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"Then I shall have the seizure on his behalf." He drops into the window seat. "What are you writing? Not to our aunt, I hope. She has had six letters from you this week, and she is beginning to think you mean to take over the estate."

"To Bingley."

Fitzwilliam's eyebrows go up. "Bingley?"

"I owe him an apology." I fold the sheet. "Last autumn, at Netherfield. Do you remember I told you I had saved a friend from a most imprudent marriage?"

The room goes very quiet.

I look up. Fitzwilliam is sitting perfectly still in the window seat. His face has gone carefully blank, the way it does when our aunt asks him how many dinners he has eaten at his club.

"I remember," he says.

"It was Bingley. And the lady was Miss Jane Bennet."

"Yes," says Fitzwilliam slowly. "Yes, I had—gathered something of the sort."

"I persuaded him she did not care for him. I believed it, Fitzwilliam. I watched her and I thought her indifferent. I thought her family vulgar and grasping and her mother a fool, and I thought I was doing him a great kindness." I set down the pen. "And I was wrong. She has been breaking her heart all winter, and smiling over it, so that no one should have to carry it but herself. And Bingley has been in London moping like a spaniel, and I have let him, because I was too proud to think I might have been mistaken."

Fitzwilliam says nothing.

"She was in London," I go on. "Miss Bennet. In January. With her aunt in Gracechurch Street. She called on Miss Bingley. I knew it, and I did not tell him." The words taste foul. "I told myself it was for his good. It was for mine. I did not want to be proved wrong."

"Darcy," says Fitzwilliam. His voice is odd. "What made you see it?"

"Elizabeth." I say it without thinking. It is the first time I have said her Christian name aloud, and it sits in the room between us, warm. "Miss Bennet. She told me about her sister yesterday. Only a little. She did not accuse me of anything. I do not think she even knows it was I who did it."

Fitzwilliam makes a sound. It is not a cough this time. It is something nearer to pain. He turns and looks out of the window very hard.

"No," he says, to the glass. "No, I do not suppose she does."

"I mean to tell her. Today. She will be angry with me. She has every right to be." I look down at the folded letter. "But I would rather she were angry with me for the truth than fond of me for a lie."

Fitzwilliam does not answer for a long moment. When he turns back, his eyes are bright and his mouth is pressed thin, and he looks at me as though I were someone he was very fond of and very sorry for at once.

"Read it to me," he says.

I unfold it and read.

"Bingley. I have been a fool. Last autumn I told you that Miss Bennet was indifferent to you. I was wrong. I mistook her composure for coldness, because I did not trouble to look further, and I let you believe me because it suited my pride. She was in town in January, and I knew it, and did not tell you. That was ill done, and I am ashamed of it.

Miss Bennet loves you. I was wrong to say otherwise. Go back.

If you require an excuse to call at Longbourn, you may tell them you come with my compliments, to the family that is soon to be mine. Darcy."

I look up.

Fitzwilliam has his hand over his eyes.

"Is it so bad?" I ask.

"No," he says, from behind his hand. "No, old man. It is very good. It is the best thing you have ever written." He drops the hand. "Shall I take it down to the post bag?"

"No. I want her to see it first."

He looks at me a moment longer. Then he gets up, and claps me on the shoulder, hard, the way he did when we were boys and I had fallen out of the apple tree, and goes out without another word.

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