He was talking to someone. But there was no one else in the library. She peered through the gap in the door.
Darcy was in his chair. Truffles was on the rug beside him, lying on her back with her legs in the air. Darcy's hand was resting on the pig's belly, scratching slowly, and Truffles' eyes were half-closed in an ecstasy of contentment.
"You are completely absurd," he said to the pig. His voice was gentle and faintly amused, stripped of the formality he wore in company like armour. "You are a pig. You should be in a field. You should not be in a gentleman's library having your belly scratched."
Truffles grunted. Her back leg kicked rhythmically, the way a dog's did when you found the right spot.
"I am going to stop," he said. He did not stop. "I am going to stand up and close the door and you are going to go back to the kitchen where you belong."
He continued scratching.
"You are exactly like your mistress," he said, more quietly. "You appear without warning and refuse to leave and somehow convince me that I do not want you to."
Elizabeth's breath caught. She pressed her back against the wall beside the door. Her heart was doing something complicated, something that involved heat and surprise andthe unwelcome recognition that she had been wrong about something.
He was not cold. He was not proud. He was a man who talked to her pig when he thought no one was listening, in a voice so gentle it made her chest ache.
She must have made a sound, or perhaps the floorboard creaked, because she heard the chair scrape and when she looked through the gap again, Darcy was on his feet. His hand was at his side. His face had snapped back to its usual composure, the gentle voice replaced by the familiar mask.
Their eyes met through the gap in the door.
"Miss Elizabeth." He cleared his throat. "I was merely... the pig was..."
"Scratching her belly. Yes. I saw."
His ears went pink. Elizabeth filed this observation away in a part of her mind that she would examine later and probably regret.
"She is very... insistent," he said. He was not looking at her. He was looking at the pig, as though the pig were a safer object for his gaze. His hand hung at his side, the fingers still slightly curled from where they had been resting on Truffles' belly.
"She is. She gets that from me."
His face changed. Not the mask slipping, but the person behind it looking out. His mouth moved. Almost a smile.
"I had noticed," he said.
From the far end of the corridor, she could hear a housemaid polishing the hall table, the soft rhythmic sound of cloth on wood. The door remained open. The proprieties were technically intact, which was more than could be said for Elizabeth's composure.
She stood in the doorway and looked at Mr. Darcy, who had been talking to her pig about how she appeared without warningand refused to leave, and she thought,I am in a great deal of trouble.
She thought this clearly and precisely and with the full awareness that it was true and that she did not know what to do about it.
"Jane is feeling much better," she said, because she needed to say something and this was the safest thing available. "We should be able to return to Longbourn tomorrow."
"Ah." He paused. "That is good news."
"Yes."
"For Miss Bennet's health."
"Yes."
"And you will take the pig."
"Obviously I will take the pig. She is my pig."
"Of course." He looked at Truffles, who was still on the rug, still on her back, still waiting for the belly scratching to resume. "Of course she is."
Something passed between them. Not a word, not a look, but something. A thread. Thin and new and already taut.
