“Not,” she said drily, “where you are concerned.”
The set ended. Darcy deposited Miss Bingley at the edge of the floor with the air of a man returning an overdue library book and retreated to the far wall. He did not ask anyone else to dance. He did not circulate. He did not so much as glance at the refreshment table. He stood there like a monument to aristocratic displeasure, immovable and apparently content to remain so.
I drifted toward the punch bowl—partly from thirst, and partly because my observation post had grown lonely without Charlotte, who had been claimed by her father for the set.
I was ladling punch into a cup when Mr. Bingley appeared at my elbow.
“Your sister is an angel. An absolute angel. The way she moves, the way she smiles—have you noticed the way she smiles? Of course you have, you’re her sister, you must see her smile every day, but truly, Miss Elizabeth, it’s quite extraordinary.”
“I shall tell her you said so. Though I warn you, she’ll blush and insist you’re merely being kind.”
“But I’m not being kind at all! I’m being perfectly honest.” He beamed at me with such unaffected joy that I smiled back despite my better judgment. “You must all come to Netherfield. I absolutely insist. Darcy, come here and tell Miss Elizabeth she must visit Netherfield.”
Mr. Darcy, who had been standing nearby with his attitude of elegant suffering, turned at his friend’s summons. His gaze passed over me—a brief, assessing look, conducted with the thoroughness and warmth of a man appraising a rug.
“I am sure Miss Elizabeth has better uses for her time,” he said.
The words themselves were almost neutral. A stranger might have heard politeness, a gentleman declining to presume upon a lady’s schedule. But the tone—that absolute certainty that I would assuredly agree with his assessment of my insignificance—landed like an old shoe on my dad’s fishing rod.
“I am sure I do,” I retorted, sharper than was strictly ladylike. “But Mr. Bingley’s invitation is kind, and kindness ought to be acknowledged, even when one has better uses for one’s time.”
Darcy’s eyes narrowed and finally fixed on me, lingering with a recalibration of a man who had expected the furniture to remain silent. I returned his gaze, not at all quailed that a gentleman of a higher circle disapproved of my remark.
“Sharp tongues,” he observed to Bingley, as though I had ceased to exist the moment I failed to be convenient, “are a common enough trait in country society. One finds them in every village. The challenge is locating conversation that merits attention rather than merely demands it.”
Bingley gasped, and the air froze instantly.
He had not called me stupid. He had done something considerably worse: he had acknowledged my quick retort, weighed it, and pronounced it ordinary. Common. The sort of cheap cleverness one encounters in every rural tavern, unworthy of engagement.
Any sensible woman would have walked away. But I had been trained by the sharpest tongue in Hertfordshire, and retreat was not in Mama’s curriculum.
“How fatiguing that must be for you, Mr. Darcy,” I said, with the creamiest sympathy I could manufacture. “To travel so far from London only to find that the provinces contain people with independent opinions. Had someone warned you in advance, you might havepacked accordingly—perhaps a thicker coat, to guard against sharp tongues conversing without permission.”
Bingley burst into delighted laughter and clapped his friend’s shoulder. “She’s got you, Darcy. Pinned and mounted. I believe you may have met your match in?—”
“I believe I have met my punch,” I said brightly, lifting my cup. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I see Mrs. Bennet beckoning.”
She was not, in fact, beckoning. But Mama had a gift I had never fully understood: the ability to sense, from across any room, when one of her daughters required extraction. She moved in my direction with Sir William in jovial orbit beside her, his genial chatter providing the perfect cover.
“Lizzy.” She tucked my hand into her arm. “Sir William has been telling me all about Mr. Bingley’s plans for Netherfield. They intend to grace us with their presence for the entire season.”
“How fortunate for Hertfordshire,” I murmured, aware that we were still within earshot of the brooding Darcy and the excitable Bingley.
Sir William seized the opening. “And doubly fortunate for the Bennet girls, with their many accomplishments. Miss Elizabeth especially, so intelligent with such a brilliant mind, so like her mother, and that is very high praise indeed.”
“You flatter us, Sir William.” Mama’s smile was warm, but her eyes had found Darcy, who stood not eight feet away, his attention ostensibly elsewhere and his stillness suggesting he heard every word.
“Not flattery but honest assessment!” Sir William turned to address Darcy directly. “I was just saying to Mr. Darcy that our Hertfordshire girls would hold their own in any drawing room in England. Particularly Miss Elizabeth. A mind like hers—quick, perceptive, and engaging—why, she would be an ornament to any household.”
“Indeed.” Darcy’s tone was the cool, considered tone of a man accustomed to having his observations treated aspronouncements. “A clever girl from a respectable family—one could see her suiting admirably in any number of roles. I have been seeking a companion for my sister since the last proved unsuitable. Someone of adequate breeding and sharp mind might suit the position admirably.”
Everything went very quiet. Not in the room—the room carried on, musicians scraping, slippers shuffling, neighbors gossiping in cheerful ignorance—but in some small essential place beneath my ribs, where I had been quite comfortable a moment ago, was no longer comfortable at all.
He had categorized me. Looked at the quality I valued most in myself, the characteristic I had cultivated and taken pride in above all others, and thought: useful and employable.
Not the daughter of a gentleman, but a sharp tongue and a potential guard dog for his younger sister. A clever girl who might be useful to preserve his family’s standing.
Not much was known about his sister, Miss Georgiana Darcy, seventeen and reportedly shy, if Mrs. Long’s testimony gleaned through the gossip vine could be believed. She possessed a dowry of thirty thousand pounds and a brother who guarded her like a dragon perched atop a mountain of gems.
