"The pig gave me very little choice."
"That is not what I mean. You let her into the library. You fed her bread crusts. You talked to her."
His ears heated. "You heard that."
"I heard enough."
They separated, moved through the figure, returned. His heart was doing something that bore no resemblance to the rhythm of the dance.
"Miss Elizabeth. What I said at the assembly. About your being tolerable."
Her chin lifted. The armour went up. He could see it happen, the walls that rose when she expected to be hurt.
"I was wrong," he said. "I was wrong, and I have thought about it every day since, and I am sorry."
The music carried them apart. When they came back together, her expression had changed. The walls were still there, but they had developed cracks, and through the cracks he could see something fragile and surprised.
"That is the first genuine thing you have ever said to me," she said.
"It will not be the last."
The dance ended. They stood facing each other in the suddenly quiet space between the last note and the applause. Her eyes were bright. His hands were at his sides. The distance between them was two feet and felt like nothing.
"Thank you for the dance, Mr. Darcy."
"Thank you, Miss Elizabeth."
She turned to go. He watched her take three steps. Four.
A squeal erupted from the direction of the entrance hall.
Every head in the ballroom turned. Darcy closed his eyes.
The doors to the ballroom opened, and through them shot a small, determined, wildly squealing pink blur. Truffles. Three miles from Longbourn, past the broom handles and the barrel and Hill's vigilance, by means that no one would ever satisfactorily explain.
The pig navigated the ballroom with the fearsome competence Elizabeth had once described as "terrible" and Darcy privately considered remarkable. She dodged a dancingcouple. She weaved through the crowd. She slipped once on the freshly polished floor, righted herself with a scramble that sent a dowager clutching for her companion's arm, and pressed on. A servant lunged. A young officer tried to herd her with his boot. Neither succeeded. She crossed the remaining distance at speed, and she arrived at the exact spot where Darcy and Elizabeth were standing.
She sat between them. She looked at Darcy. She looked at Elizabeth. Her curly tail quivered with satisfaction.
The ballroom erupted in laughter and gasps and the kind of delighted chaos that only an unexpected pig could produce. Caroline Bingley, who was standing near the punch bowl, made a sound that Darcy had never heard a human being make before.
Elizabeth's face had gone very still. She was looking at the pig between them, and then at Darcy, and then at the room full of people watching them, and he could see the mortification rising like a tide.
Darcy bent down.
He picked up the pig.
He stood in the middle of the Netherfield ballroom, in front of four and twenty families of the neighbourhood, holding a pig against his chest. Truffles nestled into his waistcoat and sighed. Her muddy hooves pressed against his lapel. Her snout bumped his chin.
He looked at Elizabeth. Her eyes were wide.
He held the pig out to her. Their hands met as she took Truffles from his arms. His fingers brushed hers, and neither of them pulled away. The pig was between them, warm and wriggling, and he was close enough to see the pulse at the base of her throat and the gold in her eyes and the way her lips parted just slightly when she was surprised.
He wanted to say something. He wanted to say that the pig was right about him. He wanted to say that he was not the manshe met at the assembly, or rather, that he was that man and also someone else, someone better, someone who talked to pigs and meant the apology he had offered and would mean every word he ever said to her from this moment forward.
He opened his mouth.
"Cousin Elizabeth!" A man's voice, nasal and self-important, cut between them like a blade. "I believe the next dance is promised to me."
