Sabine Delacourt

Jane said no. Elizabeth said yes. Neither of them knew what they were starting. When Mrs. Gardiner invites a Bennet daughter to London for the season, everyone assumes it will be Jane. Jane quietly declines. Elizabeth goes instead, presented to society not as the second daughter of a minor Hertfordshire estate but simply as her aunt's niece: educated, intelligent, and pleasingly unspecific as to background.
At the Ashford ball, she argues about a painting with a stranger in the west gallery. He is right about most of it. She is right about the shadow. By the end of the conversation she is the most interesting person he has met in twelve seasons, and he does not yet know he has met her before. Darcy dismissed Elizabeth Bennet at the Meryton assembly six months ago. He did not look at her then. He cannot stop looking at her now.
The problem of those two women being one woman will resolve itself, eventually, with considerable mutual irritation and something considerably better than either expected. For readers who have been waiting for a Darcy who had to work for it.