Page 2 of Bitten By Mr. Darcy
Bingley laughed.
The girl, Elizabeth, turned away, a look on her face of amused shock.
Oh dear, I think I may have said that too loud,he thought.I think she heard me insult her.
“—if you take my meaning?” Bingley was saying.
Mr. Darcy turned back to him.
“You aren’t listening again.”
“Apologies,” said Mr. Darcy, clearing his throat. “But I think we are speaking too loudly. We are here going on and on about tasting and drinking and—”
“And what? Who heard?”
“The pretty sister.” Darcy was watching Elizabeth moving through the crowd, going directly for one of the other women he’d been introduced to that night, one of the Lucases, he thought. He could not keep all of the various families straight, nor keep straight all of the girls who had looked him over with an eager gaze, thinking him human, the sort of man looking for a bride.
“Well, what did we say?” Bingley’s voice was quieter. “It might have sounded odd, but I’m rather sure neither of us said anything about…” His voice dropped even lower. “Blood.”
“I shall intercept her, question her,” said Mr. Darcy. “Make certain.”
Bingley laughed knowingly. “Oh, yes, that’s all you’ll do.”
“Charm her, if necessary, I suppose.”
“And if you’re already going to the trouble of charming her…” Bingley let out another knowing laugh.
Darcy sighed.
“Not handsome enough to tempt you, my foot,” said Bingley.
Darcy was already moving through the assembly, however, thinking to himself that perhaps loneliness was preferable to the Bingleys.
He hadn’t always known them as the Bingleys, of course, but he had known them a long time. They’d been companions, sometimes more than companions, over the interminable centuries that their kind spent together. He had a long history with them all.
Sometimes old friends were a comfort, he supposed, but sometimes they were a torment.
I’m going back to London,he decided firmly as he stepped into Elizabeth’s path.No more time with the Bingleys.
She looked up at him, surprised. “Pardon me, sir,” she said, and there was a haughty undercurrent to her voice.
“You overheard me just then?” He raised his eyebrows.
She took a step back, clucking her tongue. “If you are only apologizing because you know that you spoke too loud, I shall charge you not to bother, sir. We do not know each other, after all, and there is no obligation on your part to flatter me.”
“This is all you heard, then? Nothing else that—” He stopped talking because he had just then gotten thescentof her.
Mr. Darcy was a vampire, and his senses no longer worked like human senses. He could smell, but the smell wasn’t necessarily like smelling what a thing actually smelled like, it was more that his brain translated the smell into something that he remembered as enticing. He could not find any of these things actually enticing anymore, however. He did not taste food the way he once had, for instance.
So, Miss Elizabeth Bennet smelled of cinnamon and honey, but he could not enjoy cinnamon or honey anymore.
She smelled like the sweetest thing he thought he’d ever smelled, in all of his centuries-long life, and he was robbed of the ability to form words by the scent of her.
“If that’s all then?” she said in a withering voice.
He leaned in, closer, breathing her in.
She jerked back. “If you don’t mind, sir—”
