Darcy could feel Elizabeth's breath, so close was she as she delivered a sharp and bitter epitaph on his hopes of becoming her husband. His defenses loomed stormily. It would take an endless and tortured white night before he would admit to himself how deeply her blows had landed. Awash in confusion and denial, he found himself detached, transfixed by that breath washing over his skin, enthralled by the rare manifestation of a decorous young woman enflamed and provoked to battle. The allure of her ferocity was bewildering and the only reason intact enough to prevail against his closing the scant distance to capture her lips was invoked by the painful memory of Georgiana's grief and unwarranted shame.

Lizzy's emotions careened wildly, but the satisfaction of freely expressing her long-withheld rancor was unspeakably intoxicating. Her blood rushing, she felt near giddy in her liberation, which mingled bizarrely with her rage. Heady from flouting ten thousand a year, she saw him as never before, as he was, after all merely a man. As if to assert her equality in stature, she stood boldly close, rising against his disparagement.

Darcy fought for composure, self-awareness washing over him again, lapsing through pride, scorn, wonder, lust, before finally settling on remorse. Lizzy watched the flickering transition of emotions, held too aloof by victory to know or care if she read them rightly. She wouldn't realize until the small hours of the morning just how close they'd come to kissing, a troublesome thought, which refused to be banished.

At last he uttered, "Forgive me for taking up so much of your time."

Words that would echo unceasingly, words whose apparent bitterness would later exposed the grief that they endeavored to conceal.

Lizzy'd made a strong go of rallying her spirits in the months that lapsed. Jane was more cautious these days, but Mr. Bingley remained steadfast in his attentions, determined to make his amends completely. It was a comfort to observe them in action, but lingering judiciously behind in the lane left her at the mercy of a certain set of memories, which gave her no pleasure at all. This meant something. Big or small, she could not know, but the result was plain. Three weeks of marked attention in town and Bingley had returned to Hertfordshire faithfully at Jane's heel. Something in the universe had been set right.

Unanswerable musing on the subject chased sleep away often enough that she was given to drowsing beneath a particular elm in their park. She wove her fingers in the spring hay and for an hour or two flagrantly disregarded the dangers of the afternoon sun. It felt good on her skin, temporarily banishing the plague of uncertainties flocking her and she drew strength from it after mornings spent trying to out walk her thoughts. It was a marvel that she could be so infatuated with a man she had determined to hate and was hardly ever likely to encounter again. Charlotte would have her laugh; what exactly had she said at that ball? That she would find him agreeable indeed? It seemed an eon ago and yet her life still spread out before her blankly. Her days had never seemed so idle as they did when hardly a minute was free from the earnest pursuit of driving Fitzwilliam Darcy from her thoughts. Absurdity, which she had formerly delighted in, now held her by the throat and she was keenly aware of it.

"Miss Bennett has many sisters."

Georgiana's surprised declaration bared a vein of longing. Fitzwilliam openly winced; her unguarded sentiment lay too near to his own. She deserved a sister and needed a proper confidante. Setting Bingley's hurried dispatch aside his cup, he gathered his courage, "I doubt it will be many months before you will have cause to meet them, my dear."

She was hardly the first woman to reject a proposal by a man counting as scarcely more than an acquaintance. If she had done it twice, it was probably more common than general opinion held. Your particulars, Lizzy Bennett, she told herself sternly, are hardly novel. What right have you to carry on like this? She applied herself with some success to a new order of philosophies and political journals in her father's study. She often felt his scrutiny landing heavily on her, but if anyone in Longbourn appreciated peace and respite, it was Mr. Bennett.

"With lake country out of reach now, I hope you will not be too disappointed to be contained to Derbyshire, Lizzy."

Without hesitation or wavering the stream of hot tea from pot to china, she replied, "Not at all. I have been looking forward to it keenly, I assure you."

In the myriad scenarios her imagination had produced, the effect of sheer heart-stopping mortification had somehow been forgotten.

"I fear my presence here—"

"Your presence here is very welcome, indeed, Miss Bennett. Will you do me the honor of introducing me to your friends?'

This drove her eyes straight to his in wonder and instinctively he leaned towards her. Proximity evoked a dizzying déjà vu, but this time the heightened colour spread over cheekbones was driven by a sudden hope that was answered in turn.