Page 11

"Morning, sir. Early for it."

"I am aware of the hour."

"Ground's soft under the oaks after the rain, sir. I'd take him easy along the paling lane."

"I know the lane."

"Aye, sir. Only there's a low limb at the bend, the old oak. Wanted cutting since Michaelmas. Her ladyship's not given the word."

"Then I shall duck." I take the reins and mount. The black dances under me. He has not been out in two days, and he is as restless as I am.

"He's fresh, sir," Hobbs says.

"So am I."

"Begging your pardon, sir, you don't look it."

I look down at him. He looks up, entirely unrepentant. Servants who have known one in short coats are the most impertinent creatures in England.

"Thank you, Hobbs."

I mean to go gently. I do. For the first half mile I hold him to a trot, and I rehearse.

"Miss Bennet," I say to his ears. "Miss Bennet, I have come—" No. "Miss Bennet, will you do me the honor of reading this letter?" Too humble. She would laugh. "Madam. Be not alarmed."

The black flicks one ear back at me, unimpressed.

"You are no better critic than she is," I tell him.

The last man in the world.

I give him his head.

I do not decide to. My heels simply speak before my judgment does, the same way my tongue did in the parlor, and he leaps forward gladly. The wind is cold on my face. The paling flashes past. For a few strides there is nothing in the world but speed and noise and the blessed absence of thought.

Your arrogance, your conceit, your selfish disdain—

Faster.

Had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner—

The bend comes sooner than I expect. The oaks lean in. The black takes the corner wide and slithers on the wet ground, and I lean with him, and look up.

The limb is there, exactly where Hobbs said it would be.

I have time to think, with perfect and absurd clarity, She will say I deserved this.

Then the world turns white.

***

Voices.

They come and go like waves, and I am lying at the bottom of the sea.

"—will not have it, Mr. Pettigrew. I will not. A Darcy does not lie insensible for three hours like a common drunkard."

"No, your ladyship. Certainly not, your ladyship. Only the blow was very severe—"