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He takes off his spectacles. He polishes them on his sleeve, quite unnecessarily, and looks at me with that same strange expression, and I have the oddest feeling of being read, the way one reads a page of Latin, word by careful word, for a meaning one already suspects.

"Mr. Darcy," he says. "I am going to say something to you, and you will not understand it, and I do not mean you to. I only mean you to remember that I said it."

"Sir?"

"My daughter is the best of my children. She is cleverer than her sisters, and braver, and a good deal more honest than is comfortable. When she has done wrong, she knows it before anyone has to tell her, and she is harder on herself than any of us could be." He sets the spectacles down on the blotter. "Whatever you hear of her in the future, from whatever quarter, I hope you will remember that I told you so. And I hope you will remember that she is very young, and has been very frightened, and that she has never once in her life done anything for her own advantage."

I stare at him.

"I—of course, sir. I know all that. I have known it for months."

"Have you," says Mr. Bennet. "Good."

He stands, and holds out his hand across the desk.

I take it. His grip is dry and firm and surprisingly strong. He holds on a moment longer than he needs to, and that strange look comes over his face again, half amusement and half something else, something almost like pity.

"I have a story to tell you one day, Mr. Darcy," he says. "About a toad. But it will keep."

"A toad, sir?"

"A very warty one. You will enjoy it." He lets go of my hand. "Now go away. I believe there is a young woman lurking in the hall who has been pretending not to listen at the keyhole for the last quarter of an hour, and I should like my library back."

***

She is not lurking. She is standing at the bottom of the stairs, with one hand on the newel post, very straight, as though she has been carved there.

She looks at me as I come out. Her face is pale. She does not ask. She only looks.

"He said yes," I say.

The breath goes out of her. All of it at once. She sways a little against the newel post.

"He said I might have you," I say, coming to her, "if you would have me. I told him you already had. He looked at me very oddly. Your father is a very odd man, Elizabeth."

"Yes," she says faintly. "He is."

"He told me you were the best of his children."

"Did he?"

"And that you are harder on yourself than anyone could be. And that you have never done anything for your own advantage." I stop in front of her. We are very close. The hall is narrow at the foot of the stairs, and dim, and the door to the back passage is shut, and from somewhere above us I can hear Miss Kitty Bennet practicing the pianoforte, badly. "He said I was to remember it. I told him I knew it already."

She looks up at me. Her eyes are very bright.

"And do you?" she says.

"I have known it since you ran a mile for me in the mud without your bonnet."

Her lips part.

I should step back. We are in her father's hall. Her mother is somewhere in the house; I can hear her voice faintly through two closed doors, discoursing upon lace. Any servant might come through from the kitchen. I should step back, and bow, and offer her my arm, and take her into the drawing room like a gentleman.

I do not step back.

I put one hand on the newel post above hers. Not touching her. Only near. So near I can feel the warmth of her through my sleeve. She tips her head back against the carved wood and looks up at me, and the color comes slowly into her face, and she does not look away.

"Elizabeth," I say. My voice has gone low and rough again, the way it went in the shrubbery. "Your father has given his consent."