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Anne comes down the steps.

She does not hurry. She comes down one step at a time, very upright, with her chin up and her eyes straight ahead, and she walks past her mother as though her mother were a piece of statuary on the terrace.

"Anne. Where do you think you are going?"

Anne stops on the gravel beside the carriage. She turns round.

"I am going to visit Hertfordshire, Mama," she says.

The silence that follows is perfect. The rooks have even stopped. Somewhere behind me, I hear Fitzwilliam's horse shift its feet, as though even it does not dare make a sound.

"Hertfordshire," says my aunt.

"Yes, Mama."

"You have never been out of Kent in your life."

"No, Mama. That is precisely why."

My aunt opens her mouth. For the first time in my experience, nothing comes out of it.

"Darcy has asked me," says Anne. She looks at me. "Have you not, cousin?"

I have done nothing of the kind. I look at her. She looks back at me, and there is something in her pale face that I have never seen there before. Something bright, and frightened, and absolutely resolved.

"I have," I say. "Of course I have. My cousin Anne is coming to Longbourn, Aunt, as my guest and Miss Bennet's. Mrs. Bennet will be delighted. She is fond of company."

Elizabeth, inside the carriage, makes a small choking sound.

"She cannot go," my aunt says. Her voice has gone strange. Thin. "Her health. The night air. She takes cold. She has always taken cold."

"Then she will take cold in Hertfordshire," I say gently. "I am told they have very good colds there. Every bit as good as Kent."

"Mama," says Anne. "I am eight-and-twenty years old. I have been taking cold in this house all my life. I should like, just once, to take cold somewhere else."

My aunt stares at her daughter.

I have known my aunt all my life. I have seen her angry, which is often, and triumphant, which is oftener, and offended, which is daily. I have never seen her look like this. She looks, for a moment, as though someone has taken the floor out from under her, and she is only now noticing that she is standing on air.

"Mrs. Jenkinson will go with you," she says at last.

It is not a command. It is very nearly a plea.

Anne's face softens, just a little.

"Of course she will, Mama," she says. "She is coming behind us in the second carriage, with my trunks. She has packed four shawls."

"Five," says Mrs. Jenkinson faintly.

"Five," says Anne. "And a hot brick." She hesitates. Then she goes back up two steps, and kisses her mother's cheek, quickly, the way one touches a stove to see if it is hot. "I shall write, Mama. I shall write every week. I shall tell you all about the colds."

And she turns, and comes down, and puts her small gloved hand in mine, and I hand her up into the carriage.

Behind me I hear my aunt draw a breath. A long one. The breath before a sermon.

"Drive on," I say to the coachman, and swing myself up, and pull the door shut.

The carriage lurches forward. Through the window, as we go down the long drive, I see my aunt on the steps of Rosings, in her purple, very small against the great gray front of the house. She is not shouting. She is only standing there with one hand half raised, as though she has forgotten what she meant to do with it.