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SONG: Dress by Taylor Swift.

Halfway through the first evening of filming Lizzy's feet were sore from standing at the edges of the hall and pretending to make conversation with a lovely gentleman from Didsbury. During their real conversation between takes she discovered he was working as an extra due to retirement; his wife had insisted that he find something to do to fill his hours or she would kill him or divorce him, and he had found himself signing up for local projects to get stave off boredom. He advised her not to start eating any of the food or simply to take little morsels and pick at them, she followed his advice, however, Harriet didn't and practically inhaled a slice of pork pie. However, she found herself having to take large bites of it each time a scene was taken from another angle. By the time the scene was complete, Harriet was convinced that she would not be eating pork pie ever again.

Matthew was concentrating on orchestrating his team – it was of the utmost importance that everyone did what they were supposed to do when they were supposed to do it or else the whole sequence of shots wouldn't work. Casey's script had followed the standard pattern and showed Elizabeth and Darcy verbally sparring with each other, as well as the Bennet family demonstrating their inferior social skills. The dance; the slow moving, intricate, classic formation was the way that he would showcase the physical manifestation of the attraction between Elizabeth and Darcy without having them sneak off halfway through and having sex in the gardens. For all its prim properness, he knew that the story was about two people who really fancied each other but who couldn't admit it to themselves, let alone each other – especially not when the only contact they could have was at formal balls and assemblies where they were standing on a dancefloor like performing monkeys and being watched by anyone of any consequence.

He watched Tamsin from across the room, she was dancing with Sam Gallagher, who was playing Captain Denny, and he felt a small pang of jealousy as she laughed and teased him, pressing herself against his redcoat uniform and taking a whole host of selfies that would inevitably appear on her Instagram at some point that evening. She was so close to Lydia Bennet in temperament that she had practically cast herself in the role, even though he had her pencilled in for the more straight-laced Mary before the first round of casting. Looking at her now, all strapped into stays and corsetry, he couldn't wait until they had finished for the day so that he could pull her out of it and feel the warmth of her skin under his own.

Benn was talking softly with Jenny Graves, as his Elizabeth they had built a great working relationship over the last few months, and she made him laugh with the random snapchats she sent him and the sense of humour that they shared over stupid things that happened on set. She even once provided him with a live commentary of one of his old nineties rom-coms, where he played the best friend to the leading lady, via Snapchat. It would have been annoying if it hadn't filled a terrible void of loneliness and made him laugh rather than drink. Jenny secretly admitted to him once, after a long emotionally draining rehearsal of the Hunsford proposal scene, that she had a poster of him on the back of her door all through high school, that she was fairly convinced that he had been responsible for her sexual awakening even if he was old enough to be her dad.

Technically he knew that this was correct; she was playing true to the age of her character - twenty - whereas he was fourteen years older than twenty-eight-year-old Darcy would have been and would probably have been better cast as Mr Bennet. He felt guilty that he wasn't cast in more age-appropriate roles, or with more age-appropriate actresses. Even the brilliant Mariella Jones, who had played his love interest in 'Praise To The Skies' and was the same age, was now reduced to playing mothers and ageing spinster aunts. His only hope was that when the film was finally screened that they photoshopped out his wrinkles and it didn't look like 'Elizabeth' was kissing her Dad.

Lizzy was partnered with one of the officers, a lovely young whippersnapper called Rhys, who didn't have any lines, but looked good in a uniform and had spent three weeks learning the dance. He looked nervous as the first bars of the song played, but easily found his pace and they bounded through the cotillion with the other three couples in their set. Laughing with Rhys, albeit silently, she noticed that Benn would quickly glance in her direction as he observed the dancing from the outskirts of the room with a glass of Ribena masquerading as port. Even though the music played intermittently, the main noise coming from the room was the soft shuffle and stomp of dancing shoes as they moved across the wooden floor. As they moved into Mr Beveridge's Maggot, the dance which she had practised so hard with Benn, Lizzy was excited to see how well he had rehearsed and if his earlier boasting was warranted.

