Mr. Darcy’s time at the Assembly local to Mr. Bingley’s leased estate had been by no means pleasant.
Too many people. Too much noise. A dozen conversations at once. The heat from two score couples leaping about. The sawing of the (if he were to be honest, which he did not wish to be) decent violinists. Hordes of bright candles.
Crowding, crowding, and crowds.
Mr. Darcy had been once forced by politeness to speak to an older woman chattering about her nieces.
Fitzwilliam Darcy did not like balls, and a public assembly was the worst sort of ball.
There were many things he liked.
The lecture halls at Cambridge. The soft sound of someone turning the pages of a book. Eager conversation in a close domestic circle. Fencing. His sister. Mr. Bingley. His confidence in his own capabilities.
Darcy stood resolutely to the side, near a portrait of the king, watching the wavering crowds and feeling slightly sick to his stomach.
The only thing of interest that he’d noted had been an oddly dressed girl, who looked slightly familiar. He’d looked closely at her while he tried to puzzle out where that sense of familiarity came from, but then she’d looked back at him, and he realized that his attention could be misconstrued.
Darcy wished that there was no conversation, and only music. He hated the sound of dozens of conversations. He wanted the tension growing in his gut to relax. Since Georgiana’s near escape, he had been easily irritable. This was the first time he’d been in a large social gathering since then, and his previous ways of finding patience when crowded by crowds no longer worked.
He wanted to scream, run, and beat a tree down with his bare hands. Pugilism, a friendly boxing match, would match his mood precisely. Or fencing. Or shooting. Or foxhunting.
That almost familiar girl sat near him, and at first, he thought that she perhaps hoped to inspire him to a dance. However, there was something about her manner. He did not think she had any scheme of that sort. He would certainly not have danced with her in any case. She dressed in a manner that combined cheapness with slovenliness, but when he briefly met her eyes there was intelligence to them.
He found himself confused. But Darcy knew better than to give any particular attention to a poor girl.
Darcy put all his attention on the music, but it seemed every time he started to forget the rest of this miserable event while letting his mind leap with joy of a pretty Irish reel, someone would bump into him as they walked past, there would be a loud coughing sound, and the one inferior member of the musical troupe, the cellist on the left, would make a mistake.
Each time he felt that flash of anger, mostly directed at himself, jerk its way through his chest.
He should have dueled Wickham.
He should never have let Georgiana go to Ramsgate. He should have gone to Ramsgate with Georgiana. How had he been so stupid as to hire Mrs. Younge? Many of the sheep in the north meadows had gotten sheep rot this year, twice as many as any time in the last several years. He should have foreseen the danger of the wet conditions. Would Georgiana’s deepened antipathy to society ever dissipate?
At last, Darcy found a brief peace. A lovely piece of music, and his mind thinking about the astronomical observations he intended to make tomorrow. There was a fine hill next to Bingley’s estate. He had been lately observing each night the way the moons of Jupiter appeared and disappeared around the great planet, and looking at the odd, strange rings about Saturn. What did he wish to study tomorrow with his telescope?
“Darcy, you had much better dance.” Bingley’s cheerful voice broke through Darcy’s reverie. “I hate to see you standing about in this stupid manner.”
That frustration with being distracted, with being made to pay attention to another human, even if it was someone who he usually liked, flashed through Darcy.
With a force of will Darcy brought up that part of himself which he used to manage himself in society. It was the part that had been trained by his mother’s cheerful instructions in social behavior.
The cost of having such a friend as Bingley, a man to whom his advice was helpful, and who brought him to regularly feel more cheeriness than was his usual wont, was to be subjected to unwished for suggestions. “I assure you, there is no one in this room for whom it would not be a pain to me to stand up with.”
Bingley suggested that he dance with the girls sitting behind him.
In his abstraction he had not noticed that the interesting girl had been joined by another, a fashionably dressed young Miss who looked very young indeed, and who had a tipsy air.
He barely glanced at her though, looking again at the half-familiar girl.
Their eyes caught. There was a curious flash in her dark eyes. And then she looked down and away, with a slight smile.
Darcy wanted to ask for that invitation. She was not precisely pretty, but she was different in a way he suddenly dearly wished to know better.
