Page 82

The last man in the world.

The oak, leaning in.

The bough.

White.

***

I am sitting on a stone seat in the garden at Longbourn, in the dark, and I cannot breathe.

She is half in my lap. My coat is round her shoulders. My hand is in her hair, and I cannot feel it, and I take it away.

"Fitzwilliam?"

Her voice is very small. I do not look at her. I look at the dark shape of the elms against the sky.

"Rosings," I say.

"What?"

"When I woke. In my aunt's blue bedchamber. And I asked for you." My voice sounds as if it belongs to someone else. "You knew then."

A long silence.

"Yes," she says.

"You had refused me the night before."

"Yes."

"And I lay there telling everyone in the house that we were engaged."

"Yes."

"Why did you not say so?"

"I tried." She draws a breath that catches. "I was going up the stairs to tell you. That very morning. I was at the door of the breakfast parlor. And Mr. Pettigrew stopped me."

"Pettigrew knew."

"He overheard. He said a shock might do you real harm. He had seen it before. He begged me not to contradict you. Only for a little while. Only until you were well."

I laugh. It is a short, terrible sound, nothing like a laugh. I remember making that sound once before, in Mrs. Collins's parlor, when she said his misfortunes.

"And my cousin?" I say.

"I told him myself. In the breakfast parlor. Before I came up to you."

"Before you came up." I close my eyes. "So when I said we are engaged, and he opened his mouth, and nothing came out of it—"

"He did not know yet. Not then. He learned it a quarter of an hour later."

"And came back upstairs with you, and stood by the window, and let me hold your hand."

She does not answer.

"Mrs. Collins," I say.