“I believe we are exactly where we should be.” Jane’s voice drifted with wonder.
“Those mansions are becoming very large, and that square ahead could be paved with gold. And see that woman? She’s wearing silk on a Friday, and I fear we might have taken a wrong turning and wandered into someone else’s life.”
Mary’s gaze fixed on the surroundings, as if memorizing every detail as the carriage turned into Grosvenor Street. The square itself was vast, as were the houses that encircled it. They rose around a central garden of manicured green, like cliffs around a valley, white-fronted, black-railed, gleaming inthe pale April sunlight with the smug, self-satisfied assurance of buildings that knew what they were worth and expected you to know it too.
“Lizzy,” Mary said, in a voice stripped of every affectation she had ever adopted. “Which one is ours?”
Ours.The word made everything startlingly real. “I believe it is Number Thirty-Three.”
The carriage glided to a halt. And there it was: a four-story house of white stone, grand arched windows, and a heavy mahogany door that looked thick enough to withstand a Mrs. Bennet-style bombardment.
The door itself opened, and a line of servants emerged. A housekeeper in black bombazine, a very staid and proper butler, footmen in livery, maids in white caps, and a cook shaking out her apron. They arranged themselves on the steps, all eyes fixed on the carriage and at Elizabeth Bennet, who owned the house they worked in.
And there, standing in front of them all, was Fitzwilliam Darcy.
He was hatless, his dark coat silhouetted against the pale stone. His cravat—Elizabeth noted with an involuntary, traitorous precision—was loosened by the fraction of an inch at his throat. It was a microscopic lapse in his usual armor, yet it sent a sudden, fluttering warmth through her chest that she immediately labeled as indigestion.
A footman opened the carriage door, lowered the steps, and Darcy stepped forward.
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet.” He extended a hand. His voice was exactly as she remembered and everything she had tried to forget—steady, formal, without any of the agitation he had displayed at Hunsford. “Welcome to Mayfair.”
She placed her hand in his. There were layers of fabric between them—her tired cotton, his expensive leather—and yetthe contact bypassed every stitch of common sense. Her fingers tightened of their own accord before she could remind them that she was not a woman who clung to anything, least of all to him.
“Mr. Darcy.” She stepped down onto the pavement and released him, not looking at his face. “Thank you for the arrangements. The journey was most comfortable.”
Polite. Distant. Perfectly civil. If he noticed that she had not looked him in the eye, he was gentleman enough not to mention it.
Nettle, who possessed none of Elizabeth’s restraint, launched herself from the carriage and landed squarely on Darcy’s boot. She performed a thorough investigation of his ankle, calculating whether his trousers had recovered sufficiently to merit a second assault.
“I trust you have fed her,” Darcy remarked, glancing at the terrier.
A fleeting moment hung in the air—a fraction of a second where shared amusement might have sparked—but Elizabeth scooped up the terrier, and the opportunity vanished. It was for the best, really, as such moments ought not to be encouraged—not with their history.
Darcy turned to hand down Jane, and then Mary, his movements a study in aristocratic grace. As the three sisters stood before the silent phalanx of servants, Elizabeth felt a dizzying sense of displacement.
“Your house, Miss Elizabeth,” Darcy said, gesturing towards Number Thirty-Three as if houses of white Portland stone, with their fourteen bedrooms and regiment of servants, were as commonplace as Hertfordshire acorns.
And then, because she was Elizabeth Bennet, and Elizabeth Bennet did not falter before a line of servants, she held her head up high with Nettle in her arms, and entered the house that, on paper, was now hers.
The entrance hall, though grand, was designed for comfort rather than intimidation. A shawl lay draped over a chair; books rested on a side table, and landscape paintings evoked a surprising sense of familiarity—a view from a hilltop, a stone house nestled in a valley, and a seascape featuring white cliffs.
Lady Sophia Mottistone sat in a chair, waiting for them. She was smaller than Elizabeth had imagined. Fine-boned as a wren, silver hair swept back from her face, a distinguished face that held traces of her former beauty, and the expressive pale-blue eyes that didn’t just observe but delved.
“Miss Bennet.” She extended both hands in a gesture of unreserved welcome. Her voice, as her letter had conveyed, was warm, direct, and laced with intelligence that made Elizabeth feel simultaneously embraced and entirely seen through. “You are here. I have been waiting to meet you for rather longer than good manners would allow me to confess.”
Elizabeth curtsied, deftly dropping Nettle behind her skirts. “Lady Sophia. I am honored. Your letter was gracious. I have read it many times, and I hope my response was adequate.”
“I shall settle for your presence, my dear. It is a much more interesting proposition than dissecting our prose.” Lady Sophia’s gaze moved to Jane, and her smile deepened. “And you must be Miss Jane Bennet. Everything I have been told about your beauty is an understatement. How comforting it must be for your mother and younger sisters.”
Jane’s curtsy was colored by a sudden blush. “You are too kind, Lady Sophia.”
“I am almost never too kind. Ask anyone who knows me.” Lady Sophia’s eyes turned to Mary with an expression of discovering a rare book. “And Miss Mary. A musician of the determined variety, I am told.”
Mary curtsied stiffly. “I play a little, Lady Sophia.”
“We shall put that to the test shortly. I have a Broadwood that has been quite lonely; it requires someone who isn’t afraid of a minor key.”
Mary’s composure, which had been holding through the servants, the marble, and the sheer scale of the house, wavered.
