“You must let me finish, Jane. I have rehearsed it too long this morning not to be allowed to put it to you. Will you come back to me? Will you come back to Northmere, or come back to Aunt Gardiner’s with my coming after you within the week, or come back in some manner I have not the sense, this afternoon, to think of? I do not require to be answered today. I require only to ask it. I have walked the lane to ask it. Will you come back?”
“Lizzy. Sit down, dear.”
“I shall not sit down. I understand why you went away, but I beg of you—”
“You are wet through, dearest, and there is a chair at the hearth, and Mrs Hadley has by this minute laid a cloth across it on which you may sit without ruining anything that has not already been ruined this morning. Sit down.”
“I shall not sit down until I am answered. Please, Jane.”
“Then I shall answer you standing. I shall come back. I have not, for some days, known where back was, Lizzy, but it is plain to me now that back is in the same county as you, and you are at Northmere.”
“Oh, Jane!” She fell on her sister’s neck. “Bless you.”
“And now, Lizzy, you shall hear me. You have rehearsed yours along the lane. I have rehearsed mine across three days at this kitchen table, and Mrs Hadley has, in the most unobtrusive manner imaginable, heard the rehearsals and pretended not to hear them.”
Mrs Hadley, at the hearth, did not turn round.
Jane held her sister at the shoulders.
“I married Mr Marsden, Lizzy, for the easy thing. I had been at Longbourn after our father’s death with our mother in the state you must recall, with our sisters needing every reassurance that you gave and I did not. I could not do what you weredoing, so I thought to leave. There was a position to be had as a governess at Stevenage, of which I had not told you. I had not told you because I had been afraid that, if you knew I had been offered it, you would in your good sense advise me to take it; and the position would have kept me in the county, and within reach of you, and within reach of our mother, and within reach of the entail and all that lay around it. Mr Marsden’s offer would carry me out of the county and the entail and the mother together. I took Mr Marsden’s offer. I knew, when I took it, that I had not taken it for any of the reasons one tells one’s sister one has taken such an offer. I told you reasons that were not the truth, and you did not press me, and we left it there. I knew that, too.”
“Jane—”
“You shall let me finish, Lizzy. You have set the precedent.”
“Yes.”
“I ran, dearest. I ran from Longbourn and I left the whole of it on your back, and I knew it when I did it, and I have known it every day of the year and a half since. Mr Marsden was the price for the running, and the price was the right price for the thing I had done. I have not, this winter, been able to mourn him as a widow ought, because I have not been able to mourn a man who was the wage of my running. And I have not been able to come to you about it, because there was nothing in me with which to ask you to forgive a thing of that order. So I came to Northmere under Mr Darcy’s protection, and I sat at your bedside, and I did not say any of it. And I should not be saying it now, Lizzy, except that you have walked the lane on a leg that should not even be able to bear your weight yet to ask me to come back, which is a great deal more than I have ever walked for you.”
“Jane.”
“Forgive me, Lizzy.”
“There is nothing of you to forgive that you have not already forgiven of me ten times over by sitting where you sat at this table when we came in at the door. I think neither of us is in a position to reproach, Jane. There is only the coming back, and the way of coming back.”
Jane pulled her into her arms as she had once done when they were small. Elizabeth wept, briefly, into Jane’s shoulder, but she soon found that the tears were no more, and laughter, beautiful laughter, had taken over. Then Jane drew back and held her sister at the shoulders.
“I am to be very happy for you, am I not, Lizzy?”
Elizabeth dashed a few tears from her cheeks. “You are.”
“I had supposed so for some weeks. I had not supposed I could so quickly find pleasure in the notion..”
“Do you, Jane? You are not wounded that I accepted him?”
Jane stepped back and smiled a little sadly. “I had fancied… but I deceived myself, Lizzy, and I knew even as I let myself be fooled that it was hopeless. He has had a heart for you since the moment he pulled you out of that frozen lake. He is one of the best men I have ever known, Lizzy, and the only one I can think of who could be worthy of my brave sister.”
“Brave! I am a coward, Jane.”
Jane set her hands on Elizabeth’s cheeks. “No, you are the bravest, dearest, strongest person I know. And Mr Darcy… Oh, Lizzy, I cannot fault him for his love for you, but what of the law? I think he is as bold as you, but I cannot help fearing for you both. What is to be done?”
Elizabeth smiled. “I do not know. All I can say with any confidence is that this valley… Jane, it heals. It makes right what is wrong. Not all things—perhaps not all things we considerwrongtruly are—but I have to believe that what is true and real will come right.”
“Then I shall try to hold faith, too.” Jane put her hand to Elizabeth’s wet hair where it had stuck to her temple, and she straightened it with the small efficient motion she had used at Longbourn when their mother was coming in at the door, and the laugh from the lane had come back into her face.
“But look at you! Dripping the mere onto Mrs Hadley’s flagstones, with no cane, on Mr Darcy’s arm, with your hair down and a piece of pondweed of some sort caught at your collar. Lizzy, you have pondweed.”
“I have not.”
