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Chapter Twenty-Five

L ady Forester’s conservatory was a greenhouse masquerading as a ballroom. The glass roof glittered with frost, the air buzzed with laughter and violin strings, and Elizabeth felt like a beetle pinned under a bell jar.

She adjusted the clasp on her reticule for the fourth time and tried not to look like she was scanning the room. She was not desperate. Desperate women were obvious, and obvious women were doomed. She was merely alert. Poised. Socially strategic.

And also, very possibly, about to be publicly ruined.

She caught a flicker of ginger silk to her left—Jane, laughing and smiling, engaged in quiet conversation with Aunt Gardiner. They looked like a painting. In contrast, Elizabeth felt like the bit of charcoal someone used to scrawl a mustache across it.

She moved toward the refreshment table with purpose, intent on appearing both approachable and occupied, which was an impossible combination and she knew it. The crystal punch bowl glimmered. Beside it, two fashionable ladies leaned close in confident conspiracy.

“Lady Bascombe claims she knows who wrote it.”

“No!”

“She says she has a niece in publishing who heard it from the printer himself.”

Elizabeth bit back a groan. Lady Bascombe flustered facts like a busker with two coins—loud, confident, and barely in tune.

And she had no notebook. Not a scrap of paper. Not even a tragic program to scribble upon. It was a great deal easier to mind her tongue when she had her pen.

“She says it was a governess. Or a widow. Someone scandalous. Possibly French.”

Elizabeth’s legs trembled beneath her layers of muslin—a thing she could never dare permit polite society to notice. Her heart pounded like she had run up three flights of stairs in corset and boots.

Not yet . No one suspected her. But they would. Caroline Bingley would see to that. For now, the ton was enchanted with their new parlor game: Guess the Anonymous Authoress.

Elizabeth took a sip of punch and nearly choked. Too sweet. Too pink. Too festive for someone whose social viability was about to collapse like an overfilled soufflé.

She needed a husband. Fast. Someone respectable, dull, preferably terrible at reading.

Her eyes caught on Captain Marlowe.

He stood near a grouping of palms, laughing with her uncle Gardiner. His uniform was perfect, his shoulders unfair, and his smile warm enough to melt half the room. A model officer by appearance—if only appearances were enough.

She had—stupidly, catastrophically—mocked his taste in poetry the first time they met. Not unkindly. Just… unguardedly. As if she had forgotten that most gentlemen wilted when pricked with anything sharper than praise.

And she had done little better later in the evening when their paths happened to cross by the punch bowl again.

He had said, with the gravity of a man quoting Cicero, “Love is a fortress, breached only by honor,” and she—poor fool—had suggested fortresses might fare better with less sentimental mortar.

That was her failing, she supposed. She could admire confidence. Even endure arrogance. But a man who sought approval before every remark, who asked for permission to be amusing? That wore thinner than muslin in the rain.

Still. He was charming. Thoughtful. Not unhandsome. And he clearly thought well enough of how he looked in a uniform, which—though not quite the same as self-respect—was at least a cousin to it.

She could fix this.

She approached with casual grace and the determined expression of someone planning to undo a minor war crime with a compliment and a strategically deployed dimple.

“Captain Marlowe, I was told just this morning that the Naval Chronicle praised your actions at Calais. Something about a stranded merchant vessel and excellent judgment under pressure?”

He turned, surprised but pleased. “That is true, Miss Bennet. Though you have me at a disadvantage. I hope you are not… mocking me again?”

“Not this evening. I am strictly reverent tonight. I only mock on Tuesdays and alternate Sundays.”

He laughed. A good sign. A nervous one, perhaps, but genuine.

They spoke for three minutes. Perhaps four.

She asked clever questions. He answered, then second-guessed his answers.

He paused once to ask if she was warm enough near the fire.

Then again, to see if the conversation suited her.

Then once more, to assure her she need not indulge his talk of shipboard life if she found it dull.

She smiled each time, but with decreasing sincerity. He leans in as though my opinion will cure scurvy, she thought. How noble. How distinctly unnecessary.

She pressed her lips together. No pen. No parchment. No outlet. All these unsaid remarks swelled like unspent currency in her chest.

She adjusted her gloves instead.

They danced around the awkwardness of their last encounter. She very nearly had him smiling the way he had smiled the first time they met—unguarded, unaware, before he had decided her approval was a thing to be nervously chased.

