Page 38

T he Harringtons’ drawing room was precisely the kind of fashionable trap Darcy had hoped to avoid.

The chandelier was overtrimmed, the air over-scented, and the assembled company already well into the reception hour’s ritual of casual bloodletting—soft voices, sharp glances, the faint scent of judgment masked in lavender water and over-brewed tea.

Candles flared at every surface, casting flickering light across damask walls in a shade of green that reminded him of illness.

Darcy stood just inside the threshold, jaw tight, scanning the room with the wary posture of a man weighing exits against obligations.

He spotted her at once.

Elizabeth Bennet.

Not flirting. Not simpering. Navigating the crowd with that quicksilver grace that made every move look accidental and deliberate at once. She paused at each group with easy brightness, drawing laughter from matrons and ingenues alike, and Darcy—despite himself—felt his pulse trip.

She was gathering intelligence.

His stomach squirmed with dread. This was the plan, after all: she would help him, and he would help her. They would make introductions. They would be wise. Dispassionate. Sensible.

He adjusted his cravat—probably mussing his valet’s careful folds—and moved away from the door before his grandmother could catch him loitering.

Lady Matlock sat near the musicians with a sherry glass and the contented expression of a woman who had orchestrated five weddings, three broken engagements, and one spectacularly foiled scandal—all in one social season.

Darcy did not intend to provide her with another.

There—a familiar figure near the mantel. James Devonport. Eton man. Mild as milk.

Darcy crossed to him with the grim determination of a man performing civic duty.

“Devonport.”

“Darcy!” Devonport turned with cheerful surprise. “Heavens, I had not expected to see you at this sort of gathering.”

“I am circulating,” Darcy said, almost grimly.

“Is it catching?” Devonport grinned. “Because I’ve just become engaged, and I must warn you, it appears to be fatal to peace of mind.”

Darcy stared. “Engaged?”

“Miss Weatherby,” Devonport said with relish. “Not much fortune, but a divine wit and ankles like Botticelli’s angels. You would like her, though you would probably not admit it.”

“Indeed,” Darcy muttered, and excused himself with all the grace of a man retreating from a duel.

Every woman in the room seemed to present some obstacle. Married. Engaged. Unavailable. One of Richard’s former amours.

He was beginning to suspect that his only path to marriage would involve bribery, exile, or complete surrender of his standards.

He turned back toward the crowd—and stopped.

Elizabeth.

She was approaching with a smile so bright it might have been weaponized. Beside her stood a blonde vision in white gauze, all golden curls and guileless dimples.

Darcy’s sense of foreboding was immediate and profound.

“Mr. Darcy!” Elizabeth’s voice was warm and clear, perfectly calculated to draw every nearby ear. “How unexpected!”

He bowed. Briefly. Stiffly. “Miss Bennet.”

“I had just been lamenting,” she said with a cheerful sigh, “how few eligible gentlemen there are in Town. And then—behold! An old acquaintance.” She beamed. “How very convenient.”

He could not even glare. There were too many witnesses.

Elizabeth turned to her companion. “Miss Pennington, allow me to present Mr. Darcy of Pemberley. He is known for his excellent taste in libraries, his commendable hauteur, and a truly astonishing ability to identify the precise moment when a conversation ought to be strangled.”

His left hand clenched involuntarily behind his back, the tension pooling in his shoulders before he remembered he was supposed to be charming.

Miss Pennington curtsied, wide-eyed and amused. “A pleasure, Mr. Darcy.”

He bowed again, already wondering what crime he had committed in a past life to deserve this.

Elizabeth’s smile sharpened. “I shall leave you to it. So many guests still to meet. Good luck.”

She vanished into the crowd, leaving a faint scent of lemon soap and mischief in her wake.

Darcy stood beside Miss Pennington, who smelled faintly of rosewater and matrimonial expectation, and did his best to summon a polite smile.

“I understand you are a great admirer of Gothic architecture, Mr. Darcy,” Miss Pennington said brightly.

“I am more acquainted with drainage reports,” he replied, before managing something slightly more civil. “Though I respect the integrity of good stonework.”

She giggled.

Darcy, against his will, glanced after Elizabeth.

She was laughing with a colonel’s wife now, animated and bright—and not once did she look his way.

She had trapped him. Cheerfully. Effortlessly. Like a fox tossing a rabbit into a stranger’s lap and strolling off with a wink.

And the worst part?

