Page 110 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

"No, Papa," said Elizabeth. "You will not."

Then they were all round her: Jane, radiant and soft and a little rounder than she had been at Candlemas, which made Elizabeth look at her twice, and then at Mr Bingley's face, and then catch her breath; Kitty, taller, and quieter, and very much in awe of the lions; Lydia, who was sixteen now, and who looked at the house and the square and the footmen in their livery and said, with enormous satisfaction, "Well! I shall certainly not settle for less than this"; and Mary.

Mary came last, down from the hired chaise, with a leather music case clutched in her arms like a Bible. She stood on the pavement and looked up at the tall house, and then at Elizabeth, and then, anxiously, past her, at the door.

And Georgiana came flying down the steps of Darcy House, exactly as she had flown down them in March, and flung her arms round Mary Bennet's neck, music case and all.

"You came!" she cried. "You came, you came! I have been waiting all morning! I have learned the Handel, Mary. The one from Esther. The one my brother gave you. And the Queen told me I must play him loudly, because he was never meant to be played softly, and I thought, that is Mary exactly, and I have been waiting to tell you ever since."

Mary stood on the pavement with Georgiana Darcy's arms round her neck, and her plain serious face went slowly pink, and then pinker, and then, in front of the whole of Grosvenor Square, the Bennet family, and two stone lions, it very nearly smiled.

"The Queen said that?" she said faintly.

"She did. At the Drawing Room. To me."

Mary looked over Georgiana's shoulder at Elizabeth, with a strange, dazed, wondering expression, as though somebody had handed her a present she had not known she wanted.

"Then we shall play it tonight," said Mary Bennet. "Loudly. As a duet. If you will turn the pages."

Elizabeth, on the steps, did not trust herself to say anything. She only looked at her sister, and remembered a sonata, and a joke, and a girl of ten standing by a closed pianoforte with her hand on the lid, not opening it. And she thought that there were some wrongs that could not be undone, only mended, slowly, by other people, a little at a time.

She went and put her arms round both of them.

Behind her, on the steps, she heard her mother say, in a carrying whisper, to Mrs Gardiner: "Is that Miss Darcy? Hugging Mary? Well! I always said Mary had hidden qualities. I always said so. Did I not always say so, sister?"

And her father's dry voice, beside her mother: "Never once, my dear. But I have always found it wise to let you think so."

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By half past ten, the line of carriages stretched from the blue door of Darcy House all the way round two sides of Grosvenor Square and out into Brook Street, and the linkboys were running up and down it with their torches like fireflies.

Darcy stood at the top of his own stairs with his wife on his arm, and watched them come up.

He had stood at the top of a great many staircases in his life, beside a great many hostesses, and been bored at every one. He was not bored tonight. He found that he was watching every face that came up the stairs, and that he knew, now, which ones mattered.

Sir Hugh Ferrers came first, on his wooden leg, an hour early, in a naval coat forty years out of fashion, and kissed Elizabeth's hand loudly and told her she had the finest eyes in England and he had always said so. Lady Harriet Kerr, small and grey and shy, who had pressed Elizabeth's hand on the steps of St George's when nobody else would. Mr Lavender of Bow Street, extremely uncomfortable in borrowed evening clothes, who stood in a corner all night with a glass of lemonade and watched the doors from sheer force of habit. Pettigrew the clerk, and his mother. Mr and Mrs Gardiner, whom Darcy took by both hands.

Lord Aldridge came up the stairs with Miss Caroline Bingley on his arm.

Darcy looked at them twice. Caroline was in apricot again, with a single plume, and her chin up, and an expression of great hauteur; but Aldridge was looking down at her as they came up the stairs with an expression Darcy had seen on his own face in the looking-glass, and on Bingley's at Netherfield, and on nobody else's in his life.

"Miss Bingley," he said, and bowed. "You look very well tonight."

"I know I do," said Caroline. She turned to Elizabeth, and hesitated, and something in her proud face softened, very slightly. "Mrs Darcy."

"Miss Bingley," said Elizabeth, and took both her hands. "Thank you for Salisbury Court."

Caroline went scarlet to the roots of her plume, and glanced sideways at Aldridge, who had evidently not been told about Salisbury Court. "I cannot think what you mean," she said, very loftily. "Come along, Edward."

They went on into the ballroom. Elizabeth looked at her husband, and her eyes were brimming with laughter.

"Edward," she whispered.

"I saw."

"She will lead him the most dreadful dance."

"He will enjoy every step of it," said Darcy.