Page 56 of When Elizabeth's Cat Chose Darcy
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE CORRIDOR ENCOUNTER
Elizabeth
The candle trembledin my hand as I pulled the library door shut behind me, and the trembling had nothing to do with the draught.
My lips were warm. Not from a kiss—there had been no kiss but only a deliberate, agonizing absence of a kiss, which was worse, because a kiss at least would have been a fact I could examine at my leisure, whereas the space where a kiss should have been held a world of meaning we had left unspoken.
Meeting Mr. Darcy in a dark library most certainly qualified for either the most foolish or romantic moment in my heretofore unremarkable life, but he was correct to end it, and I should never speak about it.
I pressedBelindaagainst my ribs, the ribbon safe inside its pages. The corridor stretched ahead, dark save for my small flame, and I walked with the careful tread, like one who had taken an irrevocable step, neither wishing to undo it nor fully comprehending its implications, only that it involved a Christian name and a dance and a step backward that had cost him visibly.
“Why, Miss Eliza. What a surprise.”
Caroline Bingley stood at the corridor’s end, resplendent in a silk dressing gown the color of bruised fruit. She held no candle—she had been walking in the dark, or waiting in it.
As she approached, the hairs on the nape of my neck stood with silent alarm.
She was not limping.
The ankle that had necessitated a footstool, compresses, and draughts had miraculously healed.
“Miss Bingley.” I steadied the candle. “You are awake.”
“As are you.” Her gaze travelled from my face to the book pressed against my chest to my slippers and back, performing an inventory that missed nothing and forgave less. “How industrious. A midnight visit to the library. I did not take you for a woman of such… scholarly appetite.”
“I found sleep elusive,” I explained, “and thought a novel might be the remedy.”
“A novel.” She repeated the word as though tasting it for quality and finding it wanting. “And did the library offer you satisfactory… companionship?”
“The library offered me Maria Edgeworth,” I said, presentingBelindaas evidence. “She is excellent companionship for anyone who prefers wit to gossip.”
Her nostrils flared. “How charming. I myself have been restless this evening. I thought I might find something to read—a romance, perhaps. One never knows what or who one mightdiscoverthere at this hour.”
The implication arrived like a blade wrapped in lace, and I felt it land because I had, only minutes ago, been standing in that library in my nightclothes exchanging intimate items with the very man Caroline wished to compromise herself with.
“I cannot recommend a romance tonight,” I said pleasantly. “I appear to have taken the last one. Though I believe there is a collectionof sermons beside a rather waterlogged Gibbon’sDecline and Fall. I see your ankle has improved remarkably.”
Cinnamon chose this moment to plant herself between my ankles and Caroline’s advancing slippers. She arched her spine, flattened her ears, and produced a hiss of such concentrated hostility that it echoed off the panelled walls.
Caroline recoiled. The sneeze that erupted was violent, involuntary, and magnificently undignified.
“Thatcreature—” she spluttered, pressing a hand to her nose, eyes watering. “Miss Bennet, your animal is a menace to civilized society.”
“She is merely protective of her territory,” I explained, scooping Cinnamon into my arms. The cat now served as both shield and barrier between Caroline’s suspicions and whatever betrayal my face might unwittingly commit. “I believe she considers the corridor after midnight to be her personal domain. I do hope your ankle was not troubled by that sudden movement, Miss Bingley. That recoil seemed rather vigorous for a recovering injury.”
“My ankle improves in the evenings,” she said, with the smooth recovery of a woman who has practiced her excuses. “Since you have located your novel, perhaps I shall visit the library myself. I find I am restless, and a romance might be just the thing.”
She swept past me without so much as a “good night,” walking with long, smooth strides toward the library, and my chest constricted. I had left Darcy there, wearing only a dressing gown and a shirt, with the fire still glowing and the ghost of our conversation still hanging. If Caroline were to open that door and find him thus—in nightclothes, in the dark, in the very room I had just vacated?—
I could not go back. I dared not call out a warning. My only recourse was to ascend the stairs and pray that Fitzwilliam Darcy possessed the wit and presence of mind to shield himself from scandal.
Cinnamon, however, was under no such compunction. She twisted out of my arms and dropped silently to the floor.And then, she bolted at the retreating figure, inserting herself between Caroline’s ankles, mewing and yowling like she begged for a fish head.
Caroline stumbled, not badly, and the sound she made was more rage than pain. But the delay was real, and Cinnamon had already vanished down the corridor, hopefully to the library to warn Darcy of impending doom.
I did not wait to see what happened next. I could not. If I stood in that corridor one moment longer, Caroline would turn back and read the alarm on my face, and the alarm would tell her everything the library had not.