Instead, Darcy sharply told Bingley, once more, that he would not dance, and Bingley left at last.
Relieved by his escape, Darcy felt much of the tension that he had felt during the evening dissipate. His shoulders relaxed. He resisted the urge to look at the girl again, to see how she had taken his refusal to be introduced to her.
Suddenly the other girl, the ordinary one whose presence Darcy had nearly forgotten about, ran up to him. She had a pretty face, a little too rouged, and elaborately arranged curls. She had a miserable expression. She was crying.
She looked at him, mouth open, seemingly unable to find her words. In a low mutter she said, “Oh, I am not ugly!”
And then she swirled around and ran out the nearest balcony doors.
The other girl rose, and she flashed Darcy what seemed like a look of amused apology. Her smile seemed amused, and it relaxed her face, and made her clearly pretty. Then she followed the younger Miss out to the balcony.
He sighed.
Darcy had not meant to send a girl to the balcony sobbing. He had only wished to avoid dancing with a stranger. And to the extent that he had thought of the beauty of either of the girls, it was the other one.
The one who by convention he knew would not be considered pretty at all, but who had something in her eyes...
Darcy’s sense of mild shame at his own behavior mixed with harsh judgement of the girl’s outburst, which was far less socially permissible than what he had said. Why hadn’t he said something more polite?
He could have said this instead: “Though they are handsome enough, I will not be tempted to dance.” Darcy realized though that he had been tempted to dance. With the other girl, not the one he’d brought to tears. And that had unsettled him. The strain of the evening had left his temper under poor regulation.
More than the usual portion of the crowd was looking at him, staring, and probably thinking about him.
It was a thing that he hated, this sense of being observed, especially when he made a mistake. When he did his duties, when he was somewhere he belonged, and when he followed all of the rules of polite society, it was easier for him to bear.
At present feeling himself watched by everyone in the room was painful.
He did not wish to follow that weepy Miss to the balcony to apologize.
He ought to.
His mother would have expected him to, even though the more Darcy thought about it, the less he thought that he had done any actual wrong. However, his mother always insisted, “If you stepped on someone’s foot and they are hurt, you ought to make at least a polite inquiry after the heath of their toes, even if the stepping was wholly accidental.”
It would be so much easier to walk over to apologize if he was not being watched.
Fitzwilliam Darcy was not in fact a man who was in the habit of apologizing for anything.
Darcy stood taller and glowered at the balcony door.
He was above this crowd, and they all knew it. He did not need to condescend.
But, as it often did, it was now one of his father’s favorite sayings that echoed through his mind: “There is one thing, which a man can always do, if he chuses, and that is, his duty.”
With internal grumbling, and an external imposing mask, Darcy walked over to the balcony door, feeling the weight of the eyes of everyone—that is everyone who was not dancing, not engrossed in their own conversations, and not abstracted like he had been. Five persons. Far more than enough to make him exceedingly uncomfortable.
When Darcy stepped up to the doorway to the balcony, he heard a sweet voice echoing through the open crack, “Mr. Darcy is certainly a more interesting person than Mr. Bingley.”
With that sentiment echoing, Darcy stepped out.
The two girls stared at him.
The younger girl had quite wide eyes, while the older one looked at him with a deeply amused glance, as though she could read through him.
Darcy made a bow. “I wish to apologize to you both. I had a strong disinclination to dance tonight, but the way I expressed my disinterest to my friend was unkind to you both. Miss, uh——”
The older woman, the interesting one, said, “Miss Lydia Bennet,” gesturing at her companion. “I am Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
“Miss Elizabeth, I apologize, I did not intend to be unkind to either of you.”
“No,” Miss Elizabeth replied cheerfully, “I am quite confident, you did not think much about us at all.”
Darcy flushed.
Miss Lydia stared at him, with a somewhat chagrined expression.
With another bow to them, Darcy asked again, “May I hope that you accept my apology?”
In reply Miss Elizabeth said, still in that cheerful tone, “Oh, I never expect to be tempting to anyone. That is never my aim. But Lydia, do you forgive him?”
Miss Lydia giggled and looked down.
This was not quite what he expected, though it left him more confused and fascinated by Miss Elizabeth than before.
