Her brows lifted, just a little. Not in disbelief—rather in acknowledgment, as though the admission had confirmed something she had already suspected.
“I wished to thank you,” she said. “For your kindness. For your patience with such an unceremonious invasion of your household. I assure you, had I been fully myself—”
“Youarefully yourself,” Darcy said, and stopped.
The words had not been intended for utterance. They had simply escaped, carried on the same impulse that had opened the door too swiftly, that had stepped aside too readily to make space for her. He felt the heat rise at once and was dimly aware of wishing he could call them back.
Elizabeth, however, only smiled. Not playfully—something quieter, more considering. “Then I am doubly obliged to you,” she said. “For indulging me even so.”
She took a step farther into the room, her attention drawn to the desk. “I hope I have not entirely disrupted your work. There must be a reason you rose so early.”
“No,” he said again, more carefully this time. “I was not making much progress.”
“Ah.” She laughed easily. “Then I shall rather presumptuously consider my arrival an improvement on an otherwise dull room.”
The ease of the remark, the familiar turn of wit, struck him more deeply than he expected. It had been this—this liveliness, this unforced animation—that he had found himself missing after he left Hertfordshire, though he had refused to name the absence as such.
“You are… truly feeling better, then?” he asked.
“Remarkably so,” she replied. “Which is a source of no small embarrassment, I assure you. Miss Bingley has already suggested—quite delicately—that I have chosen a most artful moment to revive.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened despite himself. “No one could think you motivated by arts and allurements, Miss Elizabeth.”
“I am glad to hear it. I should hate to think myself the object of suspicion.” She hesitated, then added, more softly, “But my father will be relieved when he hears of it.”
Something in her tone—quiet, unguarded—made Darcy’s throat constrict. He gestured toward one of the chairs before he quite knew why. “Will you sit?”
She did, framing her skirt about the chair and casting a glance about his study as if she knew it already, and was merely reacquainting herself with it. She rested her hands lightly in her lap.
“I see,” she said, “that your papers are all in precise rows. My father’s desk resembles a battlefield after the troops have fled.”
Darcy’s mouth twitched despite himself. “Your father conducts his affairs by stratagem,” he replied. “I prefer to know where the enemy lies.”
She laughed—softly, but with real amusement—and the sound struck him with more force than it had any right to do. He felt it at once: that faint, draining pull, like a tide withdrawing beneath his feet. But he endured it gladly.
“I had thought,” she chuckled, “that gentlemen who keep such order must be frightfully dull.”
“I have been accused of many faults. Dullness is not one I often hear.”
Her brows lifted. “Perhaps because everyone wishes for your good opinion?”
He leaned back slightly in his chair, pursing his lips. “Is that what you think of me, Miss Elizabeth? I am wounded.”
“Wounded by a little tease, sir? I should think not. No, I think you rather fancy a bit of irreverence, though everything in your looks attempts to suggest otherwise.”
Darcy inclined his head with a smile. “I shall never confess.”
Elizabeth’s smile came quick and unmistakably pleased, as though she had landed her point and meant to enjoy it. Darcy kept his gaze where it was, though each moment demanded more of him than the last. To see her thus—to hear it in her voice—was worth every fraction it took.
Her gaze drifted once more to the desk. “I imagine you must have been very busy these past weeks,” she said. “It was quite a loss to the neighbourhood that you were called away so suddenly. Miss Bingley, in particular, felt your absence most keenly.”
The familiar evasion rose—ready, reflexive. He had employed it all his life. But when he opened his mouth, it failed him. “I have been occupied,” he said instead. “On… family business.”
It was true. After a fashion.
Elizabeth studied him for a moment, then nodded, as though that answer—paltry as it was—had satisfied some private accounting of her own. “One cannot count you remiss in attending to your duties, sir.”
The words were gentle. The meaning was not.
