He smiled. He caught himself smiling and stopped.
A scratching at the library door. A small, insistent sound, like a fingernail on wood. Then a squeal. Short, polite, questioning. A pig knocking.
He should not open the door. Opening the door would establish a precedent. The pig would expect the library to be available, and he would have a pig in the library for the duration of Elizabeth's stay, and there was absolutely no reason to find that anything other than an inconvenience.
He opened the door.
Truffles trotted in, circled the rug twice, and lay down beside his chair. She rested her chin on his boot and sighed.
He looked at the pig. The pig looked at him. He sat back down and continued reading, and if he leaned over after a few pages to rest his hand on the pig's warm back, it was merely to confirm that the animal was settled and would not cause further disruption.
Elizabeth was upstairs with Jane. He could hear her footsteps occasionally, moving between the guest room and the corridor. Once, he heard her voice, low and soothing, and once, he heard her laugh at something Jane said. The laugh was muffled by a floor and a closed door, and it still reached him with the clarity of a bell.
He turned pages without reading them.
At midday, a maid brought a tray to the library. Cold meat, bread, an apple. Darcy ate at his desk. He gave the pig a crust of bread, which she accepted with a delicacy that surprised him. She took it gently from his fingers, chewed with her eyes half-closed, and then looked at him with an expression that plainly communicated: more.
"One crust," he said. "That is the limit."
He gave her a second crust. And then a small piece of cheese. And then the core of his apple, which she devoured with a crunching enthusiasm that was nearly musical.
"This is the end of it," he told her. "I am not feeding you. This is not an arrangement."
The pig pressed her snout against his knee. Her eyes were large and dark and trusting.
He gave her a third crust. He was being managed by a pig. He was being managed by a pig, and the pig was winning.
The afternoon passed quietly. Darcy read. The pig slept. Occasionally, Truffles would shift and her hoof would tap against his boot, and the sound was oddly companionable, like a clock ticking in a familiar room.
At some point, he began talking to her. He told her the Latin was better than the translation. He told her that her mistress would disagree, at length, and would probably be right. He caught himself, stopped, and returned to his book. The pig returned to sleep. Neither of them acknowledged that he hadjust spoken aloud about a woman he was not interested in to a pig who was not listening.
In the middle of the afternoon, Elizabeth passed the library on her way to the kitchen to request broth for Jane. She paused in the doorway. Darcy did not notice at first. He was reading, one hand on the book, the other resting on the pig's back, his thumb moving in slow circles over the warm pink skin.
"Mr. Darcy."
He looked up. His hand froze on the pig's back. He withdrew it with a speed that was, he realised, far too sudden to be casual.
"Miss Elizabeth. How is your sister?"
"Improving. The fever has eased." She was looking at his hand, the one that had been resting on the pig. "You appear to have made a friend."
"The pig followed me into the library. I did not invite her."
"You opened the door."
"She was scratching at it. The noise was distracting."
Elizabeth's mouth did that thing again. The slight curve that was more dangerous than a full smile because it suggested she was restraining herself, and the restraint was the joke.
"Of course," she said. "Very practical."
"Entirely practical."
"And the bread crumbs on the floor beside your chair?"
He looked down. There were, in fact, crumbs. A small constellation of evidence that he had been feeding the pig. He looked up at Elizabeth. She was not laughing. She was holding herself very still, as though laughing would break something she needed to keep intact.
"The bread is stale," he said. "I was merely preventing waste."
