Yet she remembered that this was the first ball held at Pemberley in ten years. When he moved away once more, she watched him attentively. She had left the past behind in words alone, for she still saw the proud man she had first encountered in the assembly rooms at Meryton the previous October. And it was not just.
“Tomorrow, after breakfast, I shall take you to the western boundary of the estate. It is the furthest point, seven miles from here.”
Elizabeth nearly missed her step in surprise.
“Seven miles?”
“I tell you this not to impress you, but that you may understand that an estate such as Pemberley is managed through days and months of labour, and requires my presence everywhere. No, Miss Elizabeth, since my father’s death, I have spent only a few months each year in London. The rest of my time is here. Working.”
Elizabeth nodded, for she believed him. There was something remarkable in his company. When he told her something, she had no doubts. A man who had spoken with such ruthless honesty about her family when he asked her to marry him would hardly invent falsehoods merely to please her. The certainty that he was exactly the man she saw before her eyes, whether proud or disdainful, yet always showing his true face, was in itself an invaluable quality. She preferred his arrogance to the honeyed smiles and admiration of men such as Mr Wickhamor Mr Collins, which had proved nothing more than deception and disguise.
“Do you believe me?”
“Of course I believe you,” she replied sincerely.
When they met again in the middle of the ballroom, he gave her hand a gentle pressure. And perhaps there, beneath the magical light of the chandeliers, something became clearer between them. As they parted, Elizabeth made her way towards Mrs Cooper, but not before looking at him in silence, and Darcy knew that, at last, she trusted him.
∞∞∞
“My goodness, Elizabeth,” murmured Mrs Cooper as they made their way towards the room where refreshments awaited them, “everyone is talking about the two of you.”
“The two of us?” asked Elizabeth, still rather occupied by the ending of her dance with Darcy, which had been unsettling for her as well.
“Oh!” she exclaimed finally understanding and she blushed so deeply that Mrs Cooper drew her away from the crowd and out onto the terrace.
“There is nothing wrong with it,” said Mrs Cooper gently, attempting to calm her.
“How can there be nothing wrong? There is. What are they imagining?”
She pressed her unexpectedly cold hands to her cheeks, trying to master her agitation, or perhaps her annoyance, for she was no longer certain which she felt.
Mrs Cooper looked at her with a kind of amused pity. The young woman who spent her mornings instructing her children in the most varied subjects, displaying an uncommon breadthof knowledge, was at the same time plainly inexperienced in the manner in which a ballroom of more than a hundred guests regarded an unmarried gentleman of fortune.
Yet again it did not take Elizabeth long to understand. “I refused everyone a dance and then appeared on his arm.”
“Exactly. With your beauty and the looks he casts in your direction, you have destroyed the hopes of many mothers and daughters in that magnificent ballroom.”
“But the two of us…nothing is happening between us.”
“I believe you must speak only for yourself,” Mrs Cooper reproved with the same gentleness.
“What am I to do now?” asked Elizabeth with evident alarm.
“That is what I am wondering myself, for people are already saying that this ball is intended to announce an event.”
“No!” exclaimed Elizabeth.
She wished to hear more, but Colonel Fitzwilliam and Miss Darcy were approaching, and with very few words Mrs Cooper departed on the colonel’s arm, leaving Elizabeth alone and decidedly embarrassed in Mr Darcy’s sister’s company. She fervently hoped that, at sixteen, Georgiana had understood nothing and was merely there to accompany the colonel, who had plainly come to invite Mrs Cooper to dance. Yet that hope proved short-lived.
“You cannot imagine how glad I am that you are here,” said Miss Darcy. “I have not seen my brother so content in a very long time.”
Elizabeth wished to stop her at once and explain that there was nothing between them, but she recovered herself quickly. Georgiana’s moderate words could mean anything. They might simply express pleasure that her brother had found such a friend.
“And I am very glad to be here and to make your acquaintance.”
“Mrs Cooper has told me how much you love children, and how you manage to make hers interested in subjects that ordinarily belong to grown people. How very much I should like to talk with you.”
She paused before continuing, without looking at Elizabeth, as though she required considerable courage to speak.