Page 13 of What to do with Fitzwilliam Darcy?

There was no response.

"Jane!" Elizabeth called.

Nothing.

Darcy and Elizabeth stood side by side before the locked door, listening as their friends and relations abandoned them to their fate.

After a long moment, Elizabeth turned slowly towards him. "This is your family's doing."

Darcy looked down at her. "Your sister is equally involved."

"Jane has never behaved like this before. It must be the influence of your cousin." Elizabeth's eyes narrowed.

"I blame the colonel."

Darcy let out a long breath. "On that, at least, Miss Bennet, we are in complete agreement."

✽✽✽

Elizabeth crossed the room and dropped into the chair furthest from Mr Darcy, still burning with indignation at Jane's betrayal and with a quite separate, considerably more uncomfortable heat whenever she remembered that she was now locked in a room with the man she had spent most of the previous evening telling how handsome he was. She could not look at him. She would not look at him. Indeed, if Colonel Fitzwilliam intended to keep them imprisoned until they had conducted a sensible conversation, there was every possibility she would die in this library.

Mr Darcy appeared to have reached much the same conclusion about conversation. He took the chair opposite, picked up his abandoned cup of tea and discovered it was cold. Without comment, he poured himself another. Elizabeth watched him from the corner of her eye, then realised she was watching him and became extremely interested in the arrangement of sandwiches instead.

She was hungry. Horribly hungry, in fact. Her stomach had been protesting since Jane first drew back the curtains that morning, but shame and the remains of her headache had made breakfast impossible. Now she took a small sandwich from the tray and ate it carefully, trying to behave as though being locked into a library with Fitzwilliam Darcy was an entirely ordinary way to spend the afternoon. He took a sandwich too.

For perhaps ten minutes, that was all they did. They ate. They drank tea. Elizabeth examined the fire. Mr Darcy examined a book he did not appear to be reading. Once their eyes met over the rim of her cup, and both looked away so quickly that Elizabeth nearly laughed. The whole thing was absurd. Their families had decided that they were incapable of behaving like reasonable adults, and thus far they were doing very little to prove them wrong.

She reached for another sandwich at precisely the same moment Mr Darcy did. Their fingers almost touched and both hands withdrew at once.

"Please," he said, not meeting her eye.

Elizabeth took the sandwich and placed it on her plate, though she had suddenly lost interest in eating it. The silence settled again, but it had changed somehow. It no longer felt merely awkward. There was a strange awareness between them now, sharpened by the knowledge that neither of them could escape the room even if they wished to. She wondered whether he was thinking about the previous evening too, whether he remembered every humiliating word she had said or whether, mercifully, some of it had been lost beneath the general horror of watching her drink herself senseless.

Mr Darcy turned a page of his book. Elizabeth took another sip of tea and stared into the fire, determined that if either of them was going to begin this supposedly necessary conversation, it would not be her. She had already said quite enough to the man while under the influence of wine to last a lifetime.

Several more minutes passed before Mr Darcy finally closed the book and placed it carefully on the table beside him. "There is something I have been wondering about since last night," he said, and there was enough hesitation in his voice to make Elizabeth wary.

She looked across at him. "That sounds ominous."

"I do not intend it to be." He paused, seeming to reconsider the wisdom of continuing, then looked at her properly. "Did you mean it when you said that you thought me handsome?"

For a moment Elizabeth could do nothing but stare. Of all the subjects she had imagined he might raise, his own appearance had not featured amongst them.

"Mr Darcy."

"I realise it is an absurd question." There was the faintest movement at the corner of his mouth, though he still looked uncomfortable. "Nevertheless, I find I should rather like to know the answer."

Elizabeth felt the heat begin to climb into her cheeks. "I was very drunk."

"I am painfully aware of that fact."

"And I said a great many things that I would ordinarily have had the good sense to keep to myself."

"That is also true."

She narrowed her eyes at him, although it was becoming increasingly difficult not to smile. "Are you enjoying this, Mr Darcy?"

"Perhaps a little more than I ought."