Argh, hehadnoticed me. This wasn’t good at all; Darcy was meant to be forgetting about me, not talking to me. I turned to walk away.
“Would you do me the honor of joining me for the next dance?” I heard Darcy say to Elizabeth, and I breathed a small sigh of relief. If he was asking her to dance, that must mean he was still interested in her, so hopefully the story was still on course. I took a step away from them, and then I heard Darcy speak again.
“Miss Knight?”
I froze. Was Darcy askingmeto dance, not Elizabeth? I remembered what Maggie had said about how Jane Austen built up their relationship through each small interaction, and this was a key one. I had to make sure they danced together.
I turned around to see all three characters looking at me.
“Thank you for the invitation, Mr. Darcy, but I’ve hurt my foot.” I mimed a rather pathetic limp. “Why don’t you dance with Miss Bennet instead?”
“It is quite all right, I do not need Mr. Darcy’s charity,” Elizabeth said tightly. “Charlotte, I find myself thirsty. Will you join me in the drawing room?”
“Of course. Mr. Darcy, Miss Knight.” Charlotte gave a quick curtsy to us both and then hurried off after Elizabeth, leaving me alone with Darcy.
“Miss Knight, I had been hoping to find you here this evening,” Darcy said, taking a step toward me. “I have found myself most unsettled this week, for I had been certain we were not acquainted, and yet I have been lately troubled by the strangest recollections.”
“Oh?” I said helplessly.
He lowered his voice. “I had been hoping you might be able to offer me some clarity on where and when we previously met. I cannot recall the specifics, yet I catch myself imagining the most unlikely inventions: horseless carriages and moving images, and an underground traveling abomination from Dante’sInferno. And in all these hallucinations, who should I find present, Miss Knight, but you.”
Oh no, no, no, this wasreallybad. Darcy shouldn’t remember any of this!
“I think you’ve been having nightmares, Mr. Darcy. Maybe you should cut back on the cheese?”
“Yet many of these visions are during waking hours,” he said. “This morning, for example, I was breaking my fast and suddenly found myself craving some cocoa on my bread, a dish I am quite certain I have never eaten before.”
“Well, I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s definitely not connected to me,” I said. “I was mistaken when I thought we’d met before; we’re total strangers. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go, and I think you should ask Elizabeth Bennet to dance.”
Darcy scowled. “I have no desire of dancing with Miss Bennet. Please, Miss Knight, you must explain to me how it is we are acquainted.”
I could feel myself getting hot. This was all wrong! Not only was Darcy supposed to dance with Elizabeth right now, but when I looked over his shoulder, I saw Bingley was talking intently to Kitty Bennet, while Jane was on the other side of the room with an officer. The threadsof the story were starting to unravel, just like Maggie had predicted they might. My dress suddenly felt unbearably tight, and I had the horrible sensation that if I didn’t get some fresh air soon, then I might faint like an actual Regency damsel in distress.
I turned from Darcy and began to push my way through the ballroom toward the exit. It was packed with people now, and my progress was slow. I needed to get out of here and away from Darcy, but everywhere I turned, I found my path blocked by dancers. To my right, I saw Elizabeth laughing with Mr. Collins and felt another wave of vertigo. No, she couldn’t start being attracted tohim! And why was Bingley now dancing with Kitty and—my God, was Jane’s officer talking to Mr. Bennet?
I felt myself sway, and as I stumbled, a strong hand reached out and grabbed my wrist to keep me from falling. I went to snatch my arm back, but then I looked up at the man holding it, and in that instant, the whole ballroom froze.
Standing over me, his sparkling, icy-blue eyes on mine, was Nick.
Chapter Thirty-One
A smile spread across my face, and for a second I had an overwhelming urge to throw myself into his arms and never let go. Nick was here! And then my heart dropped, because Nick washere, which meant he was also stuck inPride and Prejudice.
“Zoe,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. “I found you.”
He was still holding on to my arm, and I felt the heat of his fingers on my wrist. Then I heard my name being called from across the ballroom.
“Shit, Darcy!” I said, glancing back to see him pushing his way through the crowd. “We need to hide.”
Without saying a word, Nick turned and began to lead me through the crowd toward the exit. I could still hear Darcy behind, but it sounded like he was struggling to get through the mass of dancers, whereas Nick’s height made him more of a human battering ram. When we reached the door and into the main hall, I took over.
“Through here,” I said, pushing open a door and leading us down some stairs into a servants’ corridor. I’d gotten to know the house prettywell over the past week, what with my late-night creeping around to the kitchen, so I knew there was a pantry at the end of this corridor that barely got used, and that I was pretty sure neither Darcy nor the Bingleys even knew existed.
When we reached the room, it was dark, lit by only a few candles, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. When they did, I stared at Nick, my brain still struggling to comprehend what I was seeing. Nick, the man who I had misunderstood so terribly—the man who I now realized was kind and funny and in many ways kind of perfect—was here, at Netherfield, making a tailcoat and breeches look indecently sexy. I felt something molten stir in my core, and bit back a smile; so it turned out my sex drive hadn’t shriveled up and died after all.
“How did you get here?” I asked, glad the lighting was low so Nick wouldn’t see the color creeping up my neck. “You don’t have the book magic, do you?”
He shook his head. “No, although I did spend several days trying to do it anyway. Then I remembered my great-aunt Matilda, my granny’s sister, who’s in a care home in Manchester. She’s really unwell, and I had to wait until she understood what I was asking, but eventually she managed to read me into the story. Given you’d been gone for twelve days, I estimated this was roughly where you might be in the book, and I arrived here this afternoon.”
