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I swing up into the saddle. It hurts my head. I do not let him see that.

"And Wickham," I say, looking down at him. "If you come within a hundred yards of her, or her sisters, or anyone at Longbourn, I will not pay you a farthing. I will do something a great deal worse. I will tell the truth about you. All of it. To your colonel. In writing."

The smile stays. But it is a frozen thing now, fixed in place, like a mask nailed on.

"Good morning," I say, and turn the horse, and ride out of the yard.

***

I ride straight to Longbourn. I do not decide to. My hands simply turn the horse at the crossroads, away from Netherfield.

My head is aching by the time I get there. Pettigrew would have a seizure. No excitements, sir. Not even a strong opinion. I have had several very strong opinions in the last half hour, and I find, examining them, that I do not regret a single one.

She is in the garden.

She is sitting on the low wall at the end of the walk with Anne beside her, the two of them with their heads bent over something in Anne's lap, a book or a letter. Anne sees me first. She looks up, and looks at my face, and says something quiet to Elizabeth, and gets up and goes into the house without a word.

Elizabeth stands.

"Fitzwilliam?" she says. "What is it? You are white."

I like it when she calls me Fitzwilliam. It still goes through me, every time, like warm brandy. I did not know, before the hall on Wednesday, that I had been waiting all my life to hear someone say my name like that.

"It is nothing," I say. "I met Wickham in the Red Lion yard."

I watch the color leave her face.

It goes all at once, the way it did on Saturday, on her aunt's doorstep. I had not understood it then. I had thought it was only the shock of seeing him, of being accosted in the street by a man she had once trusted and learned to despise.

I see now that she is afraid of him.

Something hot and protective rises in my chest, so strong it makes my head pound.

"He cannot hurt you," I say. "I promise you. I have dealt with him."

"What—" She swallows. "What did he say?"

I hesitate. Then I laugh, a little, because it is so absurd.

"He said you refused me," I tell her. "At Hunsford. He said that was the evening I cannot remember. That you said no, and I fell off my horse, and you saw your chance." I shake my head, and wince. "He wanted a thousand pounds not to say it to all Meryton."

Elizabeth does not move.

She is standing very still on the gravel, in the soft May sunlight, with the apple blossom coming down around her like snow. Her hands are pressed together in front of her, very tight. Her face is perfectly white. Her eyes are enormous, and fixed on mine, and there is something in them I have never seen before, something so stricken that I take a step toward her without thinking.

"Elizabeth. My love. Do not look so."

"What did you say to him?" Her voice is hardly above a whisper.

"I laughed at him."

She flinches.

"I laughed in his face," I say. "I told him he did not know you. I told him you would never. I told him you cried buckets." I take her cold hands in mine. They are shaking. "I told him to tell all of Meryton, and be laughed at. I did not believe one word of it, Elizabeth. Not for one moment. How could I?"

She makes a sound. A very small sound, like something breaking a long way off.

"Fitzwilliam," she says. "I—"