“I remember that you all vanished before the second toast was cool.”
“Well,” Mrs. Gardiner said again, “I went upstairs to fetch my shawl. You know I always forget it until the moment I need it. And while I was in your room—purely to reach the side table, I promise—I happened to see a bit of crumpled paper in the waste bin. I thought it might be another upsetting letter from yourmother. You had such a look about you all evening, I feared it might be a fresh volley of aspersions.”
Elizabeth gave her a tight, incredulous look. “You were foraging in my waste bin out of ‘concern’?”
“I was brushing ash from my sleeve, which happened to be over the bin, and the paper peeked out like it wanted rescuing.” Her aunt pressed a gloved hand over her chest. “I swear it. I had no intention of snooping.”
Elizabeth arched a brow.
“Until I saw your handwriting,” Mrs. Gardiner amended. “Which, really, is not snooping—it is simply noticing.”
She drew in a breath. “And later, when Lady Chiswell and I were discussing the post-holiday gloom that seems to settle after Epiphany, I said something I perhaps ought not to have. She was fretting about the dullness of her guests—fretting in that very particular, theatrical way she has—and she was hoping to find some means of making her nephew laugh again, poor fellow. I told her that if she truly wished for something bright and original, then she ought to pray for a contribution from my niece. I did not mean to offer anything. But when I returned to your room that morning to fetch the shawl I had left behind, I… I saw the waste bin.”
Elizabeth inhaled sharply.
Her aunt winced. “They were clever, Lizzy. Hilarious and sharp and unmistakably yours. And I know why you threw them away—I do. But I thought… if you saw the effect your words had, if you heard them read aloud without the burden of consequence or suspicion, then perhaps you would remember why you began writing at all. You are not careless anymore. You know too well what your words can do. That makes you more trustworthy than ever. And the world needs more wit, not less.”
Elizabeth stared at her, eyes wide, jaw tight. “But… you went through my waste bin!”
“I did,” her aunt admitted, without flinching.
“That was private!”
“Itwas.”
Elizabeth crossed her arms and looked away, trying to summon the proper amount of fury—but it refused to rise. This was not a stranger prying into her life. It was Madeline Gardiner, who had stitched up the hem of her best walking dress, who had smuggled extra biscuits into her coat pocket during childhood visits, who had once faced down Mrs. Bennet’s shrieking hysteria with nothing but a teapot and a look.
Still.
“It was just a scrap of paper in the bin,” Mrs. Gardiner murmured quickly. “I feared it was another horrid letter from your mother. You have been… quieter, these past days, and I only meant to be certain it would not send you into one of your moods again.”
“Mymoods?”
“Well, yes. You did spend an entire afternoon arguing with a holly bush.”
Elizabeth pressed her fingers to her temples. “Tell me you did not submit it.”
“I did,” Mrs. Gardiner said, with the placid courage of someone about to be pelted with bread rolls. “It was funny. Witty. Rather too much like your old self to leave in a bin. And no one will guess it was you.”
Elizabeth pinched the bridge of her nose. “I am going to expire from mortification.”
Mrs. Gardiner patted her arm. “If you do, I shall sell your tragic tale to the Illustrated London News and retire to Bath on the proceeds. You may at least give me a dramatic pose for the engraving.”
Elizabet stared at her.
She gave Elizabeth a pointed look. “See? I have been taking notes. Come, Lizzy. This will be terribly enjoyable, even for you.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth—to argue, to seethe, to flee—but no words emerged. Only the sound of the harp, still plinking bravely along, as if unaware it was soundtracking her impending social demise.
And then—God help her—she saw him.
The back of a dark head. A familiar posture. A man near the sideboard, just tall enough to make her breath catch.
Darcy.
Surely it was Darcy.
No one else walked like that. No one else carried tension like a cloak and managed to make it look like elegance. And—oh, no—those eyebrows. She had mocked them once, had written a dozen witty and delightful lines about their severity. But there was no mistaking them now. They were his.
