First Impressions: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Adaptation

Chapter 21.1

Darcy was uncertain where to be appalled or overjoyed when he finally got his timing right. It took three tries, but he managed to meet Elizabeth before she had entered the park. When she said good morning, there was a sigh in her voice that left him tongue tied and nearly silent.

At least he could open the door for her. He had no way to explain it, but it was almost thrilling to do so. Perhaps it was the expectation of a morning spent at her side. As he watched her step, stiff-backed, through the doorway, Darcy forced himself to take a second to shake himself back into shape. He could certainly not allow himself to follow her around the park, puppy-ish and impolitely mute.

He was just flustered. Everything was happening so quickly! Or, quickly for him, at least. He needed to get a handle on his emotions before he could allow himself to speak on the matter. He could not precisely say that he was happy about the turn of events, only it felt so much more inevitable than it had yet.

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At first, he wanted to be angry when she told him where she ran in the mornings. Why was she telling him? He did his best to ignore her as he finished his workout—and then spent the next several hours trying very hard not to dwell on it in his free time.

He was still fretting on it into the early evening when Anne suggested they spend time... Well, anywhere but her mother's house. "We're going down to the rec room," she told him, rather than suggesting it. Robert seemed to already be in on it; he had his shoes on. "And I invited Liz and the Lucas sisters."

"Why?" The question was sharper than he intended, but, too late, it was out of his mouth.

Anne gave him a look. He had seen it before from her and Robert, and even on occasion from Bingley. It usually involved the narrowing of eyes, the tightening of mouths, and sometimes the shaking of heads or various "hmm"s and "hmph"s. When he didn't reply, she sighed. "Because I'm bored and you and Robert are just going to play pool because you always play pool. I want someone to actually sit with me."

"We could sit with you. If you asked us to."

"Yes, but now you can play and I can make new friends. That seems like a reasonable compromise to me."

With no real argument against it—nothing that he could say without giving himself away—he shrugged with as much nonchalance as he could manage. He maintained his silence as Anne filled his arms with yarn from her latest project, most of it still attached to the huge creation she had passed on to Robert.

Darcy spent so much of the walk—had it always taken so long to travel from Aunt Catherine's apartment to the rec room? they seemed to go on for miles and miles—dreading spending the evening in her company, trying to decide what to say and how to say it, that he did not plan ahead to prepare himself for the actual seeing. No matter how many times they met, every instance of meeting felt like the same—like stepping out a door into a windstorm. Not cool or hot but chaotic.

His eyes were drawn, almost magnetically, away from the Lucas sisters to find her standing on the edge of the room, in front of the bookshelf. His heart squeezed at the sight of her. You need to get a handle on yourself. If he thought the last few months had been painful, it was nothing compared to what he felt every time he saw her again in person. It was one thing to suffer a dream, but quite another to watch it appear in the same room, yet entirely out of his grasp.

It was strange to see her at Rosings, surrounded on every side by evidence of his aunt and her tastes. Among the not-always-tasteful rich florals and creams, expensive leathers and oiled wood, she sat as a bright smudge. She was wearing her glasses again and the blue rims clashed gently against her bright lilac sweater. Her bangs were pushed to the sides and the rest of her hair was caught up in a bun on the top of her head.