Page 23 of Requirements for Love (Love in London with Mr Darcy #3)
“I do not know what you mean,” Elizabeth said to him after she emerged from her room to come to the breakfast table. “There can be no occasion for you to say anything to me that the others need not hear.”
Darcy had asked her to speak privately with him in the course of the morning, hoping he could apologise, but she answered him with such affected carelessness that he knew her to still be angry. She was too vexed to hear his apology.
He regretted his misconduct yesterday on the stairs, but even after the meal, Elizabeth rebuffed him.
“I do not need to return to my room, thank you,” she said when he pointedly offered to carry her back, so they might have a moment to themselves. “Besides, I can make use of the cane you lent me.”
“Are you certain?” he pressed. “I am fencing today and have Devonshire’s assembly tonight. I will not have the opportunity to help you until very late.”
He emphasised “help you” to mean “talk with you” since Georgiana and Mrs Annesley were listening, and there was no way Elizabeth doubted what he meant. Still, she pasted a small smile on her lips that did not reach her eyes. “I have no need of your ‘help’, but thank you for your kind offer.”
“I do not mind, and I would like to ‘help’ you.”
“What could be the sense of my needing your ‘help’ now? You ‘helped’ me quite enough yesterday.”
“I did not ‘help’ you how I wanted to, and there is more ‘helping’ I could yet do. In fact, it is imperative that I ‘help’ you.”
“As I said,” she emphasised through gritted teeth, “I am not going to my room, so I need no ‘help’ of yours, and if I wanted to go to my room, I could get there on my own. You have ‘helped’ enough.”
He felt the other ladies’ curious eyes on him, and Elizabeth’s were staring into him as though she wished she could set him ablaze. It was a struggle, but Darcy kept his patience, and he hoped by the time he returned tonight that she would be in a calm enough mind to hear his apology.
“Your servant,” he managed to say with no sarcasm in his tone. He wished everyone well before parting from them and strode from the room to change for fencing at Angelo’s school.
Darcy was mortified that she had overheard him.
Of course she was offended to hear her family’s faults openly canvassed, but that was no reason to ignore his attempts to apologise.
After nearly kissing her two days ago, he now had to wonder if she would welcome his addresses.
Was Elizabeth as capricious as that? He did not want to believe it, but how could he be secure of anything when she pushed him away?
He fenced terribly. His thoughts were preoccupied with wondering if Elizabeth loved him enough to marry him or if she would hold his words about her family against him forever.
He could hardly comprehend the intention and suitability of every parry, thrust, or feint he executed, let alone perceive their probable consequences.
“I have never before seen you so stiff and awkward crossing foils with anyone,” Captain Peck said, taking off his mask after they saluted one another and the spectators .
“I will perform better next week,” he said brusquely as he stepped aside.
Darcy saw his cousin leave the spectators and give him a worrisome look, but Darcy waved him away. “I am perfectly well.”
“I was not about to suggest otherwise,” Fitzwilliam said. “However,” he drawled, “since you mention it, you fenced appallingly, and now you are stalking away like a petulant child.”
“I must get home to dress for Devonshire’s assembly tonight. He has invited me to dinner before the ball.”
“Hmm.” Fitzwilliam followed him. “So your terse manner and bad fencing has nothing to do with being discourteous to the woman you admire and everything to do with the idea of an evening of dancing?”
“Yes. Precisely.” Darcy made quick work of gathering his things to leave.
He returned home to find only his sister in the drawing room. “Where is your friend?”
“Lizzy just went to rest,” Georgiana said, setting aside her book. “I noted when the hour struck you might be home soon, and she insisted she felt tired.”
Elizabeth was going to great lengths to prevent his speaking to her. While he stood in silent frustration, his sister added, “His Grace invited you to dinner before the assembly, if I recall?”
“Yes,” he said as calmly as he could. “I do hate dancing, but it was kind of him to invite me to dinner before the dancing starts.”
“Will you not dance at all?” she asked curiously. “Is there no friend you would dance with?”
He thought of the woman with a sprained ankle who insisted on avoiding him. “Certainly not,” he said. “I will smile amiably at all who meet my eye as I circulate the room, greet those whom I must acknowledge, and then hide in the card room with the married men and old bachelors.”
“Some lady sitting down will be disappointed,” she said absently, returning to her book.
Georgiana was right, as he had learnt from Elizabeth, but there would be enough young and single men to go around tonight.
