“Miss Eliza, we saw your shocked reactions when we announced the switch of dance partners. Was it because William was heard saying you only had a ‘tolerable figure’ and that your mother was ‘coarse and mercenary'?” Caroline asked, her tone snide.

“Oh, did Darcy say that? Remind me to introduce him to my uncle. You could say that he is even more ‘coarse and mercenary’ than my mom, since he is in the gold mining industry,” Elizabeth replied, and grinned.

She then added in a serious but sweet tone, “I’ve been training with George for eight weeks. Naturally, I wanted to complete the competition with him and win the trophy. I was just shocked with a swap so late into the series. I’m a professional, though, and I'm sure I could teach even a skeleton to dance well.” Gossip magazines often laughed at Caroline, saying that she walked and danced like a skeleton dipped in orange paint because she was so thin, behaved so arrogantly and wore orange clothing all the time.

“Oh, you wanted to win the trophy with George? How touching! Then the off-camera rumors must be true. Are you pregnant?”

“You seem awfully interested in home pregnancy kits, Caroline…” Elizabeth winked while Caroline’s face turned deadly red. “As for me, I only went to the pharmacy to buy high blood pressure pills for my mom. Perhaps you need some? You look quite red now. Maybe you have high blood pressure, too.”

The footage stopped there, and the studio audience broke into a fit of laughter.

Charles couldn’t help but laugh, too. Then he continued, “The gossips did absolute wonders for our ratings. Last week, we did a recap of our couples’ journey to the Finals, to allow our newly formed couples two weeks of bonding time, and over 5 million viewers tuned in to watch.”

“Here is some further footage from that two weeks of intense training,” a red-faced Caroline said, when cued by the production team. She would kill Jimmy after the show. She had specifically asked him to cut out that “high blood pressure” footage.

Now, on camera, Pemberley’s ballroom appeared, where a casually dressed Darcy met up with Elizabeth. He looked serious and pensive.

“Miss Bennet. How do you do, today?”

“Hi, Darcy. Why so formal? I’ve seen you frequently over the past eight weeks. Even if you won’t call me ‘honey,’ like George does, I’m sure you can do better than ‘Miss Bennet,’” Elizabeth replied teasingly.

She had also known Darcy socially for the last few weeks, as her sister Jane was dating his good friend and host, Charles. She had also learned about how he had mistreated George, regarding an inheritance from Darcy’s dad. George also said that Darcy was a playboy with a number of kept women. As a result of that, along with his remarks about her figure and her mom, she found him arrogant and conceited, and enjoyed taunting him, every opportunity she had.

“They may be filming us secretly now,” Darcy said.

“Why should you be afraid to get comfy with me in front of the camera? We have to dance a rumba together during the Finals. You know that the rumba is a sensual dance. It should be like making love with me in front of the camera, so you'd better get used to it.”

“I’m not very good at this – at being comfortable with women,” he said, and blushed.

“Really? Just imagine that I'm your lover number 18.”

“What?”

“Just something George said… That you had gotten comfy with quite a number of women.”

Darcy’s eyes shone with anger. He said coldly, “George is vulgar and a bad influence, Miss Bennet. I hope you haven't paid too much attention to what he’s said, and that you haven’t slept with him, as the gossip magazine claimed. I would also hope…”

Elizabeth grew angry, too, and suddenly pressed her body into a surprised Darcy. She wrapped her arms around him, positioned her hands on his butt and smacked him with force. “Okay, Mr. Gossip, let’s concentrate on our job. Here is Lesson One on how to touch your partner, rumba style,” she said archly.

The footage stopped and Caroline cried out, “Scandalous! No wonder some gossip magazines claimed that Miss Eliza was a …”

“Wow, Caroline,” Charles interrupted hastily, “do you think our sly producer has any more secret footage to show us before the dances begin?”

The light in the studio dimmed, and the announcer said, “Dancing the rumba certainly is like making love! So let’s see if William Darcy really can make love with a stranger…in a sensual rumba.”

Standing in the centre of the darkened studio, Darcy trembled when Elizabeth wrapped her arms around his back and pressed every inch of her body to his. The music began, and she smoothed her hands down his back as she swayed her body down at the same time, leaving absolutely no space between them.

