Lady Bridget's Diary (Keeping Up with the Cavendishes #1)(46)

“Duchess, have you invited all of our enemies?” Claire inquired after Lord Fox and Lady Francesca made their entrance.

“ ‘Enemies’ is such a strong word, dear.” But she smiled in that sharp and knowing way of hers.

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Bridget quipped.

“Precisely. If you are to stay here, you need to win these people over. Simply being Durham is not enough,” Josephine said. And then turning to the next guest, she greeted him warmly. “Ah, Mr. Collins! We are so pleased to have you join us this evening. The ladies cannot express how delighted they are that you could join us.”

Indeed, they could not.

“I look forward to dancing with all my cousins. We hardly get such delights as this at the vicarage and I shall be sure to enjoy it.”

The ladies were less than enthralled with the prospect.



A few hours later, Bridget found herself lingering along the perimeter of the ballroom, in an endless round of polite chatter with her guests and striving to avoid Mr. Collins. Earlier, he had penciled his name on her dance card (bad) and pinched her cheek (worse) and said he thought women were too slender these days and he was glad she bucked fashion (the very worst).

She sought out her sisters. Claire was speaking with Lord Fox (!), Amelia was being introduced to a gentleman Bridget didn’t recognize (?), James had disappeared, and Rupert was nowhere to be found, which Bridget found troubling. He had promised he would attend and claim two dances. Here she was, her dance card glaringly empty, save for a few obligatory dances with unappealing prospects. Ahem, Mr. Collins. She had learned the hard way that ladies did not refuse gentlemen’s invitations to dance.

But there was Darcy threading his way through the crowd, with his eyes set upon her. Her heart started to pound, hard and slow in her chest. He was something else entirely in his evening clothes—-he was even more Darcy--ish, if such a thing was possible. Everything was black and white and starched and fitted and perfect.

It was hard to believe this man had been overcome with passion for her. She couldn’t imagine him overcome with passion for anything and yet . . . She pressed her fingers to her lips, remembering. She almost wanted it to happen again, just so she could be sure. Or did she need it to happen again because she just needed to feel that wanted again?

Darcy stood before her, gazing down intensely with those dark eyes of his. Making all thought, rational and otherwise, flee.

“Good evening, Lady Bridget.”

How had she never noticed how low his voice was? How had she not noticed the way it made her tremble slightly?

“Good evening, Lord Darcy.”

Was that the faintest hint of a smile? Rupert laughed so easily, but his brother . . . his expressions might as well have been carved in granite. That faint upturn of his lips was some sort of triumph. She felt elated.

“How are you enjoying this evening?” she asked, ever the polite hostess.

“Very well. You and your sisters have done an excellent job planning this affair.”

Bridget leaned in close to confide in him and caught the scent of his jacket, which reminded her of the time she had worn his coat . . . and then for a moment she forgot what to say. “It was mostly the duchess and myself. Claire couldn’t be bothered, and if Amelia had her way, there would be a tightrope strung up between the chandeliers.”

“I actually would have liked to see that,” he remarked, glancing up to the ceiling.

“I as well, though the duchess nearly had an apoplexy when Amelia made the suggestion.”

“I don’t suppose your sister has revealed anything about her day spent abed whilst gravely ill from a malady from which she has miraculously recovered?”

She smiled. She and Darcy shared a secret. Two secrets. Whoever thought she would share secrets with a man like him? It made her feel so connected to him.

“She has not breathed a word. It is highly unusual for her.”

And then Darcy said something that surprised her. In fact, he leaned in close to whisper in her ear.

“She was not with Rupert,” he said softly. And suddenly the air between them changed. If it had been charged before, it was positively electric now. She didn’t know what to make of this feeling. She didn’t know what to say.

She just knew that her heart leapt because Amelia had not been with Rupert, which meant that perhaps she still had a chance with him.

But then why did she feel a bolt of lust when Darcy approached?

“Oh, I didn’t know,” she replied. “Will he be here tonight?”

“He said he would be late.”

She had been counting on Rupert to be here especially because she was nervous to be hosting her first ball. He made her laugh and feel at ease. He was her friend. She wrote Rupert and Bridget in her diary an embarrassing number of times and fancied marrying him.

But he had never kissed her. Not once, not even a little, and not at all the way Darcy had done, with all the fierceness of long--restrained passions finally bursting free.

Passions that seemed to have been gathered and restrained.

She couldn’t make sense of this man, or her feelings for him.

And then he surprised her again.



Darcy ought to be used to this feeling of war within him: there was the desire to do one thing, cold rationality demanding he do another. Rupert wished to wed her. And Darcy wished to bed her.