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The market day noise goes on around us. A carter is shouting at his horse. Somewhere a child is crying. Mrs. Long's voice rises over all of it, calling for Maria. I hear none of it clearly. I hear only my own heart, beating in my ears like a drum.

I keep my face perfectly still. I have had a month of practice. I have kept my face still for Lady Catherine, and for Mr. Collins, and for my mother, and for Mr. Darcy himself, every morning on those walks, while he told me about his mother's nose and his sister's shyness and I held what I knew like a coal in my fist.

But I am not quick enough. Not this time. Not with this man, who has spent his whole life watching faces for the one small slip that will tell him where to put the knife.

I feel the color leave my cheeks.

And I see him see it.

His eyes widen, just a fraction. Then they narrow. Then, very slowly, delightedly, as though he has turned over the last card and found it was the one he wanted, his smile grows.

"Ah," he says. Just that. "Ah."

"Elizabeth?"

I turn. Mr. Darcy has escaped. He is coming toward us along the pavement, unhurried, his hat in his hand, his face still soft with the remains of whatever he was smiling at with Lady Lucas. He has not seen who I am standing with. He is looking only at me.

Then he looks past me.

And I watch his face close. All at once, the way a door slams in a wind. The softness goes out of it. The smile goes. What is left is the man I met at the Meryton assembly, cold and proud and still as stone, and I had forgotten, in Kent, that he could look like that.

He does not look like that at me. He looks like that at Mr. Wickham.

"Wickham," he says.

"Darcy." Mr. Wickham bows, easy and graceful, as though we were all at a ball together. "I have been wishing Miss Bennet joy. I hear I must wish it to you too. And I hear you have had an accident. I was very sorry for it. A great many old friends at Pemberley would be distressed to hear you were hurt."

"I am well."

"I am delighted to hear it." Mr. Wickham's eyes go from his face to mine, and back. "Quite recovered? Nothing lasting?"

"Nothing that concerns you."

"Of course. Forgive me." He bows again. "I shall not keep you. I know how you dislike to be kept. Miss Bennet."

He turns to go. Mr. Darcy offers me his arm, rigid, and I take it, and my fingers are shaking on his sleeve, and I feel him feel it, and look down at me sharply.

And then Mr. Wickham turns back.

Not to Mr. Darcy. To me. He steps close, quite close, close enough to speak below the noise of the market, below Mr. Darcy's hearing. He bends his handsome head, as though to murmur some pleasantry, some last compliment to the bride.

He is smiling. His eyes are warm and frank and full of that old rueful amusement, as though we two shared a private joke that the rest of the world was too dull to understand.

"Does he know?" he says softly. "About Hunsford?"

Chapter Sixteen — Darcy

"She refused you, Darcy," says Wickham. "Ask anyone at Hunsford."

I have come into Meryton alone on Monday morning, to the saddler's, because the black has thrown a shoe and the Netherfield smith is drunk. It is an errand of ten minutes. I have been in the town for eight of them. I am standing in the yard of the Red Lion, waiting for the ostler to bring my horse round, when a red coat comes out of the shadow of the stable arch and stops between me and the street.

I have not been alone with George Wickham since Ramsgate. Before that, not since the day I paid him three thousand pounds and told him I never wished to see his face again. I have seen it since, across a street, across a ballroom, across a lane in Hertfordshire last autumn, and each time I have turned away.

I do not turn away now. I cannot. He has stepped in front of the gate.

"I beg your pardon," I say.

"She refused you," he says again, quite pleasantly. "At Hunsford. In April. That is the evening you cannot remember, is it not? The one that was knocked out of your head by a tree? Well. I can tell you what happened in it, if you like. She said no."