Page 12

The talk turned, as Miss Bingley meant it to, to accomplished women.

"No one can be really esteemed accomplished," she said, "who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages." She glanced at the footstool where Elizabeth's foot was propped. "And she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking."

"Manner of walking," said Elizabeth. "Then I cannot be accomplished for three weeks at least."

Mr. Bingley laughed. Miss Bingley did not.

"All this she must possess," said Mr. Darcy, from his chair by the fire. "And to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading."

He looked at the fire when he said it. She had turned his pages until three o'clock that morning, and the morning before.

Extensive reading, she thought. At two in the morning. In a borrowed wrapper.

Heat climbed into her face. Miss Bingley must not see it, or wonder at it. So Elizabeth did what she had always done with Mr. Darcy. She laughed at him.

"I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women," she said. "I rather wonder now at your knowing any."

"Are you so severe upon your own sex?" asked Mr. Darcy.

"I never saw such a woman," said Elizabeth. "I never saw such capacity, and taste, and application, and elegance, as you describe, united."

Miss Bingley protested at once. Mrs. Hurst protested with her. Elizabeth let them. She was looking at Mr. Darcy, and he was looking back.

She looked away first.

The nights fell into a pattern after that.

By day she thumped about the house on the farmer's crutch. At two o'clock, she left it by her bed, where it could wake no one. She would hop from the morning room to the library door, one hand on the wall.

He would be waiting in his chair by the fire. He would rise and offer his arm, and she would take it. She read, and he listened. When she wanted a book from the high shelves, he fetched it. He hooked it out with his wrist and carried it back tucked against his chest.

They quarreled about Cowper. They quarreled about Scott. He thought Marmion overwrought, and she thought him a heathen. He had opinions about everything, it turned out. He gave them all in the same grave voice he used for his tenants' drainage. She laughed at him constantly, and he let her.

One night she told him about the old lane. It left the carriage road just past the Netherfield lodge. It ran narrow and rutted between high hedges, all the way to the back of Longbourn's home wood. Nobody used it but the carter in summer. "It is my favorite walk," she said. "It is where I go when I do not wish to be found."

"I shall tell no one," he said gravely.

"You need not trouble. Nobody would think of looking there."

Every night she told herself it was improper, and every night she went anyway. She never dressed for these meetings. There seemed no point, after the house was asleep. She wore Mrs. Hurst's wrapper with the sleeves turned back, and her hair in one long plait down her back. He never wore a cravat. He could not tie one, and he would not let anyone else touch his throat.

She noticed his throat a great deal. She noticed the open collar of his shirt and the shadow of hair beneath it. She noticed how his voice went low and rough when he was tired.

You are here for the books, she told herself. Only the books.

On the fourth afternoon, she could not bear the morning room another hour. The sun had come out. It lay across the terrace beyond the window, bright and dry and impossibly far away. "I shall go mad," she told Jane. "I shall go quite mad and throw myself out of the window, and then Mr. Jones will have two ankles to bind."

"Then ask Mr. Darcy to take you out," said Jane.

"Mr. Darcy?"

"He has been walking past the door all morning." Jane smiled at her sewing. "He has walked past it six times, Lizzy. I believe he is working up the courage to knock."

On the seventh, he stopped and rapped on the doorframe with his elbow. "Miss Elizabeth. The sun is out." He cleared his throat. "If you would care to sit on the terrace, I could lend you my arm."

"Your arm is bandaged to the wrist, sir."

"My arm is perfectly sound. It is only the hands that are useless."