Page 10

ELIZABETH WAS ALONE after the dances with Mr. Darcy, for Mr. Darcy did indeed dance with Caroline, and Charlotte was dancing with Mr. Collins.

She sipped punch, feeling nervous and confused and out of sorts. What was happening to her?

Eventually, her sister Jane found her, all smiles. “What do you think of Mr. Darcy?” she said in a low and conspiratorial tone.

“He said you have been talking of me to him!” said Elizabeth.

“Oh, yes,” said Jane. “I know you think you’re the one who is the matchmaker in the family, Lizzy, but I think I have matched the two of you and have done it rather well.”

Elizabeth’s shoulders sagged. “But you know that Caroline wants him!”

“I think not,” said Jane with a shrug. “Yes, yes, she is the one who brought him here, and she is the one who said she was desperately in love with him, and I interceded for her, but here is the way of it, Lizzy. Mr. Darcy is a very lonely man. Most people give him deference and they respect him, but he is very rarely included in anything. He was quite eager to come here, you see. He’s the sort of man who needs someone who will not simply tell him what he wants to hear.

Caroline isn’t truly in love with him. She wants to use him.

Anyone can see that. She’s not the least bit good at hiding it.

They had this conversation about pens.” Jane shook her head, sighing.

“Pens?” said Elizabeth, who thought this was an odd change in topic. Pens?

“Oh, yes,” said Jane. “Caroline comes to him and says that she will mend his pen, and he says no, he mends his own, and she is huffy about this, as if he has done her an injury, not allowing her to do him a favor. So, then he reacts rather badly to that, but she won’t take the hint.

She stays close to him, though it is obvious he would rather she leave him be.

So, then, she is looking over his shoulder and commenting on the evenness of his handwriting, and he is clearly annoyed and simply wishes to be free of her company, but she is oblivious, and…

and… after that, I decided I should no longer feel guilty about answering all of his questions about you, for he has been talking about you, Lizzy, ever since he saw you in Meryton. ”

Elizabeth let out a breath. “Caroline is good at being complimentary, or she can be, but she sometimes applies it badly.”

“Oh, Lizzy, are you hearing anything I say? They are no good for each other, Mr. Darcy and Caroline.”

“Well, I must talk to her first,” said Elizabeth. “She is one of my closest friends. I cannot marry a man she says she is in love with!”

“No, I suppose, but she isn’t in love with him,” said Jane. “Anyone can look at her and see she is not.”

“That is the way she is in love, though,” said Elizabeth. “She’s… not exactly a warm person, you know? Caroline is a bit cold, but she knows what she wants, and Mr. Darcy is everything she wants.”

“But she is not what Mr. Darcy wants,” said Jane. “And I think you are.” She gave her a small smile. “It will all sort itself out, I think.”

Elizabeth wanted to believe it could all be sorted out so easily.

She truly wanted to believe that .

“I DON’T THINK he’ll do it in the end,” Caroline muttered to Elizabeth. “I don’t think he’ll propose to you.”

Elizabeth and Caroline were on the outskirts of the ballroom.

It was quite late, and the party had gotten loose and disorganized.

Some dancing was still taking place, but still more of the company was simply seated or standing in clumps, drinks in hand, laughing uproariously at various things that were being said.

Mr. Darcy himself was trapped on the dance floor, dancing with Jane, something that Caroline had insisted that Elizabeth herself engineer because otherwise he would have been attempting to talk with her all evening.

He was very obviously enamored, and Mr. Collins had noticed, too.

There had been an incident where Mr. Collins had introduced himself to Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Darcy had not taken that well, and Mr. Collins had spent a very long time explaining the entailment of Longbourn to Mr. Darcy, and all of that had been wretched.

“Well, of course he won’t,” said Elizabeth, studying her fingernails. She had been hoping not to be so very confused by this time of the evening, but she was actually even more confused than she’d been at the beginning of the evening.

“He wants to,” said Caroline. “He and I spoke of you. He has made you into something in his head, some symbol, I think, of freedom or his own choice or I don’t even know, but he is the sort of person who will come down on duty over freedom every time.

He will go with propriety. It’s who he is, I see it now.

And he must have the right sort of woman. ”

Elizabeth picked at her fingernails. How was it that Caroline had gotten so much of a better idea of Mr. Darcy than she had?

“That’s why it was really a lost cause for me to bring him here, anyway,” said Caroline with a heavy sigh. “I don’t think he would ever propose to me either. I do not have the right connections either .”

