She would not think about him. She would not think about his stiff voice or his cold manners or the way the pig had looked at him, as if he hung the moon, or the way he had almost smiled, just for a fraction of a second, before he caught himself.
She would not think about the almost-smile. It was irrelevant.
Truffles emerged from the flower bed covered in soil, shook herself, and trotted back to the kitchen door. Elizabeth watched her go. The pig who loved a man Elizabeth could not stand. The pig who saw something in him that Elizabeth refused to see.
"You have terrible taste," she murmured to the empty room.
But even as she said it, she thought of his hands. The quick, sure way he had lifted Truffles at the assembly. The firmness that was also gentleness. The way his ears had gone pink.
She pulled the curtain shut and went downstairs.
Charlotte arrived after luncheon. She found Elizabeth in the garden, throwing a stick for Truffles, who retrieved it with the enthusiasm of a dog and the technique of a pig, which meant she mostly rolled it around with her snout before losing interest and chewing on it.
"I have come to check on your spirits," Charlotte said.
"My spirits are fine."
"You are throwing sticks at a pig."
"For a pig. There is a difference."
Charlotte sat on the garden bench. She watched Elizabeth with the patient, appraising gaze of a woman who had known her since childhood and could not be deceived.
"He is shy, you know."
"He is not shy. Shy people do not insult strangers within earshot."
"Shy people say exactly the wrong thing because they are uncomfortable. I have watched him, Lizzy. He does not know what to do with himself in company. He stands apart because he does not know how to do anything else."
"You are very generous."
"I am practical. I observe. And I observed that when your pig was on his boot, he looked down at her, and for one moment, his entire face changed."
Elizabeth did not want to hear this. "His face did not change."
"It did. Charlotte Lucas does not imagine things."
"Charlotte Lucas sees romance in the most unlikely places."
"Charlotte Lucas sees what is in front of her." Charlotte stood and brushed off her skirts. "I am not saying you should like him. I am saying the pig may not be as foolish as you think."
She left. Elizabeth stood in the garden with the chewed stick in her hand and a pig at her feet and thought about Mr. Darcy's face when he looked at a pig, and how different it was from his face when he looked at the rest of the world.
The weekend passed, and Monday after it, and Elizabeth was still thinking about it, against her better judgment, on Tuesday afternoon when the sound of horses came up the lane.
Elizabeth shaded her eyes. Two riders were approaching Longbourn. One fair, one dark. One waving cheerfully, the other sitting very straight in the saddle with the rigid posture of a man approaching enemy territory.
Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy.
"Jane!" Mrs. Bennet's voice erupted from inside the house with the force of a fired musket. She had spotted them from the window. "Jane, come to the parlour at once! Fix your hair! Kitty, stop coughing! Lydia, sit up! Lizzy, put away that pig!"
Elizabeth looked at Truffles. Truffles was chewing the stick and had not yet noticed the approaching riders. If Elizabeth could get her into the kitchen before Darcy dismounted, before the pig caught his scent on the breeze, there might still be time.
She scooped up Truffles, who protested at being separated from her stick, and carried her through the kitchen door. She placed the pig on the flagstones. She closed the door. She latched it. She wedged a broom handle through the latch for good measure.
"Stay," she said, pointing at the pig through the window.
Truffles looked at her. It was not a look that inspired confidence.
