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"I heard."

"You were listening at the keyhole."

"I was not." A pause. "I was listening at the door. It is not the same."

I laugh, very softly. Her eyes drop to my mouth when I do.

"Then you know," I say, "that there is nothing now between us but that word of yours. That yet."

She does not answer. Her breath is coming quick. I can see the pulse going at the base of her throat, just above the lace at her collar, where I put my temple in the carriage yesterday and very nearly my mouth.

"Is it?" I ask her. "Yet?"

She lifts her hand from the newel post. Slowly, as though she is not sure what she means to do with it. It comes up between us and rests, very light, against the front of my waistcoat, just over my heart. I am quite sure she can feel it hammering.

"Fitzwilliam—" she says.

My Christian name. In her voice. I have never heard it before, and it goes through me like a lit fuse.

I bend my head.

"MR. DARCY!"

The drawing room door bursts open behind me with such violence that it bounces off the wall.

Elizabeth snatches her hand away from my waistcoat as though it has burned her. I straighten so fast I hit my head on the underside of the stair rail, directly on the bruise, and see stars.

"Mr. Darcy! Oh, Mr. Darcy! Is it true? Has Mr. Bennet consented? Oh, my dear, dear sir!" Mrs. Bennet is upon us in a cloud of lace and lavender water and agitation, both hands outstretched. "Lizzy, why did you not tell me? Why did you not come and tell me at once? I have been sitting in there with my heart in my mouth this half hour! Hill! Hill! Fetch the Madeira! Mr. Darcy is to be my son!"

"Mama," says Elizabeth, in a strangled voice.

"Do not Mama me, you wicked, wonderful girl. Oh, sir, you have hurt your head. Lizzy, he has hurt his head! On my stair rail! Hill! Bring the hartshorn as well as the Madeira!"

"It is nothing, ma'am," I say, with my eyes watering. "I was—examining the carving."

Behind her mother's shoulder, Elizabeth makes a sound like a kettle and turns her face to the wall.

"The carving! Oh, it is very fine, is it not? It was Mr. Bennet's grandfather's. Oak, you know. Very old. Not so fine as Pemberley, I am sure, nothing is so fine as Pemberley, but very fine for Hertfordshire." Mrs. Bennet seizes my arm. "You must come into the drawing room and sit down. You must stay to dinner. You must stay to dinner every day. Do you like ducklings, Mr. Darcy? I shall have ducklings. And a white soup. Lizzy, does Mr. Darcy like a white soup?"

Elizabeth, with her face to the wall, says something muffled that might be yes.

"There! I knew it! Come, sir, come, come." Mrs. Bennet tows me toward the drawing room like a skiff behind a ship of the line. I go, because I have no choice in the matter, but at the door I look back.

Elizabeth has turned round. She is leaning against the newel post with both hands pressed to her scarlet cheeks, and she is looking at me, and she is laughing, silently, helplessly, with her eyes full of tears.

I mouth one word at her over her mother's lace cap.

Yet.

She covers her whole face with her hands.

***

Bingley proposes to Jane Bennet on Thursday.

He tells me he means to at breakfast at Netherfield, over the kidneys, in a state of such agitation that he puts sugar on his ham. I tell him that if he does not do it today I shall do it for him. He laughs, and goes pale, and goes red, and puts more sugar on the ham.

We ride over together at noon. Mrs. Bennet, who has the instincts of a general in these matters, contrives within ten minutes to clear the drawing room of every living soul except her eldest daughter and Mr. Bingley. She does it by announcing that she has something very particular to show Kitty upstairs, and Mary something very particular in the library, and Miss de Bourgh something very particular in the garden. She looks at Elizabeth and me, and appears to consider whether we too can be found something very particular. Then she sees Elizabeth's face, and thinks better of it, and sends us out to walk.