Elizabeth looked up at her. “Wait, what are you saying?”

“Unless you have some idea,” said Caroline, “some way to get him to go against his very deep-held ideas of propriety and uprightness and ask either one of us. You’re the one who can do such things, after all.

You’re the one who can see that part of him, the things he wants, the things he hates, what would propel him to go against propriety in some way. ”

“No, I have no idea,” said Elizabeth. “I’m afraid I did not get to know him very well. I had a hard time getting him to talk about himself. He wanted to talk about me.”

“Oh, yes, I see that he is well-nigh obsessed with you.”

“No, he’s not!”

“Aha! So, that is your weakness then, Eliza, you are not very astute when it comes to seeing yourself, I see. You can see other people clearly, but not yourself or not when it comes to the way they see you.”

Elizabeth sighed, deflating. She supposed she was going to have to accept being called ‘Eliza.’ The time to say something about it had come and gone.

“Anyway, that’s very unfortunate,” said Caroline. “It seems to me, it would be easier to make him propose to you than to make him propose to me at this point.”

Elizabeth glared at her. “I don’t believe you’re as sanguine about this as you’re acting. You want him, I can see that.”

“I don’t want him , per se,” said Caroline. “I want someone like him is all. And if you could snag him, then you could help me get someone else.”

Elizabeth had one moment of clarity in the sea of confusion that had been the entire ball.

Caroline was serious about this. She had never wanted Mr. Darcy himself but only a man who was as connected and wealthy as Mr. Darcy.

The man himself barely mattered to her. Elizabeth could not imagine a marriage for those reasons. She was not that way.

But, well, she might be in the minority, she thought, looking up and seeing Charlotte still talking to Mr. Collins.

“So, it would be ever so convenient if you weren’t worthless with Mr. Darcy because you’re so out of sorts about someone finding you attractive, Eliza. I wish you could simply secure him for yourself.”

“Right,” said Elizabeth quietly.

She got up from her chair and went across the room to where the dance between Mr. Darcy and her sister was now just ending. She fixed Mr. Darcy with a look, a determined look.

He spied her and his expression relaxed into a smile. “Miss Bennet! Why, there you are. I have been looking all over.”

“I’m sorry for having made myself scarce, sir,” she said. “It’s been a puzzling evening for me. You are…” She looked him up and down. “Well, you have such eyes.”

“ I have eyes?” said Mr. Darcy. He turned to Jane. “Have I not been going on about Miss Bennet’s bright eyes for days now?”

“He has,” said Jane, smirking.

“Sit with me?” said Elizabeth.

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” he said.

They sat. Elizabeth looked him over again, her mind working quickly. Maybe it was because it was late or because she’d had a bit too much of the wine punch and was somewhat tipsy, but she felt only a bit of blind determination at this point, an excitement, not a sense of worry or concern.

Could she do it?

Could she make him override that sense of propriety?

Her own conversation with him had only illuminated it, after all. He had spoken of fulfilling expectations about responsibilities. There was only one thing that she had heard about him that did not fit in with it, and that was the business with Mr. Wickham, denying him that living.

Now, she wasn’t sure that Mr. Wickham’s version of the events was the full and true story, but there was some element of it that might, indeed, provide the reasoning behind it all.

Jealousy was the reason that Mr. Wickham had given for Mr. Darcy’s actions.

But not simply jealousy, something deeper than that.

Inadequacy.

Mr. Darcy had not felt as if he had been properly loved and accepted by his father, and this was why he’d been jealous of Mr. Wickham.

Of course, that all fit, didn’t it? If a man felt inadequate, did he not try as hard as he could to be adequate, to fulfill his role in life, to take care of what he was responsible for?

Yes, yes.

Quite.

She had him. She understood him.

Marrying her would not be proper. She wasn’t the sort of woman who he should unite with. But what had caused him to be improper before, to commit a sin against Mr. Wickham?

Jealousy.

Competition.

“You met Mr. Collins earlier, I suppose,” she said.

“So I did,” said Mr. Darcy. “He went on and on to me about all manner of things about your family’s household. Is it true he is your father’s heir?”

“It is,” she said. “You see, it is all decided, my future is. You arrive, with your eyes and your admiring and everything else, but you must understand why I have had trouble entertaining any of it.”

He blinked at her. “No, I’m afraid I don’t. What do you mean?”