Elizabeth shook her head slowly. "Your mother," she said, "was unreasonably perceptive."
"I know." Mia's smile faded. She slid off the counter and crossed the room, dropping onto the sofa beside Elizabeth with the loose, unselfconscious ease of someone who had been doing that since she was small. "How did you two meet?"
Elizabeth looked at her. The question was simple and the answer was not and Mia was sitting close enough that she could feel the warmth of her beside her, this fifteen-year-old girl who had Charlotte's eyes and Richard's patience and was askingabout the beginning of a story that had, apparently, not yet ended.
She exhaled.
"Your mother's wedding," she said.
Mia went still.
Elizabeth felt it immediately and looked at her. "Is that —"
"No." Mia shook her head. Small. Deliberate. "Keep going. I want to hear it."
Elizabeth nodded, slowly. "I flew in from London. I was living there at the time, freelance work, a terrible flat in Hackney that I was convinced had personality. Your mother had been telling me for six months that I needed to come home." She paused. "She was right, obviously. She was always right. I just preferred not to give her the satisfaction immediately."
Mia made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"I arrived two days before the wedding. Your mother picked me up from the airport herself, which she did not have to do, and spent the entire drive telling me about your father's family. His cousin in particular." Elizabeth looked at her hands. "Fitzwilliam Darcy. She said he was private. Said he was the kind of person who took some time to understand. I remember thinking: that is the most diplomatic thing Charlotte Lucas has ever said about a person and I should probably pay attention to it."
"And did you?"
"Absolutely not." Elizabeth said it flatly. "I saw him at the rehearsal dinner and decided within twenty minutes that I knew exactly what kind of person he was."
"What kind was that?"
"The kind who stands near the window at parties and makes everyone feel like they should justify being there."
Mia considered this. "That does sound like him."
"In fairness," Elizabeth said, "I later learned there is a reason for that. But at the time I simply filed him under difficult and moved on."
"So you didn't like him from the start."
"I did not dislike him. I was indifferent to him. Which, if I am being honest, he probably returned." She picked at a loose thread on the sofa cushion. "Darcy’s and your father's friend, Charles Bingley, was also at the wedding. He and my sister Jane sat next to each other at the reception and did not stop talking for four hours. I spent most of the evening watching that happen and feeling relieved that somebody was having a straightforward time of it."
Mia’s brows lifted slightly. “So that’s how Uncle Bingley met your sister?”
Elizabeth almost smiled. “It is. They were unbearably obvious about it from the start, which is either very romantic or very annoying depending on how much sleep you’ve had.”
Mia huffed a quiet laugh. “I think Mum would say romantic.”
“She absolutely would,” Elizabeth said. “Bingley is Darcy’s closest friend. So after Jane and Bingley got together properly, our circles kept overlapping. Dinners, events, your parents’ gatherings. Darcy was always there.”
“And you were always there.”
“And I was always there.”
Mia waited.
Elizabeth exhaled softly. “I moved back to New York properly about eight years ago. I’d been going back and forth before that, but I finally stayed. Got a place in the East Village. Started writing full-time. And your mother, who had been trying to get me back in the same city for years, immediately beganinviting me to everything she organised. Which meant I saw Darcy about once every two weeks whether I wanted to or not.”
“And?”
Elizabeth was quiet for a moment.
“And we started talking. Properly. Not just polite conversations across dinner tables. He had opinions about what I wrote, which I found both irritating and interesting. I had opinions about the way he moved through the world, which I imagine he found equally irritating.” She paused. “Your mother found the whole thing extremely entertaining.”
