Lieutenant Denny led Elizabeth near enough to Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam to attract the man's notice. Sensing someone behind him, Richard turned around. In only half a moment, he looked past the man that was barely his acquaintance, and his mouth split into a mischievous half-smile to the young woman he recognized. Immediately, he bowed his head and greeted her by name.
"Miss Elizabeth Bennet in Brighton! You cleverly hid any travel plans this far south when I saw you in Kent," he stated, practically accusing the young woman of deception.
Elizabeth laughed nervously, her eyes flicking between Richard and his taller cousin, with whom she had so much history. "I had no design to travel to Brighton, then, sir. Only upon returning to Hertfordshire did I learn of my youngest sister's invitation, by Colonel Forster's wife." Elizabeth explained, gesturing towards the front of the assembly rooms where she had left the rest of her party. She held her breath as Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam took a moment to glance at each other.
"You knew Colonel Fitzwilliam in Kent?" Denny asked, leaning closer to Elizabeth so she could hear him clearly. She nodded but kept her gaze on Mr. Darcy, searching for any signs of discomfort or disapproval that she approached their party.
When Mr. Darcy locked eyes with Elizabeth, she sighed in relief and then felt heat rise up to her cheeks. Embarrassed, she was startled to find Mr. Darcy to be very handsome, as Jane had once pointed out. But she never fully considered the man's features for his handsomeness.
No, instead of giving him a fair evaluation, she had colored his appearance with the brushstrokes of insult from their first meeting in Meryton. Her dislike of him, strengthened by Mr. Wickham's lies about Mr. Darcy stealing a living from him and other misunderstandings, further kept him as a gentleman she did not consider in the least.
She had been wrong.
Elizabeth wanted to say something to him, but it would not be polite for her to speak first. She pressed her lips together in humility, then thought better of it and offered a smile of encouragement. To her delight, finally spoke:
"Miss Elizabeth, it is a pleasure to see you again." He bowed his head.
"I would say the same, sir," she said, firmly. She enjoyed the small look of surprise on his face once he lifted his head, but he swiftly schooled his features to appear indifferent.
More relaxed in her situation, Elizabeth addressed Mr. Darcy's cousin. "Colonel Forster and his wife told me this ball is in your honor, Colonel Fitzwilliam, for you have newly taken your post. If this is correct, please accept my congratulations, sir."
All three men suddenly looked rather uncomfortable speaking of such a topic. Remembering poor Mr. Denny standing next to her, Elizabeth sought to relieve him of his chaperoning duties.
"The set is ending, Mr. Denny. I believe you promised a dance to Mrs. Forster?" she asked, reminding him of the pact he made that afternoon.
Denny looked to Colonel Fitzwilliam for approval. The man of superior rank gave a nod, to signify that Elizabeth was safe in his care. Lieutenant Denny accepted the acknowledgement he could see to his other interests for the evening.
For a moment, neither Mr. Darcy nor Colonel Fitzwilliam spoke, but the man next to them that Elizabeth did not know reached out his hand. Instinctively, Elizabeth held out her gloved hand to his offer, as he bowed his head and introduced himself as Captain Joshua Shawcroft, of Winmarleigh.
"What a pleasure, Miss Elizabeth, to meet an acquaintance of men I've known since my childhood. May I have the honor —" Shawcroft began, but Colonel Fitzwilliam quickly reached over to take Elizabeth's hand and cut the good captain off.
"No, you may not. Stand down, Captain." Richard said, teasingly, but firm enough that Captain Shawcroft did not debate with him. "Would you care to dance the next set with me, Miss Elizabeth?" Colonel Fitzwilliam asked.
Elizabeth giggled at the men fighting over her hand at the next set, a very stark contrast to the first dance assembly where she and Mr. Darcy participated. Without thinking twice, she looked at Mr. Darcy and smiled at him in hopes he would understand that she wished for there to be no ill feelings between them.
"Well Colonel, seeing as I intend to dance more this evening," she said with her eyes flicking again to Mr. Darcy's direction, "I should be delighted to be your partner for the next set."
"I can see now, Miss Bennet," Captain Shawcroft said, "you are a lady who means to play favorites. I was most certainly going to ask you to dance the next set."
As Colonel Fitzwilliam began to lead her away to their positions in the set, Elizabeth felt comfortable teasing her newest acquaintance, slightly. "Not favorites, Captain Shawcroft. Merely following rank, sir," she said with a grin, and Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed heartily at her jesting of the man.
