“I know.”
“But I will say that a girl who is never permitted a wrong turn will never believe herself capable of finding the right road. And the world is full of people who will happily do her navigating for her, provided she does not ask where they are steering.”
“You are speaking of Caroline.”
I had not expected him to name it. “I am speaking generally.”
“You believe Miss Bingley is influencing my sister.”
“I believe your sister sometimes uses words that taste of someone else’s vocabulary. But that is an observation, Mr. Darcy, not an accusation, and I would not presume?—”
Bingley’s horse shied hard to the left, and a grunt of profound territorial displeasure erupted from the hedgerow. Darcy’s horse snorted and stomped his hooves, and we encountered a Berkshire sow blocking the lane.
She was enormous, caked in dried mud, and fixed us with the expression of a creature who had escaped her enclosure and intended to make the most of it.
“Good Lord,” Bingley said. “That is a remarkablylarge pig.”
“Do not approach her,” I said. “She wants food, not conversation.”
Bingley reached out his hand. “Come now, old girl. We need to pass. Surely we can reach an accommodation.”
The pig was unimpressed by his diplomacy.
“Mr. Bingley, pigs do not negotiate,” Georgiana said, clutching her basket.
Cinnamon sensing trouble, scrambled out of Darcy’s hands and disappeared into the hedgerows. The pig charged not at Bingley or Georgiana, but turned her attention to my basket with my mother’s walnut biscuits, the raw garlic bulbs, and a portion of rabbit pie.
I had no idea pigs could move so quickly, but Darcy was by my side in an instant, pulling me and my basket behind him. The jolt sent the garlic bulbs scattering across the lane. I clutched the rabbit pie. The pig, unimpressed by Darcy’s intervention, seized the hem of his trouser leg to move him aside, but Darcy stood as a firm barrier between me and the sow.
“Throw the apples!” Georgiana shouted. She drew back her arm and threw the first one. It sailed wide and bounced off a fence post. The pig pivoted surprisingly fast for so large a mass and consumed the apple in one gulp.
Georgiana threw another. This one hit the pig squarely on the rump. The sow, not the least bit offended, snatched up the apple.
“Excellent aim, Miss Darcy,” Bingley called, now standing on the verge while calming two horses. “Direct hit. You have a future in artillery.”
“I was aiming for its head,” Georgiana said, reaching for another apple. It bounced into the field beyond, and the pig, registering food in a more promising location, swung her massive head toward the opening.
Bingley caught the strategy. “Brilliant! More apples—over the fence, quick!”
By now, Darcy joined Bingley in tossing the rest of the applesthrough the fence gap, and the pig trotted after the trail of apples with a satisfied grunt.
“The garlic, biscuits, and pie are saved,” Georgiana announced, gathering the scattered bulbs with the composure of a girl who had defeated a pig through superior tactics and was not going to be modest about it.
And then, the wind took my ribbonless bonnet. It caught the brim and lifted it cleanly from my hair, sending it directly toward the pig, who had paused in the fence gap to consider whether the field truly offered better prospects than the road.
The bonnet landed at the sow’s feet. The pig snuffed it, nosed the straw brim, and then clamped her teeth around it and trotted into the field.
Darcy looked at the pig. He looked at the bonnet, receding into the stubble, and he looked at me.
And he vaulted the fence.
No deliberation, no weighing of consequences, no consideration of what a Derbyshire gentleman looked like pursuing a pig across a Hertfordshire field in his good riding coat. He simply went, with the athletic ease of a man who had been vaulting fences since boyhood and had decided, in the time it takes to draw a breath, that the bonnet required retrieving.
Bingley’s mouth fell open.
Georgiana pressed both hands over her mouth, her eyes wide above her fingers.
“My brother is chasing a pig,” she said, between gasps. “For your bonnet.”
I stood in the lane with loose hair and scattered herbs and watched Fitzwilliam Darcy chase a pig across a stubble field, and the thought that arrived—unasked, unwanted, and completely without my permission—was that no man chases a bonnet unless the woman who wore it matters more to him than the spectacle he is making of himself.
Darcy returned with his coat dusty and bootsunspeakable, carrying a bonnet that bore the unmistakable imprint of pig teeth and a fresh deposit of mud. He held it out with both hands.
“Your bonnet, Miss Bennet.”
“Thank you, Mr. Darcy. Though I fear the pig has won.”
He looked at the bonnet and at me. And then he laughed. Not the dry, controlled sound that occasionally escaped him in libraries and drawing rooms, but a real laugh, helpless and warm and utterly unguarded. I was so startled that I laughed too, and there we were, standing in the lane holding a ruined bonnet between us and laughing at nothing and everything and the absurdity of a life in which the grandson of an earl chased a pig for a woman he once called ordinary.
