Page 39 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

Darcy had been to perhaps two hundred balls in his life, and at every one of them he had been sought after. Hostesses had steered their daughters into his path. Mothers had contrived introductions. He had been the prize of the room without lifting a finger, and he had despised every minute of it.

Tonight, for the first time, he understood what it was to be on the other side.

He watched it happen from the edge of the floor while the admiral talked to his wife. He watched the young men who would once have fought to be introduced to Mrs Darcy look at her and then look away. He watched the sets form, and her name not be written on a single card but his own. He heard a man he had known at Eton, a baronet with a weak chin and an income half his own, say quite distinctly behind his fan to a companion, pity; she is pretty enough; I would have taken the bet myself for fifty guineas, and laugh.

He turned round.

He did not say anything. He only looked. He looked for a long, long moment, without any expression at all, the way he had looked at the tradesmen who came to Pemberley's back door with Wickham's bills. The baronet's laugh died. His face went red, and then white. He muttered something, and bowed, and backed away into the crowd, and was not seen again that evening.

Then Darcy crossed the floor to the admiral's sofa, and bowed in front of his wife, and held out his hand.

"Mrs Darcy. Will you dance?"

She looked up at him. For a moment he saw everything she had been hiding all evening, naked in her face: the hurt and the anger and the fear. Then it was gone, and she smiled, and put her hand in his.

"I should be delighted, Mr Darcy."

He led her to the top of the set, where the hostess's own daughter had been meant to stand, and took the place without asking anyone's leave. Nobody objected. He did not think anybody would dare.

They danced. He did not look at anybody else. He was aware of the room, of every eye on them, of the whispers and the fans, the way a man is aware of weather. It did not matter. He looked at his wife. He looked at her going down the set and coming back up it, her white skirts swinging, her chin high, her cheeks flushed. He looked at her when they turned and when they parted and when they met again. He did not take his eyes from her face once, from the first bar to the last.

When the set ended, Lady Pembury bore down on him, all purple silk and diamonds, with a tall pale girl in tow.

"Mr Darcy! My dear sir, you have not been introduced to my niece, Miss Stanhope. She has been longing to stand up with you. You must take her in the next."

"I am engaged for the next, ma'am," said Darcy.

Lady Pembury's eyebrows went up. "Indeed? To whom?"

"To my wife."

There was a pause, in which several people nearby stopped talking.

"But you have just danced with Mrs Darcy."

"I have," said Darcy. "And I intend to dance with her again. And again after that, if she will have me. I find, ma'am, that I have not the slightest wish to dance with anybody else in this room. Or in any room." He bowed, very correctly, to Miss Stanhope, who looked as though she did not know whether to laugh or cry. "Your servant, madam. I am sure you will not want for partners."

He turned his back on them both, and held out his hand again to Elizabeth.

She was staring at him. Her eyes were very wide and very dark. Then she took his hand, and he felt her fingers grip his, hard, and saw her mouth tremble.

"You cannot do that," she whispered as they took their places. "Not twice in a row. Not after refusing her niece. Everybody will talk."

"Everybody is talking already," said Darcy. "Let them talk about this."

The music began. It was a slow dance, a stately one, with long moments of standing face to face. In one of them she said, very low, with her eyes shining, "I have never loved you more than at this moment. Do you know that?"

"I know it," he said. "I can see it."

"Everybody else can see it too."

"Good," said Darcy.

They danced the second set and did not dance again, because he would not, and she would not dance with anyone who had not the courage to ask. They sat with the admiral until supper, and left before it. Lady Pembury's footman, handing Elizabeth into the carriage, bowed to her with a respect he had not shown on her arrival. Darcy noticed. He supposed the servants' hall had its own opinions, and he supposed that they, at least, had been watching the right thing.

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Darcy House. Saturday, 21st March