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Chapter Nine

T he fire had burned low.

Darcy sat alone in the drawing room with a letter open in his hand and an entire conversation lodged behind his ribs like shrapnel. Georgiana’s handwriting was smaller than usual. That alone was cause for concern.

She was uneasy. That much was clear, but whether the cause was her current residence at their grandmother’s dower house or… other matters… was debatable.

“Mrs. Reynolds sent over my letters today. Lady Catherine intends to call at Pemberley sometime in October. She says it is too damp at Rosings, and she ‘ought to make use of the better air.’ I do not know if she means to stay, but she asked that the blue bedchamber be ‘aired and prepared.’ I suppose I ought not be alarmed, but I am rather dreading it.”

That made two of them.

She also mentioned that she was requesting new flannels, that the dowager’s kitchen chimney was drawing oddly, and that the spaniels had misbehaved again. She apologized three times for the dogs. It was not the dogs that concerned him.

He should have been consumed with this.

But unaccountably… he was not.

Instead, his mind returned—again—to Lady Lucas’s overheated drawing room. Too warm, too full of bad tea and worse conversation—and the joyful glint in Elizabeth Bennet’s eyes when she had told Miss Lucas all about his dead language habit.

She had not meant it to sound flattering.

Which was what made it so disorienting that he had liked hearing her say it.

She remembered things he said. Everything he said, as far as he could tell. That was the problem.

He had not said anything of note. A passing mention—he could not even remember when it must have been.

A private indulgence. And yet she had tucked it away, weaponized it, and flung it back with an arched brow and a twist of her lips.

And had not stopped there—no, had bandied words with him like someone who…

well, someone who knew him far better than she did.

She noticed things. Too many things. If she ever looked at Georgiana with that same sharpness—if she guessed even a piece of it—

He could not bear the thought.

Darcy folded Georgiana’s letter and laid it aside.

Elizabeth Bennet was ordinary.

Clever, yes. Self-assured and quite fond of saying things that did not belong in drawing rooms, but apart from that, completely and obviously ordinary.

And she smiled at people—freely, unguardedly.

She had smiled at that man—what was his name?—the balding cousin of Mrs. Lucas. Darcy could still see the expression. It had not been flirtatious. But it had not been his.

This was untenable.

She was absolutely ordinary. Except, she had seen too much already. And worse—she had understood it.

That was the part he could not forgive.

And he needed to stop thinking about the shape of her mouth when she said “grave, formal, a little imperious.”

D arcy pressed his heels lightly, and the mare picked up her pace.

The morning was too bright by half—one of those October days pretending it was still summer, with the heat caught in the grass and the sky wide and too blue to be trusted.

He had intended only a short ride. A circuit of the western boundary, perhaps, far enough to feel removed from Netherfield and its conversations and its people.

Especially one person.

He had not slept well. The house was quiet, but his mind had been loud, and he thought perhaps the rhythm of hooves and the sharpness of open air would unseat whatever restless thing had taken root behind his ribs.

The mare’s gait steadied. The wind tugged at his coat. Somewhere in the near distance, a hawk called once and was gone.

Then the lane forked without warning.

It was not intentional. He had meant to turn toward the wooded edge of the estate, where the road rose and curved and left one decently alone. But the fields had opened, golden with the last stubborn grasses of summer, and the hedge had thinned, and the mare was already veering left.

And then, quite suddenly, he could see what he supposed must be Longbourn.

It sat snugly between clusters of trees and orchard rows, half-obscured by ivy and sun. The back garden sloped gently, the grass gone dry at the edges, and there—just beyond the shade of an ash tree—was an old rope swing.

And Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

She was not alone. Two of her sisters stood nearby, one pushing the swing, the other laughing into a bonnet. But it was Elizabeth who caught the light.

The tilt of her head made his pulse stagger and realign itself somewhere behind his knees. Her snarl of curls tumbled freely about her shoulders, her ribbon flying loose, her feet kicked out with a wild, unladylike abandon that made something deep inside him curdle.

And his brow beaded with sweat. His gloves suddenly itched, as though his hands resented being contained.

It was an utterly careless kind of joy. And it was infuriatingly attractive.

He reined in hard. Not because he wanted to—but because any forward movement might have betrayed something: a sound, a thought, a truth. She was loose in the world in a way he had never allowed himself to be—and it unnerved him. Her freedom had teeth.

She did not see him.

