“I do not found my judgement upon such things,” he said, though a small silent voice told him that he did. “You are wilfully misunderstanding me. I do not deny that the cases bear some resemblance. I only say that in yours there is more room for—”
“For my having been fooled,” she supplied. “Yes, we have returned to that. Foolish Miss Bennet, who has believed her uncle and a dead father and letters; wise Mr. Darcy, who has believed a man he liked at university.”
“I am not in the habit of believing men because I like them,” he said, irritated to find she had come so near the truth. “I believe them because I know their character.”
“And you know Prince Adrian’s character well, do you?” she asked. “You have seen him tempted? Disappointed? Poor? Sick? In love?”
“I have seen enough,” he said shortly.
“And you have not seen enough of me,” she concluded. “So I must be wrong.”
He opened his mouth; nothing sufficiently sensible emerged to justify disturbing the air.
She watched him for a moment in silence, then sighed and laughed a little.
“Mr. Darcy, if you are determined not to believe me, I cannot help it. But you must own the thing is at least droll. We are like two people standing on opposite sides of a looking glass, each insisting that only their own reflection is real.”
“Droll is not the word I would choose,” he said, though a reluctant humour was beginning to steal over his annoyance. “Perverse. Exasperating. Dangerous.”
“Very dangerous,” she agreed gravely. “You may go about London telling people there are no Thurnian princesses at all, and I may go about being one, and think what confusion will ensue.”
“I have no intention of going about London proclaiming anything of the sort,” he said. “I am not obliged to declare my opinion from every housetop.”
“That is fortunate,” she replied. “Youmight be thought to have run mad. You would be contradicting your own friend, after all.”
“I should do no such thing,” he said quickly; then, with an effort, added, “On the contrary, I mean to appeal to him.”
“To Prince Adrian?” Her eyes widened. “You mean to call my cousin to give judgement upon me, as if I were a disputed package and he the postmaster?”
“He is not your cousin,” Darcy said, and then realised, with immediate regret, that this was not the happiest direction to take.
Her chin lifted. “No? Then I shall be curious to hear what he says when he meets me.”
“If he says that you are his cousin,” Darcy replied, “I will beg your pardon upon the spot.”
“And if he says I am not?” she asked.
“Then you will own that I have had some reason for my doubts,” he said. “But I am not a fool, madam.”
“I have never thought you a fool, Mr. Darcy,” she said, with an expression that did not at all agree with the words. “Only determined to be in the right.”
“That is a common failing,” he said. “I do not observe you entirely free from it yourself.”
She stared at him for a moment, before shaking her head and offering him a reluctant smile. “True. I dare say when we are all in London together, and Prince Adrian sits between us like a judge upon a bench, we shall each be perfectly persuaded beforehand that he must give sentence in our favour.”
The door rattled; the sound of Mrs. Hobart’s complaints about the boy she had sent off with the letters floating in ahead of her. Miss Bennet glanced towards the sound, then back at him.
“In any case,” she said lightly, “it promises to be vastly diverting. I shall look forward to this encounter with great impatience. It is not every day that a girl has the chance to be proven either a princess or a simpleton in a London drawing room.”
He winced. “I have no wish to see you mortified.”
“Then do not watch,” she said. “You may stand at the window with your back to us and applaud when it is over.”
Before he could answer, Mrs. Hobart swept in, pink with indignation and cold, issuing a new flurry of grievances. Miss Bennet rose to meet her, composure quite regained; she might never have been engaged, a minute earlier, in demolishing his arguments.
Darcy remained where he was for a moment, collecting himself. Stubborn, provoking, infuriating girl. If she had been in the right, he reflected, she could not have argued her case with more confidence.
Very well. There was nothing more to be done at present. He had carried the point as far as civility would allow. In London, the thing would be resolved easily enough. He need only ensure that Adrian should dine where Miss Bennet stayed in London, and then Adrian might explain to this obstinate, dazzling creature exactly how she had been misled.