Page 16 of The Crown’s Gift

"That Mr Darcy has looked toward this passage four times in six minutes."

"Perhaps he fears I shall track mud upon another carpet."

"Perhaps. Longbourn's carpets are very fine."

Sir Thomas kissed her forehead and departed before she could answer.

Darcy looked toward the passage a fifth time.

CHAPTER THREE

A Gentleman Misjudged

Jane's fever lingered for three days. Elizabeth therefore remained at Longbourn, inhabiting the house of her childhood as both intimate and guest.

She knew which stair complained beneath a hurried foot, which window in the west corridor admitted a winter draught, and where the morning sun first touched the breakfast-room wall. Yet Bingley's books sat upon her father's old shelves. Caroline's shawl lay across the sofa where Lady Bennet once sorted household accounts. Mr Hurst slept after dinner in the chair Sir Thomas had favored before he learned that remaining awake sometimes improved family conversation.

The strangeness made Elizabeth tender toward Longbourn and impatient with anyone who treated it carelessly.

Bingley did not. He asked before opening rooms the lease had reserved for the Bennets' storage. He knew the names of two tenant families already. When a servant cracked a blue basin that had belonged to Lady Bennet's mother, he apologized as though he had wielded the poker himself.

His sisters behaved as if a furnished house had materialized for their convenience.

On the second morning, Elizabeth found Caroline directing a footman to remove a small portrait from the staircase.

"The frame is too dark," Caroline said. "It makes the landing positively gloomy."

The portrait showed Elizabeth's grandfather at twenty-five, unsmiling and square-shouldered in a brown coat.

"That picture is excluded from the household inventory," Elizabeth said.

Caroline turned. "Is it?"

"It belongs to my father. He left it because the wall was built around its hook, and because Grandpapa appears to disapprove of everyone who climbs the stairs. We were fond of the effect."

The footman froze with one hand near the frame.

"Leave it," Caroline said. "I had no notion it mattered."

"Now you have."

Elizabeth continued upstairs before temper could turn accuracy into rudeness. At the upper landing she found Darcy.

He had heard enough. His gaze went from the portrait to Caroline's retreating figure and then to Elizabeth.

"You were restrained."

"Were you expecting bloodshed?"

"I was expecting wit. It sometimes leaves deeper injuries."

"Then Miss Bingley is fortunate I am tired."

He almost smiled. "Your grandfather?"

Elizabeth looked at the portrait. "He died before Lydia was born. He was stern, generous, and incapable of telling a story in fewer than forty minutes. Papa says I inherited his eyebrows and none of his patience."

"Sir Thomas speaks of his family with unusual candor."