He felt like he was being electrocuted. The sensation of having her hot breasts drawing a zig-zag path from his chest to his belly, and down to his thighs was beyond words. He hoped he wouldn’t have an erection in front of millions of TV audiences. He told himself to remember the routine…but all he could remember was the previous night.

What had happened last night?

When he’d first met Elizabeth at the launch of the season, he hadn’t paid much attention to her. She wasn’t an eye-catching blond like her sister Jane…but he couldn’t help noticing that she danced with passion, even partnered with a low-life like Wickham. After her dance routines, Elizabeth’s eyes would shine and glisten. A lovely crimson colour would blossom under her creamy skin. Her breasts would seem about to burst through her tight top, as if begging for a squeeze. Her butt and thighs were tightly toned, ripe for fondling. And, best of all, she would smile and laugh with joy, as if she had just successfully completed the world’s most difficult challenge.

Darcy had wanted to write her off as a loser who only wasted her life partying away, but then he began to encounter her frequently at social functions with Charles and Jane. He soon learned that she was, in fact, a dance teacher and a nurse.

She was witty, intelligent and independent. In fact, she was altogether different from the fake women who frequented the ‘old money’ circle. She didn’t need plastic surgery or high fashion to enhance her beauty. She didn’t need a rich man to satisfy her shopping or spending needs. He particularly admired her sincerity and her loyalty to Jane, their family and her friends.

He felt it was rotten luck that she had gotten herself entangled with Wickham. Darcy was strongly attracted to her, and she was off limits to him, not least because he didn’t want to be Wickham’s successor, thereby giving Wickham a chance to gloat.

In the two weeks since switching partners, Darcy had been in big TROUBLE. He had the hots for Elizabeth, and it didn’t help that she was staying at Pemberley, with her room only a few doors from his.

He could feel her soft curves, and inhale her fragrant lavender scent and spicy hot breaths during rehearsals. Scene after scene of sexual fantasy flashed through his mind, and he was in a constant state of arousal, day and night. That was why he had chosen to wear loose trousers all the time, excusing his awkward walking to all the dancing practice. He had been like a zombie, with no thoughts except those about her hot body.

Darcy, extremely embarrassed, was sure that Elizabeth knew about it, because she had to touch his body during the dance. Since he was seriously distracted by his sexual fantasies, he didn’t learn the routines and techniques as quickly as he had with Ann. That frustrated Elizabeth a lot, and she increased their hours of training from six to sometimes as many as ten hours a day.

The long sessions and constant nagging from Elizabeth finally got to Darcy. After training from 8 am to 4 pm non-stop the day before, Elizabeth was still not happy with his performance and wanted to extend the training till 7.30 pm, right before dinner. But he couldn’t bear the tension of holding her body for another second. He refused, stomped his foot, stalked out of the grand ballroom and shut himself up in the library.

Elizabeth decided to let him cool down. Around 7 pm, however, she was determined to talk to him again and to persuade him to put in two more hours of training after dinner.

She knocked on the library door with an ‘I’m the teacher, and so you had better behave’ expression on her face.

After several knocks, he still hadn’t responded. She was getting pretty worked up, and she banged even more loudly on the door.

Bang! Bang!

Her fist was raised in preparation for banging on the door the third time, and so she was unprepared when it opened and she suddenly came face-to-face with a muscular bare chest. She couldn’t hold back her hand.

Bang!

She left a red mark on Darcy’s naked torso.

“What the hell?” He felt the pain and growled.

Embarrassed, Elizabeth wanted to apologize but, hearing his growl, she couldn’t resist defending herself. Slipping past him and kicking the library door shut to prevent others from hearing their argument, she yelled back, “You brought that on yourself! You left the training like a spoilt child and then refused to open the door when I knocked nicely.”

His eyes widened. He couldn’t believe she was blaming him when she was the one who had smacked him.

“I was asleep, you crazy woman! I didn’t hear your knock, at first. And I didn’t leave the training like a spoilt child. I left after 8 full hours.” Raising his hand to his left chest, he massaged the flesh where her fist had landed, then turned slowly and walked to the couch at the far right-hand side of the room.