wehad not been taught from the same book, because he barely held back a snort of laughter.
“You have spent most of the evening sitting down. And I cannot imagine the journey here was all that arduous—one flight of stairs? Two?” he teased. When my cheeks flushed from a mortifying blend of anger and embarrassment, he either did not notice or chose to deploy tact for the first time in the conversation. “One dance is all I ask, Miss Darcy,” he insisted.
It was an impertinent response. While he was annoyingly astute when it came to how I had passed my time at the ball, he had no right to comment on it. I considered constructing a lie about injuring an ankle in the days prior, but I could never sustain any kind of ruse. If I myself did not let slip the truth, someone else would surely reveal my lie, and then I would be no better than Mr. Honeyfield when it came to following the rules of social etiquette. Cursing myself, I took his arm and allowed him to escort me to the dance floor.
If my brother was going to choose a moment to rush in and rescue me from the flirtatiousness of a young man, this would have been the ideal time, but I knew he would never make a scene unless I was in genuine danger. I caught a glimpse of him across the room, Elizabeth on his arm. He was watching me carefully, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. Neither of us was happy about the situation.
James Honeyfield was a terrible dancer. He might have no longer resembled the gangly child with no proper grasp of where his limbs ended, but his movements were just as uncoordinated. He was never quite sure where he was supposedto be, each step either too slow or too fast, and his focus was entirely on his feet. All my energy was channelled into preventing him bumping into me—I had none left to worry about what Elizabeth or Darcy or Kitty thought of the whole affair.
If Mr. Honeyfield had thought asking me to dance was going to lead to any kind of affection for him in my eyes, he was sorely mistaken. Once the arduous experience came to an end, I curtsied as politely as I was able and begged my leave. Turning around to reacquaint myself with the rest of the room, I noticed at least three men making their way towards me. Now that a way around my brother’s protective tendencies had been found, anyone with even the slightest prior interaction with me was going to extort it in exchange for a dance. One had been more than enough.
While they might have been willing to bend the rules of acceptable social cues, I felt certain they would not cross my brother himself. I scanned the room, hoping to find Darcy and plant myself at his side to deter further unwanted attention, but before I could locate him, a hand landed on my arm. My initial reaction was to shake it off and protest that laying a hand on me without my consent was unquestionably out of order, but after my arm had tensed up at the sudden contact, it relaxed again almost immediately. Someone was tracing a familiar circle with their thumb. I knew exactly who was touching me, and there was nothing unwelcome about it.
“Do you want to get some air?” Kitty asked, the earnest look in her eyes betraying the escape plan she was offeringme. I nodded, probably far too quickly and too enthusiastically, and her smile lit up the whole room. “Come on, before they have you surrounded,” she whispered.
I was all too keen to follow her. She looped her arm around mine and pretended to lead me in a stroll around the ballroom. When we passed close to the doors, open onto the garden, she nudged me out and followed quickly after, freeing a candle from a candlestick on a sideboard just inside. I felt laughter bubbling up inside me as I followed Kitty away from the house, not wanting to lose her amongst the hedges.
My shoes weren’t intended for anything but ballrooms, and I felt the grass through the thin soles. The moon hung full and high in the night sky, and between that and Kitty’s candle, we didn’t suffer from lack of light. We weren’t the only ones to have sought the reprieve of cool air, but the voices of other couples soon faded until I could believe it was just the two of us in the world.
In the semidarkness, Kitty’s cheeks lit by the flickering orange glow of candlelight, I couldn’t help but feel the same comfort as I did in the library. There was a smile on her lips, mischievous and endearing, until something seemed to occur to her and it dropped into a frown.
