Page 19

"I asked Miss Bennet to marry me last night," I say, "before I ever saw a tree. I walked down to the parsonage on purpose. I had been resolved on it for weeks." I settle back into the pillows. "I find I cannot recall the particulars of her answer. But she ran a mile for me this morning without her bonnet, and I think we may take the general sense of it as read."

The room goes quiet.

I notice, distantly, that Fitzwilliam has stopped coughing. I notice that Pettigrew has gone the color of skimmed milk. I put it down to my aunt. My aunt has that effect on most people.

Lady Catherine draws a breath. I know that breath. I have heard it before a sermon on the proper use of a fish knife. I brace myself.

"I will not have it," she begins. "Not in my house, not under my roof, not while there is breath in my body to—"

And Mr. Pettigrew, small, gray, trembling Mr. Pettigrew, steps directly in front of her.

"Your ladyship," he says. "Your ladyship, I implore you."

She stares down at him as if a footstool has addressed her.

"Your ladyship's voice," he goes on, very fast, "is so very commanding. So very—penetrating—your ladyship will forgive me. A voice of such authority, in a sick room, so soon after a blow, carries more weight than an ordinary voice. It is a medical fact. The head of the patient feels it. Your ladyship is too powerful, if I may say so, for the patient's present condition."

I watch my aunt consider whether she has been insulted or complimented. It is a close-run thing.

"Too powerful," she repeats.

"Much too powerful, your ladyship." He has her by the elbow now. I do not think he knows how he got there. Neither, from her face, does she. "If your ladyship would take a little air on the landing—a little tea in the drawing room—only while he is so weak—"

"He does not look weak. He looks insolent."

"Precisely the danger, your ladyship." He is steering her toward the door like a tugboat with a man-of-war. "Insolence is very taxing to the head."

Fitzwilliam opens the door for them with tremendous gravity.

On the threshold, my aunt rounds once more. "This is not finished, Darcy. I shall send to London for Sir Augustus Pell. He is physician to the Duke of Cumberland. He will tell you what you are."

"I already know what I am, Aunt," I say. "I am very happy."

The door closes on her. Through it I hear her voice moving away down the corridor, rising and falling, with Pettigrew's murmuring under it like a stream under a waterfall.

Fitzwilliam leans his back against the door. He looks at me for a long moment.

"Well," he says. "That was something."

"You might have helped."

"I was helping. I was standing near the door. In a crisis with our aunt, the door is the most useful place to stand."

"You are behaving very oddly, Fitzwilliam."

"Am I?"

"You have been looking at me as though I had two heads ever since I woke."

"You have a large lump on the one," he says. "I am checking it has not divided."

Lowe comes to the bedside with the clean nightshirt over his arm. He lays it down. He does not look at me, which is usual, and does not appear to see me, which is also usual, but there is something in the set of his mouth I cannot read.

"Your green coat is past saving, sir," he says. "I have put it aside."

"My green coat? I wore the blue to the parsonage."

The smallest pause. "This morning, sir. You wore the green this morning."