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And beside her, bowing to the departing carriage, and to my aunt, and to his wife, and once more, for good measure, to the house, is Mr. Collins.

***

Nobody speaks until we are through the lodge gates.

Then Miss Lucas, who has been holding her breath since the steps, lets it all out at once in a great whoosh, and says, "Oh, my goodness gracious," and Elizabeth begins to laugh, and Anne begins to laugh, and in a moment the three of them are laughing so hard that the carriage rocks on its springs.

I sit back in my corner and watch them.

Anne is laughing. My cousin Anne, whom I have never once in my life heard laugh, has her hands pressed to her mouth and tears running down her thin cheeks, and she is laughing so hard she is hiccoughing.

"I did it," she gasps. "Oh, I did it. I said precisely. I said precisely to Mama."

"You were magnificent," says Elizabeth.

"Was I? I could not feel my knees."

"You did not need your knees. You had your chin."

"I have been practicing the chin," says Anne, "in the looking glass. Since Sunday." She wipes her eyes. She looks at me. "Darcy. Thank you. I know you did not ask me."

"I should have done," I say. "I ought to have asked you years ago. I never thought of it. I never thought you wanted anything."

"I did not know I wanted anything," Anne says. "Not until I saw you laugh." She looks across at Elizabeth, and something passes between them that I am not party to. "Then I wanted a great many things all at once."

***

By Bromley I am tired.

I do not say so. Pettigrew's orders are ringing in my ears, and if I say so, Fitzwilliam will make us stop at an inn for two hours, and I wish to be in Hertfordshire tonight. So I sit very upright in my corner, and look out at the hop gardens going by, and do not mention that the jolting of the road has set up a dull, steady thudding behind my left eye.

Elizabeth notices anyway.

"Your head aches," she says quietly.

"It does not."

"You are holding it as though it were made of glass."

"It is a very valuable head."

"Then rest it." She does not look at me. She looks out of her own window, at the hop gardens, and her voice is very even. "Miss Lucas is asleep. Miss de Bourgh is reading. No one will see."

I look across. Miss Lucas is indeed asleep, with her mouth a little open and her bonnet crushed against the squabs. Anne has a book open on her lap, and her eyes are fixed on it with tremendous attention, and she has not turned a page since Sevenoaks.

I look at Elizabeth's shoulder.

It is very near. It has been very near since Westerham. The carriage is not large, and she sits close beside me, and every time the wheels find a rut her arm presses the whole length of mine, shoulder to wrist, and then draws away again. I have been counting the ruts. I have been, God help me, hoping for more of them.

I have been aware of her all morning in a way I am not proud of. The line of her throat above her collar, where the bonnet ribbon is tied. The small dark curl at the nape of her neck that has escaped its pins. The scent of her, lavender and cold air and something warmer underneath that is only her. Every time she turns her head to speak to Anne, her breath stirs the air near my cheek, and I forget what I am looking at out of the window.

"Elizabeth," I say.

She says nothing. But after a moment, without looking round, she shifts very slightly in her seat, so that her shoulder is a little lower. A little nearer.

I lay my head on it.

She goes still. Perfectly still. I feel her breath stop under my cheek, and hold, and then come again, quick and shallow, like a bird's.