Page 60 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

"Elizabeth was innocent." The words came out rough, and something in them gave his pain away. Caroline's guilt had not made his affection for her disappear. It had only forced him to place a consequence on someone he still loved. That was its own particular kind of misery, Elizabeth thought.

Jane understood it too. She lifted one hand toward his sleeve and stopped just short of touching it. "I am sorry."

"Do you think I was cruel?"

"No."

"I should have seen what she meant to do. Darcy has disliked her pursuit of him for months, and I called it harmless because confronting it properly would have made Netherfield unpleasant for everyone."

"You cannot be responsible for every choice your sister makes."

"I am responsible for what I allow under my own roof."

Elizabeth heard Darcy in that distinction, and Bingley in the regret wrapped around it. Not for the first time, she thought how strange it was that the two men had made each other better by standing near one another long enough.

Jane considered this. "Then you corrected what you allowed. You did not expose her to the whole neighbourhood. You did not punish Sarah for telling the truth. You did not ask Mr. Darcy to offer himself up for your family's comfort."

"No."

"What more should you have done last night?"

Bingley looked at her for a long moment. "Nothing, perhaps."

"Nothing more is not the same as nothing painful."

Mrs. Bennet's argument about the mud rolled on undisturbed in the background. The room stayed perfectly ordinary around a conversation that was rearranging Bingley's whole face.

"You do not think less of me," he said.

"I think more of you. For telling me."

"Jane."

He said her name with such feeling that Elizabeth had to look away. Jane did not.

"You may tell me the rest when you are ready," she said. "Your sister's conduct should not become entertainment — not even within my own family."

"Thank you."

Mrs. Bennet chose that exact moment to return. "What are you thanking Jane for?"

Bingley recovered enough to smile. "For listening to me."

"Jane has always been an excellent listener. At five years old she sat through the whole of Mrs. Goulding's account of a harvest supper without a single complaint."

"Mamma," Jane said.

"It was nearly two hours."

Bingley looked, in that instant, like a man who would sit through two hours of anything at all, provided Jane were the one telling it. Elizabeth saw the future proposal arrive fully formed and gave up pretending she had not. Behind the library door, the conversation carried on. Mr. Bennet's voice rose once in laughter. Darcy's did not. Elizabeth found herself wondering what her father had asked, and which answer had cost Darcy the most.

Bingley drifted toward the tea table. "May I pour for you?"

Jane accepted, and he remembered, without being told, precisely how she took it. It was such a small competence, and it pleased her far more than any grand display could have.

Elizabeth watched them and thought of the orangery, the storm, the offer that had come too fast and landed too hard. Darcy had not asked for her declaration that night. Bingley was not asking Jane to absolve him now. Both men had brought their difficult truths into the light and left the women free to answer as they chose. The servants had made the opportunities. They had not made any of this.

Mrs. Bennet gasped, loudly enough to interrupt her own war over the mud. "What can your father possibly mean by shutting himself up like that? Lizzy, have you done something?"