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“I did not know she —”

“You did not trouble yourself to know. But you may ease your mind on your friend’s account.” She held his gaze. “Mr Bingley came to Longbourn a few days ago. He begged my sister’s pardon, and he asked her to be his wife, and she said yes. So your careful work has come undone after all.”

Darcy went very still. “Bingley is engaged to her.”

“He is.”

“He has written me nothing of it.”

“Perhaps he feared you would try to prevent it a second time.” She had not known she could speak so coldly, and found she did not mind it in the least. “You seem surprised, sir. I own I did not look to find you sorry that your scheme had failed.”

“That is the meaning you would put upon it. That I stand here in this room reckoning up a defeat.”

“What other meaning is left to me? I have had your character from every quarter these six months, and it has never altered. Mr Wickham was the first to give it to me, and I thought him severe at the time. I see now he was merely ahead of the rest of the world.”

The name struck him like a blow. Whatever had been open in his face closed over completely.

“Wickham,” he said. “You have had my character from Mr Wickham.”

“He was very willing to give it. And very thorough. I have had cause to remember a great deal of what he told me, especially this evening.”

Darcy was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again his voice was perfectly even.

“I came here tonight to say something to you that I have never said to another living soul.” He crossed to the door and laid his hand upon it. “I see now how it would have been received. You have spared us both a great deal of humiliation, and I find I am grateful to you for it. It is a better thing to be told the truth plainly than to be left to discover it by degrees.”

“Mr Darcy —”

“You have made your opinion of me perfectly clear, madam. I will not trouble you to say it twice.” He bowed. “Forgive the intrusion. I hope your headache is soon mended. Good evening.”

The parlour door closed behind him. A moment later she heard the outer door, and then the gate with its familiar complaint, and then nothing at all but the drizzle against the window.

Elizabeth remained where he had left her. Her heart was pounding and her hands were not quite steady, but underneath it ran a fierce, bright satisfaction. She had said every word she had wanted to say. She had not wept, and she had not faltered, and she had told Mr Darcy of Pemberley exactly what a country girl with an uncle in trade thought of him and his kindnesses.

The other thought came to her only later. By then the fire had gone out entirely, and she still had not rung for more. It was what she had been far too angry to hear at the time.

He had walked half a mile in the rain to say something to her.

And now she would never know what it was.

Chapter One

Elizabeth

Longbourn had not known a moment’s peace since breakfast. Mrs Bennet stood in the middle of the drawing room, turning in a slow circle, directing the placement of every bough and ribbon as though she were laying siege to a fortress. The good linen had been carried down from the press and rejected twice. Holly and ivy lay heaped on the carpet. Two maids waited with their arms full, and Hill balanced on a chair by the mantel, holding a swag of greenery exactly where she had been holding it for the last five minutes.

“Higher, Hill. No, to the left. It must be seen from the door, or there is no purpose in it at all.” Mrs Bennet pressed a hand to her breast. “Everything must be perfect. Lady Lucas will count the very candles.”

“Then we had better lay in more candles,” said Mr Bennet from his chair by the window, without looking up from his book. “We would not want Lady Lucas to run short of things to count.”

Mary looked up from the psalter she had been pretending to study in the corner. “It does seem a pity we could not hold the breakfast at Netherfield. The rooms are a great deal larger, and the light is better of a morning.”

The greenery slid an inch in Hill’s hands.

“Netherfield!” Mrs Bennet rounded on her middle daughter as though she had proposed holding the affair in the henhouse. “Whatever can you mean, child? The wedding breakfast is given by the bride’s family. It is always given by the bride’s family. It was so for me, and for my mother, and for her mother before her. I will not have it whispered up and down the county that a daughter of mine was married off from a borrowed table, like some shopkeeper’s girl with no people of her own. The breakfast is at Longbourn. There is an end of it.”

“I only meant that the rooms —”

“You will fetch me the second cloth, Mary, and keep your improvements to yourself.” Mrs Bennet turned back to the mantel, muttering. “Netherfield. The very notion.”