A silence stretched between them—long enough to feel like punishment.
“No invitation arrived at Gracechurch Street,” she said at last, her tone as light as windblown ash.
He hesitated. “Nor to Darcy House.”
“Curious.”
“Surely just an oversight.”
“Yes,” she said. “I am certain your bride meant to send one.”
He did not reply.
Elizabeth let her eyes wander to the rooftops behind him. “The same could be said of me. So many guests to think of. It is difficult, is it not, to keep count.”
“The Gardiners must be terribly busy.”
“Mrs. Gardiner has been a marvel. She sees to everything. The guest list. The gown. The silence.”
He shifted slightly at that, but she did not allow herself to wonder how.
“I am told,” she added, “that Thursday cannot come soon enough.”
He drew in a breath, deep and quiet. “Nor Tuesday.”
She smiled, and it hurt.
There was a sound in the street behind her—someone calling out to a horse, a child laughing—but it reached them muffled, like voices behind glass. This was the quietest they had ever been. The most formal. And it felt like betrayal.
“I hope your bride is everything you were promised,” she said.
He did not nod. Did not blink.
“And I hope your captain makes you very comfortable,” he said, with a steadiness she knew cost him dearly.
Comfortable.
The word sank between them like a stone in water.
When she finally looked at him again, there was nothing civil left in her gaze. And still he stood there, braced against her silence, the street, the weight of everything he could not say.
She wanted to speak. She wanted to scream.
Instead, she offered him a polite incline of her head, as though he were some distant acquaintance and not the man who had lived in every corner of her thoughts since the first moment they met.
“My sister,” she said suddenly, “received another call from Mr. Bingley yesterday.”
That earned his full attention.
Elizabeth forced her smile to stay in place. “He asked her permission to begin a courtship. Quite properly. With great seriousness.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“She accepted, though with caution. She does not trust easily now.”
“Nor should she.”
Elizabeth’s hands curled into the fabric of her cloak. “But it made her smile. So I will not be cross about it.”
