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Chapter Eight

“ Y ou cannot possibly mean to deny it,” said Bingley, one boot already kicked off as he collapsed into the nearest chair. “She is the handsomest creature I ever beheld.”

Darcy stood at the hearth, coat still on, staring into the flames as though they might burn the evening from his memory. “I cannot think whom you could mean.”

Bingley turned in his chair. “Miss Bennet. Jane Bennet. You must recall the lady?”

Miss Bingley did not look up from her needlework. “I do,” she said coolly. “And yes, she is quite symmetrical.”

“That is not what I said.”

“She smiles very prettily,” she continued, with a glance at Darcy that had far too much steel in it. “And rather constantly, I might add.”

Darcy shifted his stance but said nothing.

“She smiled at me when I dropped my fan,” she went on, tone too casual. “Twice.”

“Then you must have dropped it twice,” Bingley said cheerfully.

Miss Bingley’s lips thinned.

Darcy sent them a sidelong glance. “She did smile altogether too much. One wonders if she had thought for anything but smiling.”

“Egad, Darcy, will nothing please you? She smiled just enough. You are very critical tonight, my friend.”

“And you are not critical enough,” Darcy said.

Bingley sighed and shook his head. And Darcy was fairly certain that Caroline Bingley was smothering a prodigious smirk.

The fire popped, nearly showering Darcy’s boots with a spray of hot ash. He was too mesmerized by its blaze to flinch.

Mrs. Hurst, who had been lounging on the settee with a wineglass in hand, now spoke up with a faint laugh. “I thought Miss Bennet perfectly sweet. Though her gown was perhaps not quite the most fashionable cut.”

Miss Bingley sniffed. “Nor was the fabric.”

Darcy turned slightly. “Her appearance was appropriate.”

Mrs. Hurst arched a brow. “Appropriate? That is high praise indeed.”

“Coming from him, it rather is,” said Bingley.

“You were very quiet this evening, Mr. Darcy,” said Miss Bingley, arching one immaculate brow. “Not your usual lively self.”

Darcy did not look up. “I was not aware that I am usually ‘lively’.”

“Much more so than this evening, I should say. Almost as though you were… distracted.”

“I was not.”

She folded her needlework with unnecessary care. “No? How curious. You stood quite still for several minutes after we arrived.”

Mrs. Hurst chuckled. “Perhaps he was recovering from the fragrance of that punch. I have smelled perfumes that were less potent.”

“Or the musicians,” added Mr. Hurst, eyes closed.

Darcy made no reply.

Miss Bingley’s voice dipped lower. “Though of course it might have been the company. Some conversations do linger longer than they deserve.”

Mr. Bingley glanced up from his glass. “Which company? Surely not Miss Bennet? She said nothing objectionable.”

Miss Bingley flicked her gaze toward the fire. “I was not referring to Miss Bennet, the elder.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Bingley, frowning faintly. “Then—” He blinked. “You mean… the one you knew before? Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”

There was a pause.

Darcy remained mute. But his jaw was no longer still.

Miss Bingley gave him a knowing smile. “About how to flee Hertfordshire before another charity auction finds you?”

Mr. Hurst, from the corner, offered a drowsy chuckle. “I’d wager a man could go for less this time around.”

Bingley laughed. “Not if Miss Elizabeth was bidding again. Though I suppose the novelty of you has worn off.”

Darcy only scuffed the toe of his boot along the hearth, scooting back the cooling ash. He was watching the flame crawl along a half-burnt log, turning bright and searing at the edges.

Like a certain pair of eyes.

Like a certain woman standing far too easily in the wrong corner of the room.

Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

Sharp-tongued. Keen-eyed. Unapologetically sure of herself in a world that should have made her nervous. And yet she had stood there, trading barbs with him as though she had every right to—and worse, every advantage.

And now his pulse was still behaving as though the argument had never ended.

“Yes, odd story, that,” Mr. Bingley went on. “Fancy that, a charity auction! You must know the lady quite well, then.”

“I do not,” Darcy said flatly. “We are barely acquainted.”

Miss Bingley smiled thinly. “And yet one might almost believe she had unsettled you.”

Darcy’s expression did not flicker. “I am not so easily unsettled.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Hurst, “she did look you directly in the eye. Quite bold.”

“I daresay it was the only way to speak to him,” Hurst muttered.

“She is rather tiresome, I thought,” Miss Bingley continued. “Quick to speak. Very sure of her own cleverness.”

Bingley frowned. “I thought she was charming.”

Miss Bingley snorted. “Oh, Charles, you once said the moth in your drawer was charming.”

“When I was five,” he countered.

