An End to Estrangement - A Pride and Prejudice Variation

Part 17

Four years previously...

"I simply must have you dance, Darcy!"

Wickham was breathless when he came to join Darcy, who stood against one wall of the assembly room, watching his contemporaries and rather wishing he had stayed at home.

"I think you are dancing plenty enough for both of us," Darcy remarked, drily. "And with such a number of young ladies. I trust you are at least taking names?"

"Don't need to!" Wickham tapped his head. "My mind is a steel trap. And it is bad manners to leave pretty girls to be wallflowers." He turned and smiled, rakishly, at one bespectacled young miss who was warming the bench nearest them. She flushed a bright shade of pink and buried her face behind her fan, turning to giggle and whisper with her companion. Darcy groaned.

"You shall not convince me that your determination to dance with every young lady in London is a service to anything but your vanity."

"And your determination to avoid dancing with anyone is service to...what, precisely?" Wickham raised his eyes, surveying Darcy unflinchingly. "Pride? You consider yourself too good to dance with even a quarter of the young ladies at this assembly, let alone London as a whole. Look around, Darcy. Surely there is one amongst them who is tolerable enough for you to take one turn about the floor."

Darcy could see that his friend would not back down until he had had the victory so, obediently, he allowed his eyes to travel slowly around the room, pausing only when they rested on one dark head, tipped back in a musical laugh. Her stance was so natural, so unpractised, that Darcy could not help but smile a little to see her. She was so unlike her mannered, measured companions. He felt a strange desire to know what had made her laugh, to be permitted to join the small circle she formed with two other young people, a gentleman and lady he took for brother and sister, and to be let in on the joke.

"Aha!"

Darcy had not been quick enough to wipe the hint of a smile from his features, and Wickham had been watching too closely to miss even the most minuscule relaxation of his friend's habitual scowl. Immediately, Darcy shifted his gaze, feeling certain that if he acknowledged which particular young lady had caught his fancy Wickham would not be content with merely teasing him, but would seek to win the young lady for himself if only to prove to Darcy that he could. His friend had never lost an almost pathological desire to compete with Darcy, and to be victor over him, as if doing so might somehow redress the balance and undermine the natural order of things that had made Fitzwilliam Darcy heir to Pemberley and George Wickham destined for the church.

"Do not act nonchalant now, Darcy. Recall how well I know you. You may as well have made the most poetical declaration of love for all your looks betrayed you."

"I would never be so idiotic," Darcy said, calmly.

"More's the pity!" Wickham elbowed him sharply in the ribs. "You are a very difficult man to tease, Darcy. I wonder if you have ever been known to let your guard down around another living soul."

"I might be inclined to do so if my company was more trustworthy," Darcy retorted, straightening the line of his coat which Wickham's nudge had ruffled. "You need not hang around here bothering me all evening. Surely there are plenty of other young ladies who would be far more entertained by your attempts at wit."

Wickham's eyes gleamed with fun and Darcy braced himself for a retort. To his surprise, Wickham offered none, merely dipped his head in feigned deference and turned to sweep up the young lady from the neighbouring benches, who had shuffled imperceptibly closer to them along the bench and somehow manage to do away with her glasses, so that when she looked at Wickham her gaze was watery and unfocused.

"Miss Arndale. I cannot have you sit out another dance, even though you do make a truly elegant picture here, surrounded by flowers. Might I persuade you to dance the minuet with me?"

Miss Arndale leapt to her feet so eagerly she almost unseated her friend, and Darcy swallowed his amusement as Wickham swept her into the crowd of other dancers, wasting no time in whispering sweet nothings in her ear. Darcy's brow dipped in a frown once more, for whilst he had no doubt Miss Arndale was an accomplished young lady, sweet-tempered and graceful, she was neither as beautiful nor as flirtatious as the young ladies that ordinarily succeeded in attracting Wickham's attention. Her name struck him as familiar though and he turned it over in his mind. Arndale...Arndale...of course! This must be Phoebe, the only daughter of Sir Edgar and Lady Evelyn Arndale. Wickham must know of Miss Arndale's parentage, and it was this, rather than her own personal virtues, that endeared her to him. You are incorrigible, he told the back of his friend's head, before turning away, for Wickham's behaviour was his business, and Darcy was growing tired of lecturing him on it. Wickham would need to grow up and behave better in time if he hoped to ever win the respect of his congregation, but he was right. Both he and Darcy were young, and ought to make the most of their youth.

Darcy's own eyes swept the room back to where the laughing girl had been, but he registered her absence with disappointment. She was no longer laughing: indeed, she was no longer there. Both of her friends had disappeared into the melee, finding partners and joining the dance. He scanned the room with more care, determined to locate her again and at last, he saw her, standing but a few yards away from him. She was not sitting, but standing, swaying a little in time to the first strains of the music. She smiled as she watched her friends dance, but he thought he deduced a little wistfulness in her expression. She, too, wished to dance, but lacked a partner. Darcy took a long, slow breath, drawing himself up to his full height. Wickham had ordered him to dance and now fate had provided him with the opportunity. Summoning all his courage - for he had never quite mastered the art of speaking to strangers, and envied Wickham the ease with which he interacted with members of the opposite sex - he took a step towards her, trying to ignore the painful thumping of his heart in his chest.