The sun struck her profile as she laughed at something—something simple, no doubt, something foolish and fleeting—and it landed in his chest with a heaviness he could not explain. She did not look contained. She looked… alive.

His horse shifted beneath him. Pawing, shifting, as though he had given spur but not rein. Still, his eyes remained fixed, his mouth slack.

He told himself he ought to turn. This was trespassing, in spirit, if not in law. There was no reason to be here. No purpose.

He stayed.

The swing tilted forward again, her skirts catching the breeze. Her voice rang out—unintelligible at this distance, but still unmistakable. He had never once seen her like this, not unguarded, not unraveled by the performance of society.

She was not meant to be watched.

And still he watched.

Darcy swallowed hard and finally turned the mare toward the ridge. Not to retreat. To survive.

It was nothing.

And yet, somehow, it would not go.

T he drawing room was in uproar.

Kitty and Lydia were arguing over which of them would be asked to dance first at the next assembly, Mary was reciting a passage from Johnson without being asked, and Mama was bemoaning the price of satin to no one in particular.

Elizabeth sat in the corner, legs tucked under her, her notebook balanced in one hand and her pencil gripped like a weapon.

She had not intended to write. Truly. But then Lydia had mentioned that Mr. Darcy had refused a second biscuit at Lady Lucas’ tea two days ago, and something in Elizabeth’s brain had simply snapped.

“He is a man who speaks less than he scowls, and reserves a special breed of grimace for the scent of common tea. His eyebrows communicate more than most letters. His sense of humor is buried beneath four layers of frost and one Latin inscription.”

She paused. Tapped the page.

“He enters a room as though summoned to identify a corpse, and regards conversation as a siege best endured in silence.”

More noise from the other side of the room. Someone—probably Kitty—had stepped on Mary’s hem. Elizabeth tucked her chin and added:

“He may or may not have a soul. If he does, he keeps it ironed.”

Her lips twitched. She scratched out the last part. Rewrote it.

Jane’s voice came from behind her chair. “Is that a story, Lizzy? The novel Mama keeps saying you ought to write?”

Elizabeth snapped the notebook shut, nearly blotting her sleeve. “Of course it is. Pure fiction. What else would it be?”

Jane smiled faintly and bent to pick up her embroidery basket. “You were pulling the same face you used to make when rewriting Shakespeare for fun.”

“I am trying a new tone. Satirical. Entirely made up.”

“What sort of satire?”

Elizabeth tilted her head. “A portrait. Or a character sketch. Possibly a cautionary tale.”

“About?”

“A man.”

Jane blinked. “As opposed to… a woman? I suppose that narrows it down.”

“A very respectable man, or one who thinks of himself as such,” Elizabeth added. “Tragic, really. With excellent eyebrows.”

Jane looked mystified. “Is it a romance?”

Elizabeth hesitated. “No.”

Jane looked more mystified. “Then, what is it?”

Elizabeth leaned back in her chair. “I am trying to understand a hero who is not a hero. He is not charming. He is not kind. But he might be—eventually—if someone dropped a bookcase on him and started from scratch.”

Jane said nothing for a moment. Then, a sly grin overtook her features. “At least change his eyebrows. Or everyone will know.”

Elizabeth chewed her lip and shook her head, her pencil poised once more. “Oh, no, impossible. His eyebrows are the entire point.”

She adjusted the angle of her notebook, tapping the tip of her pencil against the page. Her expression softened—just slightly.

“He is… not entirely hopeless.”

Jane looked over, surprised.

Elizabeth snapped the book shut again. “But I shall remedy that in the next chapter.”

T he sunlight fell at the wrong angle for thinking.

Darcy sat at the writing desk in Bingley’s study, one hand resting beside his teacup, the other atop the thick ivory stock of a letter he had read three times and still could not quite believe.

Fitzwilliam, Your silence on the matter of your sister grows conspicuous. A girl of her age, position, and musical ability ought to be visible by now—at least to the right eyes.

The ink was impeccable. The seal crisp. And the meaning unmistakable.

Lord Matlock rarely wrote in metaphor. This was not a query. It was a warning.

Across the room, Bingley was rattling through a drawer, searching for a misplaced pair of gloves with all the coordination of a man trying to throw a net over smoke.

“I am not certain whether Philips is the one with the small vineyard or the enormous bloodhound,” Bingley said, half to himself. “Or was that the vicar? No, the vicar’s wife. She kept feeding me gooseberries.”