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“Your father built this room?” she asked.

“My grandfather built it, and my father enlarged it,” he said. “He converted several bedrooms and a sitting room into library space. I have been considering whether to do the same with the third floor.”

“Three generations of reading, stacked on top of each other,” she said, seeming pleased at the idea. “That is rather wonderful, I think.”

Across the room, Mr Bennet found something that interested him and sat abruptly in the nearest chair, shutting out everything except his pleasure in a new book. Elizabeth looked at him with an expression that was both fond and exasperated, in approximately equal measure.

“There will be no getting his attention for an hour, at least,” she said, somewhat apologetically.

“Your father is very welcome to make himself at home here,” Darcy said. He realised he meant that, and was pleased to see Elizabeth smile at his sincerity.

She finally approached the shelves, moving along them unhurriedly, as real lovers of books do in a new library. She read the titles as she passed, not taking any down yet, just exploring. Darcy watched her, and found himself thinking that she fit here, in the way that some people fit particular rooms, because she was just the sort of person who the library was meant for.

He told himself that he had to stop thinking such things. Though he was aware that he had given himself similar warnings before, to no avail.

She paused at a set of shelves that were not filled, except for a few rows in the middle. “There are quite a lot of books here on botany,” she noted.

“My Uncle Matlock has recently taken an interest in the topic,” he said dryly. “He has asked permission to come and avail himself of the collection.”

Elizabeth looked at him for a moment, realising there was clearly more to the story, but just shook her head with a smile. “Has he indeed?” she said. “How very sudden. I suppose there is no accounting for when such an interest will strike.”

“Indeed,” Darcy said, finding that he was smiling back. Across the room, Mr Bennet said something aloud, to the volume in his hands, not to them. Elizabeth shook her head and turned away, resuming her examination of the library shelves. She looked at the volumes one by one, each with loving attention, as though she felt, as he did, that each was a treasure in its own right.

Darcy sat down in a chair by the fire and watched her, and could not recall another time he had felt so content in the library he had loved all his life.

Chapter 14

Closing the door behind her, Elizabeth walked briskly to the far side of the room, where a sitting area was arranged around a tall window overlooking the east lawn. The room that they had given her at Pemberley was lovely, and its view was little short of breathtaking.

Elizabeth stood at the window just looking at it for a long moment before she remembered that she had planned to sit down and write a letter to Mary, and that standing at windows admiring inspiring views was not, strictly speaking, the sort of productive activity that would help extricate herself and Mr Bingley from their badly mismatched engagement. She resolutely pulled herself away from the rolling Derbyshire hills, the green just starting to creep over them promising the arrival of spring, and settled herself at the writing desk.

The writing desk was a delicately carved piece in pale maple, with a pattern of leaves at the corners, and it was fully stocked with tools any writer might need. The ink was fresh, there was a supply of heavy, cream-coloured paper that bore the Pemberley crest at the top, and Elizabeth thought, with a twinge of some feeling that she chose not to examine, that she could become accustomed to such things.

She dipped quill in ink and began to write.

Dearest Mary,

I write to inform you that we have arrived safely and that all is well with us. Pemberley is quite remarkable. I confess I hardly knew what to expect, but it is lovely in a way that seems to both encapsulate and revere beauty, and to disapprove of vulgarity.

As you can imagine, that might make the Bennets seem odd guests, but we are all on our best behaviour, and so far the house seems to be pleased with our presence, and we with our choice to journey forth. The library alone would reconcile Papa to any amount of travelling, and since he has taken to retiring there each afternoon, to find an armchair and a volume on history, I do not expect to see him again until dinner.

Jane and Mr Bingley are both well, and are, as ever, models of restraint and proper feeling. I find I cannot watch them too long at a stretch, as it gives me the sensation of watching something that ought to be private, as when someone reads a letter aloud that was intended for one set of ears only. They are very good, but it is too sad, and I am more determined than ever that something must be done to ensure that they are not forever separated. I do not tell you this to cause you alarm, Mary, but only to explain why I am writing, and to let you know how much trust I am placing in you to help your sisters avoid fates that will make them both eternally unhappy.

The truth is, I have a particular reason for addressing this letter to you rather than to any of the others. Before we left Longbourn, I gave a task to you: to pay attention, as only you can, to whether the gossip around my engagement to Mr Bingley, and the situation that precipitated it, has begun to ebb at all in our absence. I know I spoke lightly, so you may not have taken it as a commission, but I am writing now to tell you directly that it is one, and a most serious one at that. And you, Mary, are the only one I trust to see it through. Jane is with me, and would view matters with charity rather than the exactness that is called for. Charlotte has gone to Kent with Mr Collins, and is more occupied with managing him than managing the opinions of the village. Neither Kitty nor Lydia could carry out such a task without either making themselves the subject of observation, or forgetting the task entirely upon finding a gentleman to dance with.

But you, Mary, I trust to attend carefully, to report accurately, and to resist the considerable temptation of adjusting the report to fit your own hopes or opinions. I have faith in your judgement, and I know you are up to the task.

Please write often, and tell me what Mrs Long gossips, what Aunt Phillips tells you, what anyone in the village is saying about this situation. You must even record any information you receive from our younger sisters, though I suspect that any news received through them will lean toward the exaggerated rather than the informative. I am relying on you and your assistance more than you can know.

Your affectionate sister,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth read through the letter, read through it again, and sealed it. She sat for a moment, looking at her sister’s name on the front of the envelope, and all the while wondered if it was entirely wise to be so frank with Mary.

It was the truth she had written, all of it — which was not, she allowed, at all reassuring. Mary was the sister she trusted most to report accurately, though that was primarily because the others were absent, implicated, or entirely unable to repeat anything at all without embellishment. Therefore, Mary’s appointment to this position of trust was less a tribute to her own qualities than it was a commentary on the available alternatives. Still, Mary was, of her three younger sisters, the one most likely to actually observe something problematic rather than to cause a problem herself, and in the present situation, observation was the thing most required. Elizabeth decided to take that as an encouraging point.

She added the letter to those that would go out with the morning post, then stood, checked her attire, and went downstairs to be sociable.