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The heaviness is coming over me again. The room is soft at the edges. Pettigrew's laudanum, I suppose, or simply the blow. I hold on to her hand like a rope in a current.

"Will you be here," I say, "when I wake?"

She does not answer at once. I watch her, through eyes that do not want to stay open, and for a moment I think she is going to say something else entirely. Something grave. Something that will take a long time.

Then her fingers tighten around mine.

"Yes," she says.

It strikes me, drowsily, that it is the first time I have ever heard her say that word to me. Which is absurd. She must have said it last night. She must have said it in Mrs. Collins's parlor, and I must have heard it, and I have let it slip out through the hole in my head like water through a sieve.

No matter. I have heard it now.

"Good," I say.

***

I do not sleep at once. I lie with my eyes half closed and her hand in mine, and I listen.

I hear Fitzwilliam at the window, very quiet. I hear Pettigrew shuffle to the hearth and mend the fire, which is not his office, and which he does very badly. I hear Miss Bennet breathing, quick at first, then slower, as though she has made up her mind to something.

And I hear the door, which Pettigrew left ajar, creak a little wider.

I turn my head on the pillow.

My cousin Anne is standing in the doorway.

She has her shawl about her shoulders, though the corridor is warm, because her mother says she takes cold. She is small and pale and fair, as she has always been, as though someone began to draw her and was called away before they had finished. I have known her eight-and-twenty years. I have sat across a dinner table from her every Easter of my life. I could not tell you the sound of her laugh, because I have never heard it.

She is looking at Miss Bennet's hand in mine.

Then she looks at me.

And Anne de Bourgh, who was promised to me in her cradle, who has never in my memory been permitted to want anything for herself, smiles.

It is not a small smile. It is not polite. It goes all the way up into her eyes and lights her whole pale face from the inside, like a lamp being carried into a dark room.

By the window, I hear Fitzwilliam draw a sharp breath.

Beside me, Miss Bennet goes perfectly still.

Anne puts one finger to her lips. Then she steps back out of the doorway, silent as she came, and draws the door gently to behind her.

"Fitzwilliam," I murmur, as my eyes close at last. "Did Anne just smile?"

There is a long pause.

"I believe she did," says Fitzwilliam, in the voice of a man who has seen a comet. "I believe that is the first time in recorded history."

Chapter Five — Elizabeth

"A fortnight," I say. "Only until he is well. Then I shall tell him myself."

Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Pettigrew look at each other. They have been looking at each other a great deal today. If this goes on, I believe they will be able to hold whole conversations without opening their mouths, like an old married couple.

We are in Lady Catherine's library, which nobody uses, because Lady Catherine does not read. She says she has no need to, as she already knows everything worth knowing. The books stand in their rows looking very clean and very lonely. Upstairs, Mr. Darcy is asleep. In the drawing room, his aunt is writing her third letter to London.

"A fortnight," Mr. Pettigrew repeats. He takes off his spectacles and polishes them. "That is—perhaps—yes. Perhaps a fortnight. If he mends as I hope. I cannot promise it, miss. Heads are very uncertain things."