08 | eight.
VAGUE CONCLUSIONS.
THE music began to swell as well as the young woman's heartbeat. His eyes were almost cold enough to freeze her to the core.
"I assure you, madam, that you do not need to worry yourself over my supposed 'falling outs', if that is what you are referring to." He replied, his body stiff and uncompromising. "Do you always make it a point to converse when dancing?"
Elodie huffed in the most unladylike way possible and almost paused in place out of frustration his evasive question. She didn't quite know how to respond.
"Only sometimes. Makes it all so much more enjoyable, doesn't it?" She replied, still slightly vexed. Although she didn't want to stray from her original intent, she would entertain him for a while.
Mr. Darcy nodded to himself. "You consult your own feelings in this case to seek to gratify mine." Elodie rolled her eyes at his response as she moved a few lines down with Mr. Darcy and spun around a younger girl with blonde hair.
"Oh, very well." She commented airily, growing bored of this ghastly dance.
Mr. Darcy's eyes shifted between the floor and Elodie's face as he felt his mouth go dry. He swallowed thickly. "Tell me," He asked lowly, watching as the woman next to him turned her head in his direction. "Do you and your sisters often walk to Meryton?"
Elodie looked at him through the corner of her eye. What did that have to do with anything? "Yes, quite often." She said with a quirk to her brow. "In fact when you came upon us the other day, we were just forming a new acquaintance."
Again, she decided to try and dig more information out of the man across from her. Surely he could not escape this time.
"Mr. Wickham..." Darcy drawled in detestation, "Has the happy manners that enable him to make friends." Elodie nodded in agreement, for she knew Mr. Wickham to be a rather pleasant man in their short time of meeting each other. "Whether he is equally capable of keeping them is... less certain."
The two fell in line with Jane and Mr. Bingley, stepping forward and backwards before returning back to their starting position.
"It seems he has been rather unlucky to lose your friendship in a way he is likely to suffer from." Elodie pressed, carefully analyzing every twitch in his eye and every thinning of his lips. The more she questioned, the more aggravated he seemed to get.
For a second, Elodie enjoyed watching how much power she had over him with one single topic.
Mr. Darcy continued the dance but didn't seem to find any words he could respond with without divulging a secret he had kept with him for many years.
"I can just hardly remember hearing you once say that you almost never forgave. I suppose that applies to such a situation?" Elodie continued. Mr. Darcy lifted his chin slightly, his eyes thoughtful. "It does." He responded eventually, face forward and refusing to look at his partner.
"May I ask to what these questions tend?"
Elodie smiled slyly. She was more than happy to answer his question. "Merely to figure out the illustration of your character. You are a very hard person to read, sir."
"And what is your success?"
"I'm not so sure. There are such different accounts that it puzzles me exceedingly." Elodie pranced over to the other side of him and switched lanes with Jane, who smiled contentedly at Mr. Bingley.
As Mr. Darcy pondered over her intent, the music came to an end and the couples bowed to each other. Elodie clapped lightly and looked away from the man who seemed to let his eyes linger on her.
She wasn't completely satisfied with the interrogation but it would surely be enough poking and prodding for now.
After fleeing from the ballroom and heading towards a waiting Charlotte, Elodie passed by Mr. Collins, who greedily asked if she had danced with a Mr. Darcy of Pemberley (to which she replied that she hadn't the slightest clue).
Elodie spent the rest of the night tucked in a corner with her friend to avoid two men now. After a couple minutes of crowd-watching in silence, she was joined by a sobbing Mary. "I'm an embarrassment, aren't I?" She poured out in between intakes of breath.
Elodie frowned, looked towards Charlotte with wide eyes, and hugged Mary tightly, resting her chin atop her younger sisters head and lightly swaying their bodies. "What on earth makes you say that?" She cooed, her hand naturally reaching to pat Mary's back like she had done so many times before.
Mary sniffled and swiped a tear away from her cheek, looking up at Elodie with reddened eyes. "I was playing a song for everyone and they were all laughing at me!" She began to cry again as the memories resurfaced. "And to make my experience even more humiliating, papa made me get up and leave in the middle of my performance!"
Elodie pressed her lips into a thin line and closed her eyes. Her family always had to make a scene, didn't they?
____________
Once the Bennet's had gone home and had a couple hours of rest, the family was fully awake by noon the next day, and were enjoying a plentiful breakfast. Although the air was still buzzing with the glee from last night, Mrs. Bennet cracked an egg into her drink mixture and rubbed her forehead with a painful groan.
Her hair had remained unbrushed for most of the morning and her corset was incorrectly fastened, making her chest appear rather lopsided as it pushed everything sideways.
Unfortunately, she was hungover after indulging herself in a couple glasses of plum wine and pudding, and the sight made Elodie chuckle as she smeared strawberry jam on her slice of bread. "Mary," Mrs. Bennet crowed as she shook out the last of the egg yoke into her glass, "Please." Mary frowned as she stopped her fingers from continuing to play the pianoforte. She grabbed her music sheets with a huff and got up to sit at the dining table.
Elodie smiled at Mary and lifted a plate of rolls towards her to which she took with a straight face.
The stairs creaked, making everyone look up to see Mr. Collins hesitantly stepping down, his eyes scouring the faces of his cousins. Elodie sighed and stabbed at her ham with her fork.
"When will he be gone?" Elizabeth muttered under her breath, sharing a meaningful glance with Elodie. Elodie smirked and ignored the figure that sat down to her left.
He cleared his throat. Nobody deemed the noise worthy enough to even glance at him and he frowned. Then, again. Elodie placed down her cutlery as her father folded the newspaper in front of him to stare at the other gentleman. "Mrs. Bennet." He said in her mother's direction, the woman still mixing the egg into her glass.
She stopped, though only for a moment, and raised her eyebrows expectantly. "Yes, Mr. Collins?" She drawled hazily and with little patience. The odious man quickly stood up from his seat and folded his hands in front of him.
"I was hoping, if it would not trouble you, that I might solicit a private audience with Miss Elodie."
Stopping mid chew, Elodie couldn't seem to meet the wide eyes of her sisters that panned over to her. For a moment, all noise in the room paused. "Um..." She muttered to herself with a scrunch of her nose.
She had tried her best to avoid this situation, hadn't she? She was so very unkind to him at the Netherfield ball, so why did he appear to be impervious to her actions? Was he truly that daft?
Mrs. Bennet's eyes flitted between the table and Mr. Collins before she swiftly downed her drink.
"Oh, yes, certainly. Everyone out!" She said with a growing smile as she shooed everyone out of the room. For her, this was the greatest gift anyone could bestow upon the family; for that meant if her daughter and Mr. Collins married, the family would be able to keep their home even after Mr. Bennet's death, which was predicted to be soon.
For Elodie, this was the end of the world.
"No, please!" Elodie gripped Jane's arm as she made a pitifully sympathetic face, pulling farther and farther away. "Papa." Elodie mouthed in her last attempt to stop the inevitable. Despite making out her intent, Mr. Bennet simply grunted and walked out of the door at Mrs. Bennet's call.
END OF CHAPTER VIII.
a.n: oh boy... here we go ;)
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