“I want all my friends to join with me in celebrating a great occasion. Amabel has consented to be my wife!” Everyone rose to drink to the happy couple. Mr. and Mrs. Bingley, and Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, whose consent had already been obtained, stood smiling in pleasure, and Mr. Bingley made a short, cheerful speech of congratulation. Amabel, radiant in her happiness, looked up at Fitz, and he looked down at her, and their affection was plain for all to see.
Walter Elliot filled a glass for Juliet, who looked shocked. She loved her brother and was fond of Amabel; everyone knew it was only a matter of time before they were betrothed, but she had planned that it should be her own engagement that was announced that night. Emotion and dancing had made her thirsty and she emptied her glass at once. Mr. Elliot refilled it. He rose and filled a plate for her with every delicacy. She nibbled a vol-au-vent and some asparagus, and her companion bent his head close to her ear and talked entertainingly. He was drinking champagne, while she was drinking fruit cup, but sometimes it seemed that her glass was filled from some headier fountain. It was delicious. Golden bubbles filled her mouth and mounted to her brain. Her breath came more quickly and her laugh was more frequent. When she looked up, his eyes were on her, and this again was intoxicating. She found herself talking of Fitz and Amabel, and then moved naturally to Gerard, and the shock of his engagement. Miss Ferrars’s overloud voice could sometimes be heard above the general hubbub of the room.
“He is a fool. Why think of him?” said her new admirer. “To forfeit you for a woman with the voice of a peacock and the taste of a magpie.They are attracted by shiny objects and gaudy colors, you know. Forget him. He is unworthy of you.”
“If she is a magpie, what am I?” asked Juliet, daringly.
He looked around the room, at the portraits and tapestries and Chinese porcelain, the brilliance of the chandeliers, each with a hundred candles—everything that made up Pemberley. To be part of this, to make Juliet Darcy his wife and have the entrée as of right to Pemberley, would suit him very well, he thought. He smiled down at her.
“You are an oriole, that golden songster, a diamond of the first water. You are like champagne... you intoxicate me.” His voice sank on his last words.
The excitement of the ball, the tension of her anticipation of Gerard, the shock of his betrayal, the heat, the light, the food, the drink—all were at work in Juliet. His voice sent a delicious frisson down her spine, into her fingertips, her earlobes. His fingers brushed the back of her hand.
“I should like to take you away from this noisy overheated crowd, to have you all to myself, for a moonlit drive through the woods and meadows, soothed by the midnight breeze. Will you come with me?”
Juliet trembled. Such a suggestion was far beyond a débutante’s expectations. How daring it would be! But at that moment she caught sight of her mother’s crimson dress, as she passed among her guests. “Oh—I must not,” she said. “I wish that I could. But I must not.”
“Miss Juliet,” a voice broke into their reverie. “Miss Juliet, I protest!” Charlie Musgrove, somewhat tousled about the head and flushed about the cheeks, stood before her, staring at Walter Elliot indignantly. “The supper dance... your company... was promised to me!”
“You were tardy, sir,” said Walter Elliot suavely. “Miss Darcy waits on no man’s pleasure. Your punishment was to lose your dance.”
“Juliet?” Charlie held his ground. “The music is starting again. This next dance is also mine.”
Walter Elliot raised Juliet to her feet, then turned her hand in his, and brushed his lips over her palm before he relinquished her hand.
“Later, my diamond,” he said, and sauntered off through the crowd.
But he did not go far. Spreading his net, he began to talk to Mrs. Bingley; he knew how close the Darcys and Bingleys were. It would stand him in good stead to make Mrs. Bingley his friend. Then, somewhat daringly, he invited her to dance. Jane Bingley was delighted. She chaperoned her daughter to balls, but seldom danced herself these days. She demurred, but then consented. Her husband was in the card room, doing his duty, and she went willingly out onto the dance floor with this well-spoken man.
Then he danced again with Catriona Fitzwilliam. She had several seasons at her back and was far more sophisticated than her cousin Juliet, and had a lively sense of humor. She did not for a moment take his compliments seriously; he changed his tactics and soon had her laughing. As he danced, he kept his eyes open for Juliet, dancing first with Charlie Musgrove, then with Torquil Fitzwilliam, and then Anthony Bingley.
Juliet was enjoying herself. She still felt the excitement, the heightened emotional state that her supper with Walter Elliot had aroused in her. Torquil Fitzwilliam was a match for her high spirits, but Anthony Bingley, pleasant-mannered and gentle like his father, and more like a brother to Juliet than an admirer, was taken somewhat aback at the way Juliet pressed against him in the mazurka, by her flushed face and brilliant eyes, and the flirtatious remarks she made. He was a little younger than Juliet. They had grown up together but he had never been one of her flirts. Earlier, he had danced with Nell Ferrars and been impressed with her sweet and modest manner. Alice Bertram, daughter of the Reverend Edmund Bertram and his wife, Fanny, was also to his taste, with her air of fragility, though he had been alarmed at how soon she tired; at the end of a galop she had retired to her mother’s side with her hand pressed against her bodice.
But Juliet swirled madly through the mazurka with her head thrown back, laughing in his face. In spite of himself, he reacted to her exuberance, and they spun together round the room.And thus it was that the accident happened. Unused to so much excitement, Anthony failed to observe how closely they were dancing to another couple, until they all collided. It was a minor fault; a bow and an apology were all that was called for. Unfortunately the couple with which they collided was Lt. Gerard Churchill and his affianced lady, Selina Ferrars. Miss Ferrars cried out in alarm, and then stood apart, the picture of affront, while Anthony and Gerard bowed. Juliet, not seeing at first the identity of the second couple, turned with a laughing face and eager speech towards them. Finding herself face to face with Gerard, the laugh died. She made a small, frozen inclination of her head to Miss Ferrars, which was not returned. “Gerard,” said that lady, loudly. “These country manners are too much for me. Take me home!” She turned away, taking his arm, but managed as she did so to entangle her heel in the trailing skirt of Juliet’s pale yellow silk gown. Juliet felt the tug and rip as stitches pulled loose at her waistline, and a tear showed in her hem.
The insult, to a Darcy, to a daughter of the house, to the first lady of the ball, was too great. Elizabeth and Charlotte, talking nearby, saw the incident and hurried forward. Giving her escort no time to speak, Selina Ferrars made a shallow curtsey to her hostess, said a few cold words, and swept herself and Gerard out of the ballroom. Gerard Churchill’s face matched his scarlet coat. He knew he had outraged the Darcys. His gentle mother would be unhappy, and even his careless father would be furious at such an insult to an old friend. He had judged himself fortunate, at a time when luck was so confoundedly against him, to win the hand of a considerable heiress, but had not expected his betrothal to be conditionaclass="underline" Miss Ferrars had demanded that she accompany him to the Pemberley ball, of which he had unwisely spoken. Nor had he realized that her intentions were other than social climbing, but Selina Ferrars had had revenge in mind. Various snubs and put-downs from Juliet Darcy had long rankled. She knew full well of Gerard’s flirtation with Miss Darcy. This had been, in fact, one of her reasons for singling him out, though his self-regard was too complete for him to realize that he was in fact the hunted, not the hunter. Miss Ferrars had wished to flaunt her capture, but she had not been able to resist a more overt insult, whatever the social consequences. Her upbringing, after all, had taught her that money was all-important in Society.