She smiled to herself, as though still surprised by the discovery.
“And it does feel bright. But it also feels like being seen. Rightly understood.”
Her fingers smoothed an invisible crease in the coverlet.
“When I speak, he listens with the clear sense that my thoughts matter. When I am silent, he does not fill the silence with his own desires. He waits and watches. He understands.”
Elizabeth thought of Mr. Bingley’s compliments—always centered upon Jane’s beauty, always upon how sweet she looked, how angelic.
And she remembered how often he had laughed when Jane offered an opinion—not in deliberate mockery, perhaps, but in quiet dismissal, treating those opinions as charming ornaments rather than as parts of her soul.
Jane’s voice grew softer.
“He does not treat me as an ornament.”
Elizabeth leaned her head against Jane’s shoulder for a brief moment, closing her eyes. “Then you are very nearly the richest woman in Hertfordshire, treasure hoard or no.”
Jane’s laughter was soft. “Lizzy.”
“It is true,” Elizabeth insisted, lifting her head again. “And I will not let you pretend otherwise. You have found a man who values you, and you are brave enough to value yourself. That is a fortune.”
Jane studied Elizabeth’s face, and her expression softened into deep affection. “And you?”
Elizabeth’s heart gave a traitorous leap at the thought of Darcy—the way his eyes warmed when he looked at her, the way his hand steadied hers, the way his principles held even when they made the world harder. The way she had begun to imagine a life with him and found the imagining did not frighten her.
“We are both fortunate,” Elizabeth said softly. “To have found such pleasure in life.”
Jane’s fingers tightened around hers. “I only understood how much you were struggling once you seemed to be doing better,” Jane confessed softly. “I thought you were only distracted.” She sighed. “I did not comprehend how heavily it pressed upon you, because you did not complain.”
Elizabeth smiled faintly. “I did complain. Only not aloud.”
Jane’s thumb stroked the back of Elizabeth’s hand, soothing. “You are lighter now.”
“I am,” Elizabeth admitted. The word felt like air in her lungs. “I am very glad it is finally over.”
Jane’s gaze turned thoughtful. “Do you think it will put paid to all this treasure hunting?”
“I hope so,” Elizabeth said. “Since the Crown has taken the hoard, if word spreads that the commissioner came and went and carried off the spoils, perhaps everyone will assume there is nothing left but mud and disappointment.”
Jane smiled. “And perhaps they will return to worrying only about more ordinary things.”
“Like who sits beside whom at supper,” Elizabeth teased.
Jane’s laugh warmed the room. “Yes. Like that.”
They sat together for a long while, speaking in low tones of the week’s events as though talking could smooth the last rough edges. Jane spoke, haltingly at first, of moments with Colonel Fitzwilliam—small things that had lodged in her heart: a question he asked that showed he remembered something she had said days before, the way he stepped aside to let her choose apath in the garden rather than guiding her where he wished, the way he never spoke ill of others even when provoked.
Elizabeth listened, pleased in a way that felt almost fierce. Jane’s happiness was not loud. It was not dramatic. It was steady, like a candle that did not flicker even when the wind pressed at the window.
At last, when the hour grew late, and the house lay utterly still, Jane rose from the bed and smoothed her wrapper with a careful hand.
“I should let you sleep,” she whispered.
Elizabeth caught her hand once more. “Promise me something.”
Jane tilted her head. “What is it?”
“Do not ever believe,” Elizabeth said, voice low, “that you must be smaller to ensure others are easy again.”