“I think,” Miss Elizabeth said, “that to undo the horrible cruelty of claiming that Miss Lydia was insufficiently tempting, you must show yourself tempted to dance with her, and quickly.”
“If you would dance with me,” Darcy said, accepting that this was a proper consequence of his words, “I would be willing to do so.”
“Such an eager offer,” Miss Elizabeth laughed. “And Lydia, if you refuse him, I shall tell Mrs. Bennet.”
From the way that Miss Lydia looked at what Bingley had proclaimed to be her cousin—in truth Darcy could see little family resemblance—this whole statement was brought about by some feminine joke that the two had shared.
Then Miss Lydia said, “Oh, very well, since Lizzy insists, I shall dance with you.”
She rose and offered him her hand, and they all came in from the balcony, and Darcy followed her to the line. They did not speak for several minutes, not until Darcy perceived that the set was nearly over.
He did not know if dancing with her for less than ten minutes was a sufficient apology, but as Miss Lydia was resolutely silent, he must assume that asking for an additional set would not please her. “Tell me about Miss Elizabeth, how is she related to you all?”
“Ha!” Miss Lydia exclaimed. “I thought you were looking at her, and not at me. But I am not offended. You should dance with her . But I suppose that would make Mama very unhappy. Lizzy is never bothered by not being tempting. I think she could be very pretty if Mama would let her. You are most interested in her?”
Then, perhaps due to the forbidding expression which this suggestion gave to Mr. Darcy, Miss Lydia looked away from him, stared at the floor, stared at the chandeliers, and resolutely refused to speak for the remaining three minutes of the dance.
For his part Darcy twice more barely stopped himself from asking Miss Lydia again about Miss Elizabeth, but he resisted both times. He had at least learned something from the whole that made him understand her odd mode of dressing better, and her situation.
A poor dependent relation whom the mother feared would outshine her daughters.
And yet it was clear from Miss Elizabeth’s manner that she liked the family well enough, and that she had lively manners. Darcy felt sad for her.
When the dance ended, he walked them off the floor towards where Miss Elizabeth stood. Next to her was a woman who Darcy recalled was Mrs. Bennet. Bingley and the eldest Miss Bennet walked to the same place, and Bingley cheerfully exclaimed, “You did dance! Tempting enough!”
Darcy was effusively greeted by Mrs. Bennet, to whom he had unfortunately been introduced already once this evening. “I saw that you enjoyed that dance very much! My Lydia is the most enchanting creature in England, is she not? Few girls in the whole world who can match her for liveliness or good humor. You cannot know any such, can you?”
This was a point on which Mr. Darcy could hardly agree, given how little the two had spoken, and that the chief emotion he had seen from her was misery and a rather improper sobbing outburst following a slight.
However, Darcy bowed to Mrs. Bennet.
He considered simply stalking away, but Miss Elizabeth studied him with some interest. He had already danced once; he may as well indulge himself and dance with someone who he wished to become acquainted with. As they had not been formally introduced to Elizabeth, Darcy gestured at Elizabeth and said to Mrs. Bennet, “Might I beg an introduction?”
She had said that he was a more interesting person than Mr. Bingley. What had she meant by that?
“What?” Mrs. Bennet seemed startled and confused at first.
She looked around and then laughed. “Oh, Lord! That is just Miss Lizzy. She is nobody. Just my husband’s ward. She is a very poor relation, but we have brought her up since she was four or five. We always show her all of the kindness in the world. You will never hear me complain about the expense of her education and board—it has been very great. But I have always treated her as though she were one of my own daughters. You do not see me demand that she always know her own inferiority. I do not demand she treat my daughters as always her superiors. She is a biddable creature, I do not repine at all—Lizzy, fetch a drink for Jane, you can see that she is fagged from the dancing.”
“I would be happy to take that office,” Mr. Bingley suggested, smiling at Miss Bennet.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Bennet said, “Lizzy is quite capable and happy. A glass of punch for me as well.”
Miss Elizabeth curtsied in a way that suggested nothing of the sort of warmth and informality that a girl treated as one of her own daughters might display towards a woman very nearly her mother.
Darcy frowned to see her hurry away.
Something. What was it?
