Page 3 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

"None at all. You are my first attempt."

"Then you are either an extraordinary natural talent, or you are flattering me."

"I never flatter." He said it simply, not as a boast. "I find I have not the gift. I say what I think, and people generally wish I had not."

"Then tell me what you think of Meryton."

He glanced along the line: at Sir William capering with more energy than skill, at her youngest sister Lydia shrieking with laughter at the top of the set, at Mrs Long, who was watching them both with the fixed attention of a cat at a mousehole.

"I think it is very warm," he said gravely, "and very curious, and very kind to its own. I was not sure, until tonight, that it would be kind to strangers."

She laughed at that, a real laugh that surprised her, and when she looked up, he was smiling. It changed his whole face. It made him younger, and gentler, and so much more dangerous to her peace of mind that Elizabeth nearly missed her step.

"You should do that more often," she said, before she could stop herself.

"Do what?"

"Smile. The matrons would forgive you your ten thousand a year in an instant."

"I do not care about the matrons," said Mr Darcy.

He did not say I care about you. He had known her for a quarter of an hour. But he looked at her as the music drew to its close, and bowed over her hand a moment longer than was usual, and Elizabeth, walking back to Charlotte on legs that did not feel entirely her own, thought that he had not needed to say it at all.

He asked her again two sets later. It was, Charlotte informed her, the first time in living memory that a gentleman from Derbyshire had danced twice with anybody in Meryton, and Mrs Long would be talking of nothing else until Christmas.

#

The carriage rocked through the dark lanes towards Netherfield, and Bingley talked the whole way.

"An angel, Darcy. There is no other word. Did you see how she smiled at the Lucas boy when he trod on her hem? Another woman would have boxed his ears."

"Mm."

"And her sister! I confess I was astonished. You, dancing twice. With the same lady. At a country assembly." Bingley leant forward, grinning in the lamplight. "Caroline has been in a fury since the second set."

On the opposite seat, Miss Bingley's profile was carved in ice. "I merely remarked," she said, "that Miss Eliza Bennet has a great deal of confidence for a young woman with nothing to recommend her. Her mother is vulgar. Her younger sisters are wild. Her gown was turned at least once."

"Her gown," said Darcy, "was entirely irrelevant."

The words came out colder than he intended. Miss Bingley's mouth closed with a snap. Hurst, who had been asleep, opened one eye, looked at Darcy with sudden interest, and closed it again. Bingley stared at him, then sat back with the air of a man who has just seen a mountain move and does not like to mention it in case it moves again.

Nobody spoke for the last mile.

At Netherfield, Darcy climbed the stairs, dismissed Grey as soon as his boots were off, and stood at the window in his shirtsleeves looking out at nothing. The moon had risen over the park. Somewhere beyond those trees, three miles off, lay Longbourn. He did not know which direction it was. He found that he very much wanted to know.

This was absurd. He was eight-and-twenty. He had been hunted through six London Seasons by the most accomplished women in England, and their mothers, and on one memorable occasion their grandmother. He had danced with duke's daughters and earl's nieces and never once lost a night's sleep.

And tonight a squire's daughter in a turned gown had looked at him across a crowded room, and he had not been able to look away.

It was not her face, though her face was lovely, the more so for being alive every moment she spoke. It was not her figure, though he had been more aware of her hand in his than he had any right to be. It was what she had said behind the pillar, to a pack of gossips who did not want to hear it, about a man she had never met. He may be worried about someone at home.

She could not have known about Georgiana. She could not have known about anything. She had simply chosen, out of nothing but her own good heart, to think the best of him when everyone else in the room thought the worst. And she had done it with a joke, so that nobody could accuse her of being sentimental.

Darcy had spent the last three months believing that he had failed at the one thing that mattered, protecting the people he loved. He had half believed the matrons were right about him. Cold. Proud. Impossible to please. A man who could not even keep his own sister safe.

Elizabeth Bennet had given him one evening's grace. It was, he thought, the kindest thing a stranger had ever done for him.

He ought to be careful. He knew what his aunt would say, and his uncle, and the whole of the world he had been raised to inhabit. A country family with no connections, a mother who talked too loudly about her daughters' prospects, a small estate entailed away. Every sensible voice in his head listed the objections in order, the way his father had taught him to list the faults in a horse.