Free The Unexpected Miss Bennet by Patrice Sarath

she took his hand, conscious of his strong fingers around her hand. He tightened his grip as they swung through the steps and a little bit of the abandon she had sought came to her. Mary was conscious of her hair flying free around her face and her gown making each turn a small dance in itself. At the end of that dance she curtsied hurriedly and almost ran back to Lizzy before he could make her dance another.
    Lizzy had gone. Their seats had been taken by another couple and she stopped in bemusement as they looked up at her with surprise, and, she thought, some disfavour. Mary curtsied again, stiffly, and made her way to a small anteroom with as much decorum as she could muster.
    She sat at the pretty little window seat, telling herself she needed some air. Where had Lizzy gone? She craned her neck to see her in the narrow view she had of dancing in the ballroom. Couples swirled by the doorway, but none of them revealed Lizzy. She calmed a little, wondering why she had reacted so strongly to Mr Aikens’s partnering. It was hardly a liberty, to whisper something in a friend’s ear – except that they were not friends, only acquaintances, having just been introduced. He was certainly lively, but not indecorous. She shivered a little at the memory of his whisper at her ear. She stood and took a deep breath. She resolved to go back into the ballroom and when they crossed paths again she would simply say nothing about it. It’s not a lie of commission, she thought. It will do us both a favour, just to say nothing of it ever again, for he would be embarrassed to find out how much he embarrassed me, and I would not want to make him think ill of himself.
    Mary ventured back into the ballroom and was enveloped in heat and light and music all at once. Someone came up and grabbed her sleeve, laughing. It was Georgiana.
    ‘Mary! I saw you dancing with the alarming Mr Aikens,’ she said, her expression bright. ‘He dances as if he were riding to hounds. I thought I would have a fall at the fence.’
    So he had danced with Georgiana too. Mary hid her pang.
    ‘He was most energetic,’ she agreed. ‘Where is my sister?’
    ‘Oh, they are in conversation with Mr Grey.’ She nodded in their direction. ‘This is such a wonderful night. I have danced almost all the dances so far, and this time my brother has not hovered over me. I think it is Lizzy’s doing – she has made him forget his fears.’
    Or at the least not act on them, Mary thought, remembering Darcy’s still expression. She was almost about to ask Georgiana what Darcy had to fear about her dancing with a young man when a shadow passed over the young girl’s face. ‘I should not be exasperated with him,’ she said. ‘He is worried, and he has reason to be. It’s just – he doesn’t have to fear for me any more. Mary, sometimes I think he doesn’t know how much I’ve grown up.’
    Mary was about to venture the opinion that brothers rarely do know about their sisters, when she remembered that she had no brothers of her own to compare. At the Lucases, she knew that Maria and Charlotte’s brothers took no more notice of their sisters than they did of their mother. Yet Darcy did not seem so careless. It was all confusing. Men were brothers, gentlemen, fathers – all so commonplace, yet one knew very little of them at all.
    She heard a familiar voice rise up in indistinct conversation over the general commotion of dancing, music, and laughter. Both she and Georgiana looked over at Mr Aikens, standing with a group of young men, laughing in rowdy tones.
    The music finished with a flourish and there was much clapping and general cheer. Then in the din a small bell chimed, and the company began to file in to supper. Mary found a seat at a table next to her sister and family, but was conscious again of Mr Aikens at a table near them, deep in conversation with the others. As luck would have it they sat with their backs to each other, and Mary found it highly distracting