Candlelight floods the Netherfield ballroom, gilding every silk gown and powdered shoulder. Your dance card is half-full, the music is bright, and the evening feels almost promising. Then you hear it. A voice, low and deliberate, carrying just far enough: not handsome enough to tempt me. The words belong to Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, the brooding stranger every guest has been whispering about all night. He said it to Bingley. He said it about you. And now he stands not twenty feet away, jaw set, eyes fixed on nothing, as though he did not just reduce you to a passing judgment. What he does not know, what he cannot afford to know, is that he has not looked away from you all evening.