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Her needle stopped. “I did. In fact, I had a plan for something that might be done within that time. But if memory serves, you forbade it.”

“I should like to know what you meant.”

She set the frame aside, very slowly. Her face changed in a way he had seldom seen. She looked genuinely delighted.

“Mr Darcy. You have come round.”

“I have done nothing of the kind. I asked you a question.”

“And I shall answer it, since you ask so nicely.” She folded her hands in her lap. “I have engaged a person in town who can write a very good hand in any style one likes. This person is to compose a few letters to Jane Bennet from an admirer. They will be tender, and a little indiscreet. They will leave no doubt that the gentleman's feelings were returned. Charles is to come across them before Saturday. Then he will understand that there was another man all along. I do not think even Charles will go to the altar after that.”

Darcy did not sit down. He was too angry to trust himself in a chair.

“You would have it said in every drawing room from here to London that Miss Bennet kept up a secret correspondence while engaged to your brother.”

“I would have Charles believe it. What the drawing rooms say is their own affair.”

“The drawing rooms will say it within the week, and you know it.” He kept his voice low, for the door stood open behind him. “She would be ruined, and her family with her. No respectable man would offer for any of her sisters while such a story was about. The Bennets would not be received in any house in the county.”

“How tender you have grown of the Bennets' good name!” Miss Bingley raised her eyebrows. “In the autumn you could not find words enough against the connection. Now you would defend them to the last drop. I declare I hardly know you.”

“I cannot allow it, Miss Bingley. There must be some other way.”

“Then pray name it. I am all attention.”

He had not meant to tell her. He told her anyway. He described the bench outside the haberdasher's and the heap of parcels. He told her of the plan to buy out the entail with Bingley's money once the register was signed, and of the rich friends who were to be made useful afterwards.

“Charles ought to know it,” he said. “Let him hear it plainly before Saturday and judge for himself what he is marrying into. That may be enough.”

Miss Bingley laughed. It was a light, musical laugh, and he had always disliked it.

“Enough! My dear Mr Darcy, Charles is moonstruck. You might tell him Mrs Bennet meant to strip the lead from his roof, and he would thank you and lend her a ladder.” She took up her needle again. “He would say at once that it was the mother's doing and not Jane's. He would be right. Jane has not the wit to scheme her way across a room. Then he would tell you that as he is to be a son of that house, it is his duty to provide for them, should anything happen to Mr Bennet. He would be proud to do it. You would only have handed him a reason to be generous.”

He had no answer. She saw that he had none.

“No,” she said, drawing the thread through. “I have another idea.”

He waited.

“You shall hear it when it is further along.” She did not look up from her work. “You had better go and dress, Mr Darcy. You have brought half the lane in with you.”

He understood her perfectly. She had watched his face while she spoke of the letters. She did not mean to watch it again over a plan she liked better. If she would not tell him, it was because she knew he would never allow it.

He went out and up the stairs. Already he was half sorry he had said anything. He had gone to Caroline Bingley for an answer and come away having given her one. Whatever she did with it now, she would not ask him first.

Still, he could not pretend, even to himself, that matters could be left as they were. Mrs Bennet had sat on that bench and counted his friend's money before it was hers to count. Something must be done.

He stopped at the head of the stairs. The dinner hour was coming on, and the house was hushed around him. He did not yet know what that something ought to be. He hated not knowing. He always had.

Chapter Five

Elizabeth

“Mr Bingley is waving to you again, Jane.”

“Is he? I had not noticed.”

“Then you are the only person in the field who has not. That is the third time since we passed the gate. I begin to fear for his gun.”