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"Your eyes were wet just now, when you told it." I hold her hand a little tighter. "And yesterday, Pettigrew said you had been crying in the breakfast parlor. And Fitzwilliam would not look at me when I asked him why." I search her face. "So I wonder. When I asked you. Did you really cry?"

She looks at me.

And for one long moment, all of her composure goes. I watch it go. Something moves over her face that is so raw, so unguarded, that I very nearly let go of her hand in alarm.

Then she lifts her chin, and smiles, a crooked, watery, defiant smile I have never seen on her before.

"Buckets," she says.

And I laugh.

I do not mean to. It comes up out of me without permission, the way the smile did yesterday, only bigger. It comes from somewhere low in my chest that I had forgotten I owned. It hurts my head abominably. It hurts my bruised ribs. I do not care. I put my head back against the pillows and laugh, out loud, in my aunt's best bedchamber, at the idea of Elizabeth Bennet weeping buckets over a man who knocked over a workbasket.

When I can stop, and wipe my eyes, and look at her again, she is not laughing.

She is staring at me. Her lips are parted. Her eyes are wide. She looks as though she has seen something extraordinary walk in at the window.

At the hearth, Pettigrew has frozen with his spectacles halfway to his nose. At the window, Mrs. Collins has turned round, her handkerchief forgotten. At the door, Fitzwilliam is looking at me the way a man looks at a comet for the second time in two days.

"What?" I say. "What is it? Have I opened the cut again?"

Miss Bennet shakes her head slowly.

"No," she says, and her voice is very soft. "No. It is only—"

She stops. Her hand turns in mine and holds on.

"I have never heard you laugh before," she says.

Chapter Seven — Elizabeth

"I shall send for a London physician," says Lady Catherine.

"Your ladyship has sent for one already," Charlotte reminds her gently. "Sir Augustus Pell."

"Sir Augustus Pell is at Brighton with the Duke of Cumberland and cannot come before Thursday. He has written to say so. I consider it very uncivil in him." Lady Catherine sets down her teacup with a crack. "I have therefore sent for Dr. Hollis of Tunbridge Wells as well. He attended Lady Metcalfe's son when the boy fell out of a tree and believed himself to be the Archbishop of York. Dr. Hollis cured him in a week."

"How?" I ask, before I can stop myself.

"Leeches," says Lady Catherine, with deep satisfaction. "Forty of them."

It is Sunday, and we are in the drawing room at Rosings after church. Mr. Collins preached for an hour and ten minutes on the text Pride goeth before destruction, and I am almost sure it was meant for me, though I have not yet worked out whether he meant my pride or Mr. Darcy's. We were summoned the moment the last hymn ended. We have been sitting here for a quarter of an hour. Lady Catherine has not yet looked at me directly. She has been saving it, I think, the way one saves the best dish for last.

Miss de Bourgh sits by the fire wrapped in two shawls. Mrs. Jenkinson sits beside her, adjusting the shawls. Mr. Collins sits on the very edge of a hard chair, looking from his patroness to me and back as though watching a game of battledore.

"Leeches," he breathes. "How very modern."

"I do not know about modern, Mr. Collins. I know about effective." Lady Catherine turns her head at last, slowly, like a cannon being brought to bear. "Miss Bennet."

Here it comes.

"Ma'am."

"My nephew is not in his right mind."

I fold my hands in my lap. "Mr. Pettigrew thinks him much improved."

"Mr. Pettigrew is a fool. I have watched my nephew closely since Friday, and I am persuaded the blow has disordered his understanding entirely." She begins to count on her fingers. "He laughed yesterday. Out loud. Mrs. Jenkinson heard it from the corridor. Darcy has not laughed out loud since he was breeched."