He liked her.
Nonsense, he knew far too little about her to like her.
And he wished to protect her. To make her smile again, like she’d smiled after Miss Lydia had made such a scene. She was a woman who had a sense of the ridiculous, and who must be able to understand Tristram Shandy .
The way she was treated like she was a servant by the only woman she could look up to as a mother made him want to stand between her and the slights of the world, to protect her.
Darcy followed Miss Elizabeth, catching up to her when she was near to the punch table. “Miss Elizabeth, might I have your hand for the next dance, if you are not already occupied.”
This clearly startled the girl.
She looked directly into his eyes. She was searching for something.
Such beautiful eyes!
Darcy felt suddenly alert, confused, and eager.
They stared at each other for a seeming eternity. The brightness of her dark eyes. The appealing curve of her lips and cheeks. Raven hair. A lovely figure that was mostly hidden by the heavy dark-colored dress whose neckline nearly covered her chin, and the severe bun with no curls falling about.
Miss Elizabeth Bennet was a remarkably pretty woman.
She glanced back at Mrs. Bennet. Darcy glanced back with her, drawn to look at what she was looking at.
Mrs. Bennet was engaged in grandly making love to Mr. Bingley on behalf of the eldest Miss Bennet.
Miss Elizabeth turned her attention to Darcy again. Her eyes were dancing. She smirked at him. “Still apologizing? You did include me with Lydia in the horrid calumny of being merely ‘tolerable’.”
Darcy flushed but her light manner made the joke inoffensive. “ You are certainly more than merely tolerable.”
Darcy was quite surprised that he said so much. But he had only realized how very pretty her eyes were in the last dozen seconds, and that had addled his wits.
She frowned and did not smile.
It surprised Darcy that this odd girl was not pleased by what could have easily been taken as a flirtatious sally—what he had said in fact had the solid substance of a light flirtatious sally.
Darcy never flirted. And she had not been pleased. He very much wished to see her smile again. He had no notion of what to say to bring her to smile. He did not flirt.
“This next dance?” Darcy prompted again.
“No, no. I cannot. I never dance.”
Due to Mrs. Bennet ?
The jealousy of that woman would explain why Miss Elizabeth was so poorly dressed. Darcy nearly asked the question aloud. It was hard to be his ordinary self around this girl. The way that Mrs. Bennet pushed forward her own daughters at the expense of this young woman, with her eyes and her face that pulled at something in Darcy, made him desperately want to give Miss Elizabeth something kind.
“You are silent and grave.” Miss Elizabeth looked up into his eyes once more. The twinkling smile and light had returned to her eyes. “I do hope I have not broken your heart with this refusal.”
“If I said that you had,” Darcy asked curiously, “and I do not mean this as a flirtation, just curiosity, would you then dance with me?”
“Oh, no. Certainly not! Though I would grieve you when you died. But,” her grin widened, “you see, I am not inclined to gain consequence by dancing with a gentleman who is too incautiously loud in his expressed disinterest in dancing.”
Darcy nearly laughed. Now even his better judgement agreed: He did very much like Miss Elizabeth.
“You are not wholly without a sense of humor,” she said with that sparkle in her eyes. “I am greatly honored by your offer, but I shall be too busy by far for the rest of the night. If you wish to do me a kindness, and to gain my sincere forgiveness for calling me ‘tolerable’, you might dance with Miss Mary, or Miss Kitty, if Mary is too plain for your tastes.”
Mrs. Bennet then shouted across fifteen feet. “The punch, Lizzy. I am parched! Heavens, I am dying here of thirst.”
And Elizabeth, with a flushed and hurried motion, as though taking on a different persona now that she was reminded of Mrs. Bennet, hurried off with a squeak and quickly collected the beverages.
Mrs. Bennet then intently interrogated Miss Elizabeth for two minutes before sending her off again, to the opposite end of the room, and then out a side door. Five minutes later Miss Elizabeth returned with a parcel, presumably from their carriage.
Darcy decided suddenly to do what Miss Elizabeth had asked and seek an introduction to the plainest of the Bennet sisters.
During the carriage ride home, when Miss Bingley asked him what had come over him to make him dance so much, Darcy had no answer.