She had done it in perfect accordance with their agreement.

God help him, she had done it very well.

T he Harringtons' drawing room was a riot of candlelight and chatter.

Gilded mirrors reflected the assembled guests, creating the illusion of an even more crowded gathering.

The room buzzed with anticipation, the impending musicale lending a veneer of culture to what was, in essence, a matchmaking affair.

Elizabeth navigated the throng with somewhat falsified ease, her eyes taking in the scene with a mixture of amusement and resignation.

Ladies fanned themselves with delicate motions, their eyes darting toward eligible gentlemen.

Gentlemen stood in clusters, their laughter a touch too loud, their gazes appraising.

She felt the familiar itch in her fingers—the urge to capture the absurdity of it all in her journal.

That ridiculous turban on Mrs. Bartram’s head alone deserved a paragraph.

The dramatic sighs of Lady Ellingwood’s daughter every time a violinist so much as tuned a string required at least a footnote.

And someone—surely someone—ought to document the way Mr. Finch’s cravat appeared to be strangling him into romantic submission.

But, of course, she could not write any of it. Her journal was gone.

The bitter truth settled like dust along her spine. It was likely nestled in the bottom of Miss Bingley’s trunk, crumpled beside a pair of embroidered slippers and whatever infernal cosmetics one used to maintain a perpetual sneer.

At least she had left that woman behind in Meryton. She had taken some satisfaction in the idea that Miss Bingley’s influence might end at the county line. And yet here she stood, still entirely vulnerable, all because she had been careless. Or arrogant. Or both.

The thought made her teeth clench.

She did not miss the journal itself—well, perhaps she did. Its pages had been her private parliament, her only refuge for observations too sharp for daylight. But it was not the object she mourned.

It was the danger.

Everything she had written—about Meryton, about Darcy, about herself—was now someone else’s property. Every cruel remark, every joke too barbed for company, every confession dressed as satire. If even one page found its way into the wrong hands…

No, she could not allow that to happen.

Which meant she needed a solution. Quickly. Before her words became weapons in someone else’s war.

A husband. That had been her decision. Not for love or poetry or noble dreams. For protection. A ring on her finger. A name not her own. A barrier between her and the ruin that might come leaping out of her own ink-stained past.

She lifted her chin.

Tonight was not for amusement. It was for strategy. For introductions and calculations and finding a man—any man—who might offer her a name that was stronger than scandal.

And if he had no poetry in his soul?

All the better.

"Elizabeth, my dear," the dowager Countess of Matlock's voice cut through her thoughts, "do stop lurking by the potted palms. It is dreadfully unbecoming."

Elizabeth turned to find the dowager approaching, her expression one of determined cheer. "I was merely observing the room, Lady Matlock."

"Observing is all well and good, but one must also participate. Come, I have someone you simply must meet."

Before Elizabeth could protest, she was being led toward a portly gentleman with a florid complexion and a waistcoat that strained against his girth. "Mr. Hollingsworth, may I present Miss Elizabeth Bennet?"

Mr. Hollingsworth bowed, his jowls quivering with the motion. "Delighted, Miss Bennet. Are you fond of canary breeding? I have a most impressive aviary."

Elizabeth managed a polite smile. "I cannot say I have much experience with canaries, sir."

"A pity! They are most charming creatures. Perhaps you would give me the pleasure of showing you sometime?"

"Perhaps," she replied noncommittally, her eyes already scanning the room for an escape.

The dowager leaned in, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. "He is quite wealthy, you know. And only mildly eccentric."

Elizabeth suppressed a sigh. Any husband would do, so long as he did not challenge her too much. But the prospect of spending her days discussing canaries, gout, or Bath’s mineral springs was beginning to sound less like survival and more like slow surrender.

She had already endured Mr. Pembroke’s thorough commentary on snuffbox curvature, Mr. Leland’s misty-eyed recitations of Cowper (with heavy sighs between lines), and Mr. Carstairs’s thirty-seven reasons why Bath was vastly superior to London.

All of them polite. All of them dull enough to qualify as soporifics.

As the musicians began tuning their instruments—a sour scrape of violin followed by a tentative note from the pianoforte—Elizabeth made her way to the back of the room and sank into a chair. The seat wobbled. Fitting.

The opening notes drifted upward, delicate and clear. A Corelli sonata, she thought. It was well-played. But her attention snagged elsewhere.

Darcy.