“Shall I provide more?” The waltz turned them. The final figures drew them closer, face to face, her hand on his shoulder and his hand at her waist, and the space between them reduced to inches, to warmth, to the scent of him—clean linen and something darker, wood smoke or leather or the indefinable warmth of a man’s skin. Elizabeth’s face tilted up, and she could see the candlelight in his eyes, the texture of his jaw with the shadow of tomorrow’s beard beneath his skin. It was intimate, obscenely intimate, the most private thing she had ever noticed about another human being. Her breath was coming fast and shallow, and the fact that he curated her joy and provided everything for her?—
His gaze, which had been holding hers with an intensity that should have frightened her and did not, shifted.
It dropped.
To her mouth. To her parted lips. To the open, unguarded, surrendered mouth of a woman who was looking at him with everything she had and everything she was.
The drop lasted less than a second, but the second was infinite. She saw the want in it—raw, involuntary, the want of a man who had been restraining himself for months and whose restraint had slipped for one heartbeat—and then he corrected.
His eyes returned to hers, but she could see the cost in the tension of his jaw, in the effort of the retrieval. And she had felt that burning in waves that followed the waltz’s tempo, one-two-three, one-two-three, heat and heat and heat.
Her eyes were wide, lips parted, and as the waltz played and played, the room disappeared. Thetonwas gone; everything retreated until there was only his face, his eyes, his hand on her, and the heat of falling with the absolute, devastating, world-ending knowledge that she was in love with Fitzwilliam Darcy and had been for longer than she knew.
It was joy, terror, and she was still falling when the music ended, only it would never end in her heart, and the announcement came, “The supper dance is concluded.”
Darcy stepped back. The distance returned. His hand left her waist. And he bowed.
Her knees shook too much for a curtsy, and the loss of his touch was bewildering. She breathed, trying to reassemble.
“Shall we proceed to the supper room?” He extended his arm.
She took it, and then she smiled, because she had his arm with the heat still burning through her, and the falling was still happening with no end in sight.
This was what the poets wrote about. The ones she had mocked as overwrought and sentimental. The ones who described love as a kind of madness, an illness, a fall. They were right. The falling was exactly as they described—terrifying and exhilarating and inevitable—and the ground was exactly as absent as they promised. And the arm beneath her hand was solid, the man was real, and so, for the first time in her twenty years, Elizabeth Bennet allowed herself to simply fall in love with no regrets.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
FALLING AFTER FLYING
Elizabeth’s smilewas so stubborn, not even a parish beadle waving a collection plate under her nose could have dislodged it. She swept into Lady Harewood’s supper room on Darcy’s arm, her face still flushed from the waltz and her steps flying high. The supper table appeared brighter and shinier than any she remembered, the room brilliant with candlelight, with ornate silver centerpieces glittering from every table.
As Darcy led her to her assigned chair and pulled it out for her, she exulted:I could live inside this moment, furnish it, hang curtains, and never leave.
Darcy sat beside her. Close enough that his sleeve brushed hers when he reached for the serving dish. He selected the best cut of cold chicken and placed it on her plate.
“You are serving me as though I cannot operate a fork,” she said, and her voice carried the teasing warmth of a woman who was still falling, still airborne, and hopelessly in love.
“You have been dancing for four hours. Your hands may be less reliable than usual.”
“My hands are perfectly reliable. My judgment, on the other hand, may have suffered.”
“In what respect?”
“I have just danced the supper waltz with a man who claims to be a placeholder, and I enjoyed it so thoroughly that I have forgotten the names of every other gentleman I danced with tonight. This suggests a failure of judgment, or a success of waltzing, and I am not certain which.”
Darcy’s mouth performed the rearrangement. The private one. “I shall take that as a compliment to my feet.”
“Yes, your feet have lifted me quite unexpectedly, but I shall not regret penciling those initials. Although… Mr. Darcy, I do feel for poor Mr. Frederick Davenport. Perhaps he was to be the one waltzing with me?”
At this, Darcy’s face went crimson until Elizabeth kicked him underneath the table, and said, “Your feet were adequate and your company improving. I shall not tell you which mattered more.”
The warmth between them was practically breathing, filling the narrow candlelit space between their plates. Elizabeth let herself sink into it, reckless as she’d been on the dance floor—no thought for consequences, only the thrill of falling without the sight of ground.
Her sisters were met with respect. Jane sat with Bingley in a bubble of mutual enchantment; Mary with her escort, Mr. Davenport, discussing sermons quite animated; and Allegra two seats to the right, occupying Lord Coke, who appeared pleased with her conversation.
The ball was a dream, and society sparkled like the hundreds of candles, the heavily laden silver epergne blocking out the visages of half the table—but not the whispers. They swirled from different directions, the way a weathervane turned, unable to decipher the direction of the wind.
A fan snapped open two seats down. “Can you believe? His own family thwarted. Directly against Lady Matlock’s wishes.”