He offered to show her the stars by telescope sometime—as he was a naval officer, and could name nearly all of them.

She had the good sense not to retort that she preferred the moon over the stars, because it at least had the decency to disappear for half the month. Her hand twitched toward her reticule.

Of course it was empty. No journal. No pencil. No outlet for the line curling inside her like steam behind glass.

And then—“Oh, Captain!” came a voice like brittle toffee dipped in disdain. Caroline Bingley, draped in green satin, oozed forward on the arm of a foppish baron. She released his arm with a dip of her head, and he seemed none the poorer for it as he ambled off in search of better delights.

Miss Bingley swept closer, touching her glove to the captain’s arm. “What a pleasure to see you again. I had no idea naval uniforms were so flattering off deck.”

Marlowe bowed with a murmured pleasantry.

“Oh, and Miss Eliza, I do hope you are enjoying the evening. You seem to have so many admirers these days.”

Elizabeth returned the smile with careful brilliance. “As do you, Miss Bingley. I cannot imagine how you keep your dance card straight.”

“Oh, I manage,” she said, fanning herself. “One only has to be a little organized. I even keep a journal of my conversations—though I am told that is dangerous now. One never knows what may end up in print.”

Marlowe coughed softly. His eyes flicked to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth did not flinch. “Indeed. Some things are better forgot.”

“Or mislaid,” Miss Bingley said sweetly.

Elizabeth’s lips curved into something dangerous. “You must be very practiced at both.”

Miss Bingley laughed lightly. “How droll. Captain, you must let me introduce you to Lady Renshaw’s niece. She has a fondness for naval poetry.”

“I was just—”

“Oh, there is a pretty thing! A gallant captain, reluctant to share his talents with an eager listener? I insist. Come along.” She swept him away with a practiced pivot, leaving only a faint trail of rosewater perfume and unspoken threat.

Elizabeth stood motionless, hand clenched around her empty teacup. She had lasted four minutes. Four. And once again, she was alone.

She slipped through a cluster of chattering ladies near the punch, pulse ticking in her ears like a metronome set too fast. Her focus had narrowed to one, infuriating point: escape.

Just a little air. Just a moment to collect herself, regroup, pretend she had not been spectacularly derailed by a woman who weaponized manners like bayonets.

And then she collided with a wall of starched linen and heat.

Elizabeth staggered back, already forming her apology, but a hand closed lightly around her elbow—steady, certain, familiar.

“Apologies—” she began, but stopped at once. Him.

Mr. Darcy.

He did not smile. That would break character, after all. He only looked at her the way he always did—like he was deciphering a particularly stubborn passage in one of his Latin grammars.

“She will not say anything tonight,” he murmured, as if he already knew precisely what had set her in motion across the room. “Miss Bingley is still enjoying the guessing game too much.”

Elizabeth bristled. “I was not—”

“You were.” His gaze was steady, the great coxcomb. “You are terrified.”

“I am not afraid of her,” she hissed.

“Not her , perhaps. But you are afraid of losing. Rightly so, for the consequences do not bear thinking of.”

The words landed in her chest with quiet accuracy. She closed her eyes and wondered how difficult it would be to join a convent. If she converted… moved to France…

Darcy did not gloat. He could have—could have lorded her ruin over her, reminded her she had only herself to blame. Instead, he just stood beside her, casually surveying the room. A moment later, he said, as if offering weather, “Captain Marlowe is speaking with Miss Langley.”

Elizabeth followed his gaze, reluctantly. There they were: Miss Langley, all porcelain and practiced giggles, her fan half-hiding a smile. Captain Marlowe leaned slightly toward her, expression hidden behind some sort of potted plant. Deliberately, probably.

She turned her eyes back to Darcy. “I had nearly made up for past insults. We were getting on famously enough until Miss Bingley came by.”

“I noticed.”

There was a faint edge in his voice, and she could not tell whether it was pride or pity. She hoped for neither.

He hesitated, then added, “He favors nature. Poetry. Duty—which means he also favors melodramatic verse featuring senseless heroics and overwrought romanticism. You are more likely to impress him with moonlight and fantasy than with your usual pointed blade.”

Elizabeth’s eyes flashed. “You think I am too sharp?”

“No,” he said. “For my part, I think you need not be anything else. But tonight, you are not trying to be yourself. You are trying to be a future wife.”