Richard led them to the closest position in the line from where they had left Mr. Darcy and Captain Shawcroft in conversation. Elizabeth caught herself looking over at them frequently during the dance, hoping to see Mr. Darcy. Quickly, she became self-conscious that her dance partner might have noticed. She stopped and focused on her steps, and her partner. He did not appear bothered by Elizabeth's preoccupation, for his eyes were also on the same conversation.
Elizabeth became intrigued by what caused Colonel Fitzwilliam to watch so protectively over his cousin. She knew why she kept looking at Mr. Darcy, and she wagered to guess that Colonel Fitzwilliam was not harboring feelings for the man.
"I see that you are nervous for Mr. Darcy and the Captain to be talking alone," Elizabeth stated, as she spun close to Colonel Fitzwilliam's flank in a side-by-side promenade for a few dance steps. He performed the appropriate turn to lead her back to her side.
"The opposite, Miss Bennet. Talking with Shawcroft is the sole purpose my cousin had in attending this evening," Colonel Fitzwilliam said, and Elizabeth furrowed her brow in bewilderment.
She recalled the conversation in the carriage where Colonel Forster explained how another Colonel had been in his place. Not exactly sure how the pieces fit, her intuition told her that one piece of information related to the other. After all, there had to be a reason that Mr. Darcy felt he needed to attend to his cousin's new post, an odd assignment for a gentleman without a rank in any militia or army that she was aware of.
"Does their conversation have anything to do with Colonel Farrington's recall to London? Mrs. Forster misses his wife keenly as a card partner," she said, to explain how she'd come to know such information.
Colonel Fitzwilliam looked at Elizabeth with an intractable stormy expression on his face, but he soon shook it off to attend more to the dancing.
"You seem uncommonly interested in the business of my cousin. If you beg my pardon for speaking such, for a lady who told him he was the last man on earth whom she could be prevailed upon to marry." Colonel Fitzwilliam repeated the accounting that Mr. Darcy gave him, and was not entirely shocked that Elizabeth Bennet failed to react.
Instead, the lady tilted her chin up and took a deep breath. "Yes, yes, I was particularly nasty to him, wasn't I? The poor man," she said, with all the confidence of a woman who never expected his first proposal, let alone any restoration of his affections. Her feelings on the matter carried little risk of consequence.
Elizabeth and the Colonel danced more and just as the set was coming to a close, the man with a penchant for military intelligence took an opportunity to interrogate further.
"You almost said that as a lady who has changed her feelings towards my cousin," he said, quietly.
To this statement, Elizabeth gasped. As they applauded the end of the set, she turned to him with an expression of guilt. She cast her eyes down and explained what could briefly be shared in a ballroom.
"I am not a woman who holds false opinions when she is presented with plain and truthful facts," Elizabeth said. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied Mr. Wickham leading Lydia away from the dance floor towards a more secluded area of the assembly room. "You must excuse me, Colonel."
Watching a lady he admired greatly for her courage and common sense, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam felt his heart drop into the pit of his stomach on behalf of his cousin. In his opinion, there was no woman more perfect in all of England to become his cousin's wife. But the poor woman was clearly vexed beyond reason. He watched as she reached her destination, and as he witnessed the loathsome Mr. Wickham deceptively charming another young innocent. He assumed from the lady's resemblance to Miss Elizabeth that she must be the youngest sister invited to Brighton by the Forsters.
With George Wickham present, his plans to indict Shawcroft grew complicated. To protect Georgiana, his cousin might very well leave at morning light. But if Darcy feared that Miss Elizabeth might be in harm's way, perhaps his affection or jealousy might keep him in Brighton longer. Spying his cousin making his way to him as another set began, Colonel Fitzwilliam casually strolled the assembly room in the opposite direction until he found Colonel Forster.
Joyful introductions were exchanged and he watched carefully as Elizabeth tried to politely convince her sister to separate herself from Mr. Wickham. His anger rising as he kept his patience, he inquired about the most banal subject he could think of from the militia colonel.
"Traveling from Meryton? That must have taken a fortnight! How were the roads?" Colonel Fitzwilliam asked, allowing the man of the same rank, but vastly different levels of responsibility, to regale him with anecdotes of the journey. Richard nodded as politely as was necessary, waiting for his cousin to find him.