All standing in position, Rhys and Lizzy found themselves adjacent to Benn and Jenny for the start of the dance. Runners and crew were positioning markers and adjusting lighting, whilst the Steadicam operator would move throughout the dance with the couples as if he was part of it. Lizzy saw Rhys glance at Benn standing next to him, he looked at him with an awe and reverence that she hadn't seen someone do before, but she imagined that this was, for the newly graduated drama student, of great importance.

As they stepped into the first movement, Lizzy watched as Benn and Jenny stepped together silently, moving together and then apart, then it was her turn to repeat the movement, with a gloved hand she felt his fingers around hers a little tighter than expected. As they moved apart again and back into the first position, she saw him look at her, his face saying nothing and his eyes saying everything, and she felt as if they were having an almost clandestine affair on the set of the movie.

SC. 28. NETHERFIELD. BALLROOM. EVENING. INT.

DARCY and ELIZABETH are dancing Mr Beveridge's Maggot, we see them pull towards each other and away.

ELIZABETH:

It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy.

(Beat.)

I've talked about the dance and now you should make a remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.

DARCY:

And what would you have me say, Miss Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH:

Well perhaps I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones.

(Beat.)

Or we could remain silent.

DARCY observes ELIZABETH for a moment as the dance continues. He dances with the other lady in the group, watching ELIZABETH.

DARCY:

Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?

ELIZABETH:

Sometimes.

(Beat.)

One must speak a little, you know.

(Beat.)

It would be odd for us to be entirely silent for half an hour together.

ELIZABETH watches as DARCY dances with the other lady in the group, before she repeats the movement with the gentleman as DARCY observes, scowling. This isn't a dance, this is a duel.

"Cut!" Matthew shouted from his director's chair, and the shot was over from this angle. The dancers took a break as the scene was reset, Harriet wandered over to Lizzy with a bottle of water and an increasingly itchy head from the satin turban which, although it looked beautiful, was heavy and annoying.

"Mum," she prodded.

"Ooh, thanks," taking the water Lizzy took a moment to observe her daughter who looked beautiful, albeit annoyed, in the green gown which was sparkling under the fake candlelight softly lighting the hall.

"I'm absolutely roasting," Harriet took a fan from her matching drawstring bag and began to waft herself. "I have never known the house to be this warm and it's October!"

"I know what you mean! You can imagine though what it would have been like to have lived here when Darcy and Elizabeth did – no wonder they never mention the cold!"

Harriet looked up at the gilded plasterwork on the ceiling, the three tall columns painted to look like plaster and each containing the trunk of a tree from the estate, and the amazing chandelier in the centre of room – fully illuminated with fake candles and looking, quite accurately, like something out of a Hollywood production. Lizzy wondered if her daughter had become too complacent about her surroundings and their significance, not only to the family but historically; Harriet had lived at Pemberley all her life, but had only ever seen it as a tourist attraction not fully knowing the amount of work that it took to keep the house and over a thousands acres of the estate running and safe for the public. But tonight, they were taken back to 1814, and dancing at the Netherfield Ball in dresses that were copies of those worn by their direct ancestors. Whilst the irony of being called Elizabeth Darcy and living at Pemberley was not lost on Lizzy, she knew that sometimes it was actually a very special privilege indeed.

It was 10pm before filming was completed; amidst the hubbub and the noise of the cast of fifty all being defrocked and dewigged, their costumes and wigs placed in named boxes for the completion of filming tomorrow, Lizzy saw Benn standing at the doorway of the servant's hall, wrapped up in his North Face jacket and a tartan scarf. She felt a little bubble of happiness burst in her stomach at the sight of his face, he looked over at her, surprised to see her dressed in her normal clothes, and made a quick gesture of his head. Giddy, she jumped up from the make-up chair, wrapped herself up in her coat and walked towards the door. Without drawing attention to it, he slipped his hand into hers. Holding on to each other tightly they disappeared into the crowd of people dispersing for the night.