“And fewer still would have acted at all,” I added, and found, to my own discomfiture, that I meant it.
Darcy turned his spoon in his untouched ice. “I wonder, though, whether acting correctly can ever undo the cost of having been wrong.”
“Darcy, my good man.” Bingley clapped his shoulder. “Let us not be so morose. You made no mistakes that I am aware of. You are the best sort of friend.”
I looked between the two men. Darcy carried an unease that I could not quite comprehend. What did he believe was his error? That he had not blunted Miss Bingley’s attacks on my sister earlier?
“My father says,” I offered, “that a man’s character is not determined by his worst mistake but by what he does when he recognizes it.”
“Your father is a wise man.” Darcy’s gaze was fixed upon mine, uncomfortably earnest for a place of cakes and sugar.
“He would deny it. He finds wisdom a tiresome quality in others and prefers to call it common sense.”
“I would agree with him on that point,” Darcy said. “Common sense is sometimes not as common as we would like.”
“I cannot argue with you there, Mr. Darcy.” I licked a dollop of ice from my spoon, watching as his eyes dropped to my lips.
He drew a sharp breath; his mouth quirked—the precursor to that almost-smile, the look of a man who had momentarily forgotten to be careful.
“I should like to meet him someday,” he said, and then added, “again. At Longbourn.”
And there it was, thesomedayread like a declaration, a future I was not quite ready for and the present which was already more than I could hold.
“Perhaps you shall,” I said, and watched the ice melt from his spoon.
I pressed my spoon into the strawberry ice, watched it surrender, pink and cold, and felt his gaze warming my cheek. I knew, as surely as I knew my own name, that his scowl had melted into something I could not yet call tenderness, but could not call anything else.
Jane caught my eye across the table. She was glowing, and her expression held no surprise, only a gentle, knowing gladness.
I looked at my sister, and at Bingley, and at the children smeared with ice and happiness, and at Mrs. Gardiner sipping her tea and at Darcy beside me with his almost-smile and the untouched strawberry ice melting slowly in his dish.
And I thought:Let it all melt. The walls, the fortress of wit and suspicion I have built since the Meryton assembly—let them dissolve like strawberry ice in sunlight, and let what remains be enough.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CAROLINE’S KNIVES
Darcy
No gentleman attendsa musicale to juggle the woman he cannot stop thinking about and the woman intent on ruining his life, yet here I was.
I stood in Lady Meynell’s anteroom, fussing with a cravat that was already perfect, waiting for Mrs. Gardiner’s carriage and wishing Caroline Bingley’s words would stop buzzing in my head like a trapped wasp.
The evening before, Caroline had arrived at my townhouse uninvited, as was her custom. She had sniffed out Bingley’s visit to Gracechurch Street, his renewed acquaintance with Jane Bennet, and his return home looking as if someone had relit the lamps behind his eyes.
“I understand you have been busy, Mr. Darcy.” She stood beside my library window, turning her gloves in her hands. “I understand Charles has rediscovered his fascination with the Bennet family.”
“He has.”
“And you arranged it.”
“I informed him of Miss Bennet’s presence in London. What Charles chose to do with that information was his own affair.”
“How generous of you. And how convenient that you have been cultivating the Gardiner connection for weeks, paving the way with a tortoise and a basket of strawberries, so that when Charles arrived, the door was already open.” She set her gloves on the windowsill. “You have been remarkably industrious for a man who once told me the Bennet family was beneath serious consideration.”
I said nothing. Caroline was, infuriatingly, right.
“Lady Meynell’s musicale is tomorrow evening,” she had reported, as though the subject had naturally presented itself. “Miss Audley will perform the Beethoven. She has been preparing for weeks and has asked specifically about Charles. I have taken the liberty of accepting on his behalf, along with Louisa, Hurst, and myself.”
