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"Papa—"

"I enjoyed it very much. It was the best thing I heard all autumn. And now I have had a letter from Mr. Collins comparing your engagement to the union of the Houses of York and Lancaster, and a visit from Mr. Bingley telling me that Mr. Darcy has written him the handsomest letter of apology he ever received, and a wife who has not drawn breath in a fortnight. And I have had a daughter climb out of a carriage this afternoon with that gentleman asleep on her shoulder."

I go hot from my collar to my hair.

"You saw that."

"My dear, the whole household saw it. Your mother saw it. She shrieked. It woke him." He takes off his spectacles and polishes them on his sleeve, which is a sign that he is enjoying himself enormously. "He woke up looking like a man who did not know where he was and did not care, so long as you were in it. It was very affecting. Kitty cried."

I cover my face with my hands.

"And you," says Papa, more quietly, "had your glove off."

I drop my hands.

He is not laughing. He is looking at me over the top of his desk with his spectacles in his fingers, and his face is very gentle, and very shrewd.

"So you see, Lizzy," he says. "I find myself a little puzzled. Either you have changed your mind about toads, which is possible, for you are young, and toads are not to everyone's taste over the long run. Or something has happened in Kent that is not in Mr. Collins's letter." He puts the spectacles down on the blotter. "Sit down, child. And tell me which."

I sit.

I open my mouth to tell him that I have changed my mind about toads. It is the easy answer. It is even true.

And I find that I cannot do it. Not to Papa. Not in this room, where he taught me to read, and to argue, and to laugh at things that deserved it. He has always known when I was lying. He knew when I was seven, about Kitty's hair. He is the only person in the world, except Charlotte, who has never once let me get away with anything.

And I am so tired of getting away with things.

"Papa," I say. "I refused him."

The clock on the mantel ticks. Papa does not move.

"In April," I say. "At Hunsford. He came to the parsonage when everyone else was at Rosings, and he made me an offer. A very bad one. He told me my family was beneath him, and that he loved me against his will and his reason and his character, and that it was a degradation. And I refused him." I take a breath. "I told him he was the last man in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry."

Papa's eyebrows go up. "Did you?"

"Yes."

"In those words?"

"In those very words."

He is silent a moment. Then he says, with great respect, "That is a very good line, Lizzy."

"I thought so at the time."

"And now?"

"Now I would give a great deal never to have said it."

Papa says nothing. He waits. He has always been very good at waiting. It is one of the most infuriating things about him.

So I tell him the rest.

I tell him about the letter, and how it was in Mr. Darcy's coat when I found him in the lane. I do not tell him what it said about Miss Darcy. That is not mine to tell. I only say that it was about Mr. Wickham, and that every word of it was true, and that I had believed every lie Mr. Wickham ever told me, and repeated some of them, in this house, at this desk, to Papa himself.

Papa's face goes very still at that.

I tell him about the fall. The oak bough. Hobbs. The three hours. The blue bedchamber, and Mr. Darcy waking with Thursday cut out of his head as neat as a page.