Page 29

"I said, not yet."

The words drop into the room like a stone into a still pond.

Not yet.

I turn them over. I find that I like them a great deal. They are not no. They are not even later. They are a door left on the latch.

"Not yet," I repeat.

"Yes."

"Then there is a yet."

She does not answer. She does not need to. Her color answers for her.

And my eyes go, quite without permission, to her mouth.

I have looked at Elizabeth Bennet's mouth before. I am not proud of how often. I have watched it across the Netherfield drawing room, curling at the corner when she was about to say something that would make Miss Bingley furious. I have watched it at Rosings, pressed tight to keep from laughing at my aunt. I have never once let myself look at it like this, plainly, with nothing between us but a sickbed and a hand's breadth of air and the knowledge that she has said yet.

She sees me looking. Her lips part, just a little.

The room is suddenly very warm.

"Sir," says Pettigrew, in a strangled voice. "Sir, I did say nothing stimulating."

I drag my eyes away and look at him. "We are discussing the weather."

"It does not look like the weather, sir."

"It is very warm weather," I say. "Miss Bennet and I were remarking on it."

Miss Bennet makes a sound that is not quite a laugh. She has turned her face away toward the bed curtains, and her free hand is pressed to her cheek, and I can see her shoulders trembling.

Fitzwilliam, by the door, says, "Darcy," in a voice of strong warning, and also of deep amusement.

"I am perfectly well-behaved," I tell him. "I am a wounded man. I could not misbehave if I tried. I can barely lift my head."

"You are managing to lift your eyebrows," says Fitzwilliam.

"That is involuntary."

Miss Bennet's shoulders shake harder.

***

When she turns back, her face is composed again. Mostly. There are still spots of color high on her cheekbones, and her eyes are still too bright, and she will not quite look at my mouth, which tells me she has been thinking about mine. The thought warms me more than Pettigrew's fire.

"Two minutes, sir," says Pettigrew.

"Two minutes," I agree. "Miss Bennet. One more question."

She waits.

I have saved it. Of all of it, this is the part I keep returning to. More than the words I seem to have said. More than not yet. It is the one thing in the whole account that seems to belong to her, and not to me.

"You have not told me one thing."

"What thing?"