His eagerness to apologise faded in the face of Elizabeth’s continued resentment.
As Darcy dressed for the Duke of Devonshire’s assembly, he tried to suppress his annoyance so he would be better behaved for dinner than he had been for fencing.
He had not meant for Elizabeth to overhear a truth that would pain her, but she could not disagree with his sentiments. She must know how badly behaved her family could be.
It was a minor offence, truly. She ought not to be so offended that she refused to hear his apology.
While he allowed himself to be distracted by a lively dinner at Devonshire’s table and greeted all of those friends and acquaintances that he must, he felt his mood darken as the evening wore on. He knew he would be a dreadful dance partner and even cards would try his patience.
Irritated as he was with her petulance, nothing would change if he did not talk with her. He wanted to apologise for speaking out of turn about her family to his cousin, and then learn if she had any affectionate feelings toward him.
He left not long after the dancing began, choosing to walk the short distance home rather than cede to the pomp and circumstance of using a fine carriage when attending a duke because it was faster.
Darcy had felt as though his teeth were on edge all day, and talking to Elizabeth was the only thing that would settle his mind.
Darcy entered his drawing room, determined to apologise even if Elizabeth was with Georgiana and Mrs Annesley, and stopped short when he saw Captain Peck seated amongst them.
“Your friend Captain Peck returned to help occupy Lizzy,” his sister said with a cheerful countenance.
He blinked and looked at everyone’s expectant gazes. Everyone save for Elizabeth, who was spending an exorbitant amount of time straightening the blanket over her foot.
“Capital, you came home early.” Peck came near to shake his hand. “I knew you would be occupied tonight, so I thought—with Mrs Annesley and Miss Darcy’s permission—I might help fill Miss Bennet’s lonely hours.”
It would be rude to say how surprised he was by his friend’s thoughtfulness, so he merely nodded and gestured for him to return to his seat.
“I thought Devonshire’s assembly would go until dawn,” Peck said amiably.
“No doubt it will, but my tolerance for noise, chatter, and dancing wanes before midnight.”
“I had thought that you too would be at His Grace’s assembly at Devonshire House,” Elizabeth said to Peck.
“Oh no.” He shook his head. “They would not invite me to such a gathering. I have no title, not even a courtesy one.”
“But Mr Darcy was invited, and he is also untitled.”
“Darcy lives but a few miles from Chatsworth and a few furlongs from Devonshire House. It would be bad manners not to invite his neighbour. Plus, his uncle is a wealthy and influential earl.” Peck gave him a wink before lowering his voice to say to Elizabeth, but still audible to him, “Besides, his fortune makes up for his lack of title, I suspect.”
Darcy watched Captain Peck and Elizabeth talk.
He knew that the incident on the stairs had put him out of countenance for most of last evening while Peck was with them, but somehow he had missed that Captain Peck and Elizabeth enjoyed one another’s company.
Elizabeth would not have smiled at him in that way and Peck would not have called the day after their first meeting if they did not.
“Before you returned, Darcy,” Peck said to include him, “Miss Bennet was regaling us with stories of her sisters. You and I should both be glad that we only have one.” Turning back to Elizabeth, he asked, “Has your elder sister come to visit you since you have been confined to Darcy’s house?”
“Only once, although we write every day.”
“Then you must have mentioned me in today’s letter, of course?” he teased .
Elizabeth gave an arch smile. “What would I write to her about my new acquaintance, Captain Peck?”
“You will tell your sister that you met a very agreeable young man introduced by Mr Darcy, and had a great deal of conversation with him, and you are eager to learn more of him.”
“Naturally. Shall I tell her he seems a most extraordinary genius?”
Was she flirting with Peck? There was humour across Peck’s thin features as he answered, “I would never be so bold, but I cannot fault your good sense.”
Elizabeth laughed. Peck made Elizabeth laugh, and Darcy hated him a little.
“What is your favourite thing about being in London?” Peck asked her. Darcy leant forward, eager to know the answer.
“Here, one can step out of doors and get a thing in a quarter of an hour. I need not walk two miles to a market town where my options there are limited. I enjoy walking, but I prefer it for the exercise or for the company, not for every small errand. And you? Is it the routs, card parties, assemblies, operas, and lectures that occupy other young men?”
Elizabeth’s gaze flicked to his, but when Darcy met it, she turned away.