Page 6

She opened the fan again, holding it carefully by the sticks. Whatever he said, she would prefer not to break something she would later have to explain to Mama.

"I certainly shall not," Mr. Darcy replied, his voice deep and cultured and utterly devoid of warmth. "You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this, it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not another woman in the room whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with."

Punishment, Elizabeth thought. Dancing is a punishment. How very dramatic.

She peeked. His jaw was, indeed, clenched.

Elizabeth tightened her grip on her fan. She could hear him well enough without watching him too.

"I would not be so fastidious as you are for a kingdom!" Bingley protested. "Upon my honor, I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life. Several of them are uncommonly pretty."

"You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room," Darcy said flatly.

Jane was lovely. Elizabeth was pleased for her sister, though she could have wished the compliment had not required the dismissal of every other woman present.

Bingley glanced toward Jane. "Oh! She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld!"

Bingley spoke with such happy conviction that Elizabeth nearly forgave his choice of friend.

"But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you."

Elizabeth looked at the painted flowers on her fan. They were a poor defense, but they were all she had.

"Which do you mean?" Darcy turned to look at her, and for just a moment, their eyes met.

Was that surprise in his expression? Recognition? Elizabeth forgot the fan as those dark eyes fixed on her. For one suspended heartbeat, she thought he might see her, truly see her: not Elizabeth Bennet the character but the conscious, panicking thing trapped in this ridiculous plot.

But then the moment shattered. His expression shuttered, and he turned back to Bingley with an air of dismissal.

"She is tolerable," he said.

Tolerable. He might have been discussing yesterday's soup.

"...but not handsome enough to tempt me."

She had known the words. She had not known how easily he would say them.

"I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men."

She had been sitting down for five minutes. Apparently a woman could not rest her feet without acquiring a history of disappointment.

"You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me."

She held the fan level. It seemed suddenly important that it should not shake.

The famous slight, delivered exactly as scripted. Without the alteration of a syllable. And it hurt.

She eased her glove back over the little ridge where a seam had rubbed her thumb. It gave her something to do while two ladies nearby looked at her and then politely looked elsewhere. She had not expected their kindness to be worse than laughter.

Across the room Jane was smiling at Mr. Bingley. Elizabeth kept her own smile in place until Jane turned away again. She would not make her sister carry this, on an evening that had begun so well for her.

Knowing ought to have helped. Upstairs that morning, she had imagined hearing him with the detachment of a woman listening to somebody else's quarrel. Instead she was here, in her own gown, with her own sore thumb, trying not to mind that strangers had pitied her.

But hearing herself dismissed (hearing her worth evaluated and found wanting by a man she was apparently destined to marry) still stung like a slap.

Her face arranged itself into an expression of amused disdain.

Elizabeth tried to lower the smile. It remained. The two ladies glanced away again, evidently reassured that she had not minded.