By Force of Instinct Read Free

prompt in demanding her share of the conversation, introducing the ladies to Lord and Lady Derby—“Mrs. collins, and Miss Bennet and Miss Lucas, visiting from Hertfordshire,” she said in a dismissive voice.
    elizabeth politely expressed her pleasure in making the acquaintance.
    When it came time for her to greet the rest of the party, she found that she could not bring herself to look directly at Darcy; she made her curtsey with her eyes firmly fixed on his cravat, and she knew that her cheeks must 11

    Abigail Reynolds
    be flushed. she managed to keep her polite smile on her face, however, and was able to greet colonel Fitzwilliam and Miss Darcy with tolerable composure.
    There were several minutes before the service was to begin, and elizabeth was for the first time grateful for Lady catherine’s propensity to dominate the conversation, as it relieved her of the burden of finding something to say. As she attended to her ladyship, though, she began to despise herself for her cowardice. she forced her eyes up to Darcy’s face, only to meet his implacably cold gaze.
    That she had expected scorn and anger did not lessen the distress elizabeth felt on seeing it on his face. she held his gaze only briefly before taking the excuse of Lady catherine’s ongoing discourse to look away. she thought of how he had said that his good opinion, once lost, was lost forever. How he must be congratulating himself for his near escape from a woman of so little perception and judgment! she thought, humbled by her fall from grace and surprised that the thought of his disapproval troubled her.
    When she chanced to raise her eyes to his face again, unable to resist the painful impulse of curiosity, she found him looking on no object but the ground. It was with the greatest of relief that she heard Lady catherine pronounce that it was time for the service to begin.
    elizabeth was grateful that she was seated behind Mr. Darcy, where she need not fear his incisive gaze. You must al ow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. How he must regret those words, those sentiments which had led to his harsh and unfair castigation at her hands! In addition to blindness and prejudice, she was also obliged to claim cruelty and short-temperedness among her many faults.
    Her eyes drifted to him—the tousled dark curls against the brilliant white of his cravat as he sat proudly upright in the pew. she could not deny that he was handsome; she had acknowledged that even at the Meryton assembly when she first saw him. It was only his insulting behaviour and forbidding countenance on that occasion that had led her to disregard the appeal of his appearance. But good looks and a good fortune could not by themselves determine a good husband. In vain have I struggled. It will not do. Although she wished she had dealt differently with his proposal, when she thought of his humiliating references to how greatly he had striven to rid himself of his feelings for her, she could not bring herself to regret her 12

    By FoRce oF InstInct
    decision. An image came to her of his intent gaze as it had so often rested on her, and unaccountably she shivered, wondering at his thoughts on seeing her again.
    The object of her thoughts was at that moment brooding on the question of whether his life could possibly become any worse. He could not help being viscerally aware of elizabeth’s presence any more than he ever had been, only now it was like an ache in his breast rather than the guilty pleasure it had so often been in the past. If that were not enough, he had to suffer through the sycophantic ramblings that her idiot of a cousin considered a sermon—a reminder of just how low he had sunk in offering her marriage.
    And then there was his family … but he was not even going to think about that now.
    He had spent the last two days struggling to convince himself that the elizabeth Bennet he had loved was a figment of his imagination; he had never known the real