Chances Come, Ney Mitch [snow like ashes series TXT] 📗

spell that fell between Darcy and me. We both jumped somewhat, and we turned to the Colonel.

“I have finished drawing Miss Bennet’s silhouette,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said with a grin. “And it is terribly done. It does not do you justice at all, Miss Bennet. I fear that you shall lose all faith in me.”

“I am certain that it is splendid,” Jane said. “And it would be a great deal better than any silhouette that I could make of you. I never learned the slight bit about art.”

“It would not be your fault. For how can you make a toad into a handsome prince?” he asked. “We do not all have your beauty.”

“You are no amphibian, sir,” she said with a pert smile.

“Come and look at my failure, Miss Elizabeth,” Colonel Fitzwilliam called.

“I am always ready to give a compliment instead.”

Darcy and I walked to the other side of the room and Colonel Fitzwilliam was still holding onto the silhouette, without it being shown.

“Truly I wish that I could draw. It is painful to have not one talent in the world.” Jane laughed. “Why could I not have been very good at music?”

“Talent in personality is just as vital at talent with an instrument,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied. “Who needs someone who can play the pianoforte if they are unbearable to speak to?”

“Then accept the effort being this, please, and not the execution,” Jane responded. “I long to see your silhouette of me.”

Smiling, he showed us the silhouette.

It looked perfectly fine.

“Jane, it is lovely,” I responded.

“That is my profile completely!” Jane declared. Taking the picture, she looked at it. “Might I request a suggestion?”

“You wish for me to redo it?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked.

“Never, for I adore it. But… oh, I do not even know what it is called. Artists do it. It is when you keep the subject as the color on the page, but you color in the background as black.”

“Oh, I know what you refer to,” the Colonel gathered. “Yes, to set off the complementary colors and to augment your silhouette.”

“Precisely. Would you be willing to draw or color in the background so that I can have a full picture of it? I would love that. Oh dear! I am being direct and a little insensitive. I am being indelicate and am pushing my will on you.”

“You made a request,” the Colonel said, “and you were just eager for it. While I thank you for making certain that I never felt pressured to do anything that I worried was beyond me, I shall make an exception in this case, for you are a welcome guest. Yes, Miss Bennet. If Mr. Darcy has any charcoal stored away, then I shall finish it.”

“Excellent,” Jane replied.

Standing next to me, Mr. Darcy leaned into my ear.

“They truly appear smitten with each other,” he whispered.

“Yes,” I replied, also whispering, “god help us.”

Chapter 10 The Other Sister

The next day, Jane and I rose to have a breakfast with both Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam.

The surprise of seeing the Colonel was on two different levels between Jane and me. With Jane, her surprise was innocent, and it soon gave way to enthusiasm on her part.

Yet, with me, my surprise leaned more towards alarm. He had come even before visiting hours. Of course, it was his cousin’s home, but I got the feeling, quite quickly, that he did not come because of all the comfort he felt in imposing his company on his cousin. But rather, I felt it was because he just wished to spend more time with Jane to the point where he was ignoring proper social traditions, habits, and decorum.

This was made very evident when he looked toward the seat next to him, expecting Jane to take that seat immediately. What was even more surprising was that she did sit next to him, without any fear of how it made her appear.

Darcy and I gave each other a look, sat down as well, and let the two of them speak with each other and thoroughly ignore us. While I had been initially apprehensive about this coupling, I soon stopped caring. For truly, I was seated next to Mr. Darcy, and very quickly, all my attention gave way to him.

That is the strange and vexing tendency of falling in love with someone; you begin to have a hard time caring about the presence of others and you feel a definitive draw towards that one person. You cannot attend to much else without it feeling like it is a great nuisance, for it forces you to speak to something else than the object of your affections.

How easily it was to impose oneself on the public and fall into the habit of impropriety and being indiscrete. This was why Charlotte Lucas advised me to encourage Jane to be more forthright in her affections toward Mr. Bingley.

Charlotte!

Now that I had thought of her, it occurred to me that I had not written to her ever since I came to London!

That had been for quite some time. For all my attention had been seized by my constant overturning of emotions to Mr. Darcy. After saving me from Mr. Wickham, Mr. Darcy was all I could think of, nothing else.

Yet, in the next minute, I recalled that she had not written to me either and my heart rested. Both she and I clearly had other things on our minds, and we had temporarily forgotten each other. I would write to her in time, but for the moment, there was nothing to be apprehensive about. So, once more, I turned my attention to Mr. Darcy. And I found peace.

In speaking with him while eating, I felt as if he and I were encased in a large shell and the rest of the world was on the outside. Truly, in that moment, it felt as if he and I were the only two people in the world and all the rest did not exist.

Faith, if anyone were to disturb our