Page 78 of The Crown’s Gift

Sir Thomas stepped forward. "Lady Catherine, you are welcome at Netherfield when you can treat its inhabitants with courtesy. Today you cannot. Your carriage is ready."

"You dismiss me?"

"I rescue the remainder of our breakfast."

Lady Catherine looked from Sir Thomas to Darcy and finally to Elizabeth.

"This is not ended."

"It may continue wherever you like," Elizabeth said, "provided I am not required to attend."

The carriage departed with even greater violence than it arrived.

For several seconds no one spoke.

Lady Bennet adjusted her cap. "Her hat was dreadful."

Darcy laughed.

Not a polite breath or hidden smile. He laughed until Sir Thomas joined him and Elizabeth's anger dissolved.

Lady Bennet looked pleased. "Now, if everyone has finished allowing titled women to ruin the morning, there are eggs in the warming dish."

Darcy offered Elizabeth his arm.

"Will you return to breakfast?"

She placed her hand upon his sleeve. "I find I have an appetite."

* * *

Lady Catherine's visit postponed Darcy's proposal by one day and Longbourn's roof postponed it by another.

A storm tore tiles from the western slope during the night. Bingley arrived at Netherfield before breakfast ended, wet at the shoulders and carrying a fragment of slate as evidence.

"The bedrooms are dry, but water reached the old schoolroom. Morris says the roof beneath was sound when the lease began. I will pay for the repair, naturally, but the carpenter believes the entire west side should be replaced."

Sir Thomas examined the slate. "The lease divides structural repairs according to cause, which is an excellent method of employing solicitors and a poor method of keeping out rain. We shall inspect it together."

Darcy rose. "May I come?"

She recognized the intention he had twice gathered courage to express, only to be interrupted first by Lady Bennet's demand concerning breakfast orders and now by weather.

"Of course," Sir Thomas said. "You may prevent Bingley from purchasing gold tiles."

"I suggested copper," Bingley protested.

Jane put a hand over her eyes.

The gentlemen spent the morning at Longbourn. Elizabeth and Jane followed later with Lady Bennet, who refused to trust three men with a house and a hole in the same roof.

Rain had stained one wall of the old schoolroom. The pencil marks recording the girls' heights remained untouched beside the door.

Jane ran her fingers over them. "I had forgotten Kitty was taller than Lydia until Lydia was six."

"Lydia has not," Elizabeth said. "She calls those two years the Great Injustice."

Bingley entered with Darcy. Dust marked his coat, and his hair had lost its fashionable arrangement.