“I only think your esteemed friend has some experience with the lady that would reveal more of her character than can be learned in a single evening, and he does not appear so quick to praise her. What say you, Mr. Darcy?” Miss Bingley’s eyelashes were fluttering like some dratted butterfly.

Darcy looked back at the fire.

He should have agreed. It would have been easy. Expected. She had given him the line. He had used it before. “Tiresome.” “Presumptuous.” “Unsuitable.”

Instead, he found himself remembering the exact shape of her mouth when she had said, “I paid.”

The way her hands trembled after she curtsied.

How he had not moved, not spoken, not breathed—for at least two seconds longer than he ought to have.

“She is… peculiar,” he said finally. “Fond of provocation.”

Peculiar. That should have been enough. An easy dismissal.

So why did it feel like a defense he did not quite believe?

Miss Bingley smiled slowly. “Indeed. Do you know, Louisa,” she said, turning to her sister, “I had taken the notion of inviting Miss Jane Bennet to dine with us tomorrow.”

Mrs. Hurst glanced up with a slightly querulous expression. “Tomorrow? Whatever for?”

“Why, you heard our dear brother this evening. He has made some indecently impromptu plan to be dining out with some gentlemen tomorrow. Surely, he means to take your husband and Mr. Darcy away from us, as well. How, dear sister, shall we amuse ourselves?”

Lousia Hurst frowned. “I suppose I shall have to endure four hours of turning pages for you at the pianoforte.”

“Precisely my point, dear sister. Shall we not invite a companion to our evening? I think Miss Jane Bennet a fair prospect for society—for one evening, at least.”

“What a capital notion!” Bingley cried. “Why not invite her sister Miss Elizabeth as well? Four does make a more even table.”

Darcy turned back, his spine stiff. Elizabeth… dining here? Even without him present, somehow the notion seemed a… a violation of his privacy. She would ferret out some intrigue, expose something private, that much was sure.

“Oh, no, no, pray!” Miss Bingley laughed. “I, for one, do not fancy the notion of being outnumbered in my own home.”

Bingley’s brow creased. “But they are only two, as are you.”

The thing was on the razor’s edge of decision. Darcy closed his eyes. He could add the weight of his words, or let it pass. Take a chance…

“I would advise against it,” he said, turning toward the others. He was rewarded with a slow blink of pleasure from Miss Bingley and a slightly open-mouthed look of wonder from Bingley.

“Whatever for?” Bingley demanded.

Dash it all. Now he needed a reason. “I… I suspect,” he said, testing each word, “that if Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst desire to come to know Miss Jane Bennet better, they had best let her speak without the… the rather more… dynamic presence of her younger sister.”

It was flimsy. He knew it. But flimsy was better than transparent. Anything to stop Elizabeth Bennet from walking through the door and making everything… complicated.

Bingley blinked.

“Surely,” Darcy continued, “you noted the lady’s modesty. Would she not be thrown into her sister’s shadow?”

Bingley nodded carefully. “I can see your point.”

Miss Bingley smothered a smile. “One wonders if we ought to invite the lady at all, then, if, as Mr. Darcy says, she cannot shine well enough on her own. We hardly need another pet to fondle and entertain when we can do well enough ourselves.”

Darcy cleared his throat. “If I may, I also suspect the weather to turn tomorrow.”

Bingley scoffed. “What makes you say that, man? This evening was as fine and clear as one could ask for. Are you now a soothsayer? And what has that to do with Miss Bennet coming to dine, anyway?”

“There was a pronounced heaviness in the clouds on our drive home. Did you not notice the lack of moonlight? If your invitation obliges a lady to travel in poor weather…” He stopped there, for he truly had run out of inventive excuses.

He could hear himself grasping, voice steadier than his pulse.

The truth was, he would say anything—anything—to keep her away.

And for once, Miss Bingley proved his rescue.

“Quite right, Mr. Darcy! Why, now that I think of it, I did hear it said that the family had but one carriage and team. And on such a small farm as Longbourn, surely the horses will be wanted for work, so it would be just our luck that the lady would be forced to ride on horseback. If Mr. Darcy is correct, as he usually is, the lady might arrive with a chill. A dangerous one, Charles,” she emphasized, blinking innocently at her brother.

“Oh, very well,” Bingley sighed. “I suppose we will have other opportunities for you to come to know her in town.”

“Indeed,” Mrs. Hurst agreed. “Both Miss Jane Bennet and her younger sister ought to be easy enough to encounter again.”

Darcy’s cheek flinched. That remark sounded terribly deliberate, and rather targeted.

“What is this, Mr. Darcy?” Miss Bingley cooed. “You do not seem pleased by the notion of coming to know Miss Elizabeth Bennet better. I should think you already had more than a passing acquaintance with the lady. Why such reluctance?”