They adopted the accepted forms and continued in silence for 114 paces before she spoke.
“You said you walked in the grove hoping to meet me. Why not just watch from the folly, as usual?”
“There is no fooling you, is there? How did you work it out?”
“Rudimentary cartography. Converging lines of sight defined the vantage point, and timing verified it.”
“I should never have imagined an aficionado of mathematics would believe our meetings to be by chance.”
“No sir. I calculated the odds and updated my calculations with each meeting. They were simple enough once I estimated your walking habits. The odds of even two meetings by chance were vanishingly small. You were stalking me.”
“How long did you know?”
“From the second day. Even that was unlikely.”
“Did it worry you?”
“If it had, you would have known. I can be abrupt when my temper is riled.”
“And yet you did not mention it.”
“Rules of propriety, sir. We were both cheating then, as we are now. If the meetings were planned, they became improper rendezvous. If they were by chance, they just barely pass muster. I assumed you were reasonably discreet, for what man wouldwant to be leg-shackled over a few walks in the park? It is entirely logical.”
“What man indeed,” he laughed, the sound brittle.
Elizabeth blushed. “I am sorry, that was—”
“No apologies, Elizabeth. Please.”
She ignored the use of her Christian name, assuming he must have used it in that overcrowded head of his for months.
She tugged him back into motion. “I shall do my best.”
“That is more than sufficient. To answer your original question, I suspected you knew of my earlier strategy, and I cannot decide which excuse to use for waiting at that spot. I either did not want to frighten you, should you work out how I wasstalking you, or I supposed you might choose a different route and avoid my scrutiny altogether. To tell the truth, I came here hoping either serendipity or your own inclinations would deliver you eventually. I would have found another way if this did not work, but the other methods are uncomfortable.”
“Well, it worked, so I imagine you have no complaint.”
“None against you. For myself, I spent all night on an exercise once suggested to me. I recalled our entire acquaintance, beginning to end, except I replaced myself with an unknown gentleman, and you with my sister. I wrote the results in the letter you very sensibly did not take.”
“And?”
“If I could somehow move about in time, I would go back 6 months and beat my younger self with a stick.”
Elizabeth giggled. “That is very specific. How, pray tell, did you choose a stick?”
Darcy laughed with her—awkwardly, uncomfortably—but the tension eased.
“It is an old expression I heard from a tenant as a child. I do not know its origins. I presume a stick is hard enough to hurt but not kill. Just the right compromise between a willow switch, a club, and a rock.”
“In the end, even without the stick beating, your younger self was not soveryterrible. I had mostly forgiven him. I even thought we might be friends.”
“Truly?”
“You may not have correlated all you know, so I shall inform you. I am an exceptional prevaricator, but a terrible liar. I avoided saying what I thought to you and your friends dozens of times, but I never lied even once, unless you are a stickler for lies by omission.”
As they walked with Elizabeth lost in thought, she paid little attention to her steps until she noticed she was gradually drawn to the side, while Mr Darcy walked clear off the edge, his boots in the mud.
A puddle lay ahead on her side of the path, vaguely reminding her of the mud bath after the Netherfield ball. He guided her around it without apparent thought. She could have stepped over the puddle with hardly a hop, but he prevented even that.
