“Did you mean it, Mr. Darcy?” she whispered into the dark. “Or will you regret encouraging it?”
At the foot of the bed, Sophocles let out a questioning meow, tail thumping once against the quilt.
Elizabeth sighed.
“Traitor,” she murmured at the cat. “You were supposed to keep me sensible.”
He meowed again, affronted, and began cleaning one paw with great dignity.
“I know,” she muttered. “I should be sleeping. But I cannot help it.”
She turned her head to the window. The moonlight silvered the frost-dusted hedges outside.
For days she had watched that lane. Trying not to seem like she watched it. Telling herself she was only curious about the post in general.
Pretending not to care.
She swallowed, blinked hard.‘What will he think, reading it? Will he answer? Will he think me presumptuous? Or—’
Sophocles interrupted her spiralling thoughts with another imperious cry, shifting until he was curled against her hip, purring.
Elizabeth let one hand drift over his warm, plump side.
“Very well,” she whispered to him at last. “We will wait. But you must promise not to look so smug when the letter finally comes.”
The cat purred louder.
Elizabeth managed a small, tired smile.
Outside, the wind rattled the window lightly. The lane slept in the shadows.
She closed her eyes at last. But her thoughts refused to settle, curling tight around one insistent hope: that he would write and welcome what she had dared to reply.
***
The next morning, November light was pale and uncertain, stealing across the barren fields outside Longbourn. In Elizabeth’s room it arrived in thin streaks through the curtains, laying chilly stripes over her quilt.
She stirred before the maid knocked. Sophocles was already awake, perched at the window ledge as if he meant to guard the lane himself.
Elizabeth sat up slowly, rubbing at her eyes. It is November, she reminded herself. Time slips so quickly.
And then the memory of her letter returned—unwelcome, insistent.
‘Candour. That was what you promised, Lizzy Bennet.’She sighed and pushed back the coverlet.
Downstairs the house was already awake, though subdued with the chill. The hallway smelled of low-burning fires and newly baked bread.
In the breakfast room, Jane was standing by the window in her pale shawl, looking toward the lane with dreamy composure.
Elizabeth paused in the doorway to study her. So calm. So certain.
Mr. Bennet was at his usual place, spectacles on the bridge of his nose, newspaper half-folded. He glanced up when Elizabeth entered, one brow arching in quiet greeting.
“You look better rested,” he observed mildly.
Elizabeth arched her brow in return. “I shall thank you to stop lying so early in the day, Papa.”
Mr. Bennet made a sound suspiciously like a chuckle.
