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"You knew I had been refused, and said nothing for six weeks. I am not sure your judgment of what she means is better than mine."

The Colonel flinches as though I have struck him.

I am sorry at once. I do not say so. It seems that I have forgotten how, along with everything else.

***

Anne comes at dawn.

I am in the stable yard at Netherfield in my greatcoat, with the carriage being brought round and the horses stamping in the cold gray air, when I hear a gig come rattling up the drive far too fast. It is the Longbourn gig. Anne is driving it.

I did not know Anne could drive. I do not think Anne knew it either. She pulls up in a spray of gravel, with the horse blowing and her bonnet over one ear, and Mrs. Jenkinson clutching the side of the seat beside her with her eyes shut, and she climbs down without waiting for anyone to hand her and walks straight across the yard to me.

"You are going," she says.

"Anne, you will take cold."

"I shall take cold if I like. I am eight-and-twenty and I have been taking cold all my life, as you know very well." She stops in front of me. She has to tip her head right back to look me in the face, and she does it with her chin up, the way she did it on the steps of Rosings. "Darcy. Elizabeth has not slept. Jane sat with her all night. Kitty came to my room at four o'clock in the morning crying because she could hear her through the wall."

Something turns over in my chest. I do not let it show.

"I am sorry for it."

"Are you?" Anne looks at me. "I asked her, you know. In the carriage. Coming into Hertfordshire. You were asleep on her shoulder, and she had her hand in your hair, and I asked her if she loved you."

I go still.

"She could not answer," says Anne. "She opened her mouth and nothing came out. I thought she would choke on it."

"Then that is my answer."

"No, Darcy." Anne's voice is suddenly fierce. I have never heard my cousin sound fierce. "That is not your answer. You are being stupid. She could not say it because it was yes, and she could not bear to say it to anyone but you, while you did not know. She would not give it to me. She was saving it." Her eyes are very bright. "I sat there across from the two of you all the way to Barnet, and I watched her face, and I have never in my life seen anyone look at anyone the way she looked at you. Never. Not once. Not in eight-and-twenty years."

The ostler has brought the horses round. The carriage door stands open. Lowe is on the box, looking straight ahead at nothing.

"Anne," I say. "Go home. Go back to Longbourn and look after her. She is fond of you."

"She is fond of you, you great proud idiot."

Mrs. Jenkinson, still on the gig, gives a small scream.

Anne does not even look round. She is glaring up at me with her pale face flushed and her bonnet over one ear, and I think: she has changed so much in six weeks. And then I think: so have I. And then I think nothing at all, because it hurts too much.

I bend and kiss my cousin's cheek.

"Thank you, Anne," I say. "I am glad you came out of Kent."

And I get into the carriage.

***

Bingley catches me at the end of the drive.

He has run all the way from the house in his shirtsleeves and slippers. He grabs the window as the carriage slows for the gate and hangs on to it, panting, his hair standing up like a hayrick.

"Darcy! Darcy, for God's sake—"

"Bingley. You will catch your death."