Page 33

"Read your note," she says. "I shall see about the tea."

***

I read it in my room, standing at the window, with the door shut.

The hand is not quite steady. The lines slope a little downhill toward the right. I think of him sitting up against those pillows with a pencil and a book on his knee, and my throat tightens.

Miss Bennet,

My aunt informs me that you are forbidden my chamber. Pettigrew informs me that I am forbidden all excitement. I have considered both orders carefully, and I find that being forbidden you is the most exciting thing that has happened to me since the tree.

I have no intention of obeying either.

Come tomorrow. Bring Mrs. Collins, and the green worsted, if she will lend it. I should like to see what I looked like holding it.

Not yet is a very long time.

D.

I read it twice. Then I sit down on the edge of the bed, rather suddenly, as though my knees have been cut.

Not yet is a very long time.

He has been lying up there thinking about it. About those two words I invented, out of nothing, in a sickroom, to keep from telling him the truth. He has been turning them over. I gave them to him as a kindness. Now he has given them back to me, and they are not a kindness at all. They are a hand on the back of my neck.

My face is burning.

"You are a fool, Elizabeth Bennet," I tell the floor. "You are the greatest fool in the county of Kent."

I put on my bonnet and go out to walk before Charlotte can come up with the tea and see my face.

***

The Rosings shrubbery is the one place in the park where no one ever goes, because Lady Catherine says the paths are too narrow for a lady's skirts. They are not. They are only too narrow for hers.

I walk round it twice. I am on my third circuit, arguing furiously with Mr. Darcy in my head and losing every point, when the laurels beside me rustle and part.

It is Miss de Bourgh.

She has left one of her shawls behind somewhere and is wearing only the other, and there is a twig caught in her fringe and a small tear in her hem. She is out of breath. She looks as though she has been running, which I have never seen her do; I did not know she could. She looks behind her once, quickly, toward the house. Then she steps out onto the path in front of me.

"Miss Bennet," she says.

I am so astonished I can only curtsey.

In five weeks at Rosings I have heard Miss de Bourgh speak perhaps a dozen words, and most of those were yes, Mama. Her voice is not at all what I expected. It is low, and rather husky, as though from long disuse, and it shakes.

"Mrs. Jenkinson is asleep in the morning room," she says, all in a rush. "She sleeps every Sunday after dinner for half an hour. Mama does not know. I have twenty minutes, perhaps less. I had to speak to you."

"Miss de Bourgh—are you quite well? You have no shawl—"

"Bother the shawl."

I stare at her. She stares back, and a flush comes up into her thin cheeks, as though she is as surprised to hear herself say it as I am.

"I beg your pardon," she says. "I have never said bother aloud before. I have only thought it. It is very satisfying." She draws a breath. "Miss Bennet. Please. Please do not let Mama win."

I do not know what to say.