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"He asked for me," I say. "The moment he woke. He said, where is Miss Bennet, she will be worried, we are engaged."

"Ah," says Papa softly.

"And the apothecary said that any shock might do him real harm. He told us about a gentleman at Sevenoaks who was never the same after. So I did not tell him. I let him believe it. For a fortnight, I said. Only until he was well."

"And how long has it been?"

"Eighteen days."

Papa looks at me.

"Mr. Pettigrew says not yet," I say, a little desperately. "He said it again this morning, before we left. He took me aside by the horses and said I must on no account tell him on the road, or at an inn, or anywhere he could not lie down after. He said I must wait until Mr. Darcy had rested, and was among friends, and he would write to me himself when he judged it safe."

"So you are waiting for a letter from an apothecary."

"Yes."

"While your mother orders wedding clothes."

"Yes."

"And Mr. Bingley is practicing to call you sister."

"Yes."

Papa leans back in his chair.

"Lizzy," he says, "I have read a great many novels, and I do not believe I have ever read a plot quite as bad as this one."

I laugh. I do not mean to. It comes out of me half a sob, and he hands me his handkerchief across the desk without a word, the way he did when I was seven.

"He wrote to Bingley," I say into the handkerchief. "Did Mr. Bingley tell you? He did that by himself. I never asked him. He never knew I had accused him of it. He worked it out on his own, because I told him about Jane walking out before dawn, and he wrote that letter the next morning and showed it to me as though he expected me to box his ears for it."

"Bingley told me."

"And he paid an apothecary three times over and told him to give the rest away. And he kept a groom from being dismissed. And he told me about his mother, and his sister, and the trout at Pemberley, and he said I was the handsomest woman in every room he had ever seen me in, and Papa, he means it. He means every word. He is the best man I have ever known, and I did not see it, and now I cannot tell him that I see it, because if I do he will remember that I did not."

I stop, because I cannot go on.

Papa is quiet for a long time. The clock ticks. Outside the window the light is going gold over the shrubbery, and somewhere in the house I can hear Mama's voice rising, explaining to someone, probably poor Anne, exactly how many bedchambers Pemberley must have.

"Lizzy," says Papa at last. "In the carriage. Before your mother shrieked. You had your glove off, and your hand in his hair."

I look down at my hands.

I did. I took it off without deciding to. I only knew that his head was heavy on my shoulder, heavier and heavier as he slipped into sleep, and that he was breathing slow and warm against my neck, and that his hair was right there, dark and rumpled under my chin, and that I had wanted to touch it for days. Since the shrubbery. Since before the shrubbery, if I am honest. Since the morning he sat up against the pillows and laughed.

So I took my glove off. And I touched it. And it was softer than I had imagined, and I had imagined it a great deal.

And then Anne leaned across in the swaying carriage and whispered, You love him, don't you?

And I could not answer her. Not a word. I sat there with my bare hand in his hair and his weight against my heart and my throat closed up like a fist, and I could not say it, not even to Anne, who had asked so gently.

Anne only looked at me for a long moment. Then she smiled, a small sad smile, and said, "You need not say it. I can see it." And she picked up her book again and did not turn a page all the way to Barnet.

"Lizzy," says Papa.

I look up.