Page 60

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Making a note." He writes something, very small. "The warty toad under the cucumber frame. I mean to tell Mr. Darcy about him one day. When it is all over. I think he will enjoy it."

"Papa!"

"In the meantime," says Papa, laying down the pen, "there is the small matter of the morning."

I stare at him. "The morning?"

"Mr. Bingley," says Papa, "was so good as to hand me a note on the drive this afternoon, while you were being embraced. From Mr. Darcy, in his own hand. Written at Rosings, I gather, and carried in his pocket all the way. A very proper note. Very correct. He presents his compliments, and begs the favor of half an hour of my time tomorrow at eleven, on a matter of the greatest importance to his happiness." He looks at me over his spectacles, and for the first time in this whole conversation, his eyes begin to dance. "I gather he wishes to do it properly."

My heart turns over.

He told me so, at Charlotte's breakfast table, with his knee against mine and his hand under the table. I want to ask your father's consent properly. He means to stand on this very rug tomorrow, in his best coat, with his cravat tied too tight, and ask Papa for my hand.

Papa picks up a book from the corner of the desk and opens it, as though the interview is quite over.

"Then I had better give my consent," he says to the page. "He is asking for it in the morning."

Chapter Fourteen — Darcy

"You may have her, Mr. Darcy," says Mr. Bennet. "If she will have you."

I have been in his library for a quarter of an hour. I had prepared a speech. Lowe heard it three times this morning, while he tied my cravat, and pronounced it very thorough. It covered my income, my estate, my family, my intentions, the settlement I proposed to make upon his daughter, and the arrangements for her pin money, and it took a little under eleven minutes to deliver.

I got through two of them.

Mr. Bennet listened to those two minutes with great courtesy, his spectacles on his nose and his fingers steepled, and an expression on his face I could not read at all. Then he held up one hand, and I stopped, and he said that.

"She has had me," I say. "Already. At Hunsford."

"So I understand."

"I have come only to ask your blessing. As I ought to have done before I ever went down to the parsonage."

"Quite right. Very proper." He looks at me over his spectacles. "You do not remember the occasion, I collect? At the parsonage?"

I feel my color rise. My cousin told me Elizabeth had told her father about the blow. I did not think it would come up so soon.

"No, sir. I lost the evening. And the night after. Pettigrew says it may come back. It may not."

"A great pity," says Mr. Bennet. "I am told it was memorable."

"Elizabeth tells me I knocked over Mrs. Collins's workbasket."

Something happens to Mr. Bennet's face.

It is very quick. It is gone almost before I see it. His mouth goes tight at one corner, and something moves behind his eyes, something that might be laughter and might be pain and might be both at once. He looks down at his steepled hands for a moment. When he looks up, his face is perfectly bland again.

"Did you," he says.

"Green worsted, she says. All across the carpet."

"How very unlike you."

"So I thought. But I suppose I was not myself."

"No," says Mr. Bennet slowly. "No, I suppose you were not."