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"Does he mean to leave?"

My cousin looks back at me from the doorway. His face is grim, and something more than grim. Something almost frightened, which I do not understand at all.

"He will," he says, "by the time I have done."

***

He comes back late, after dinner, with his boots muddy and his coat torn at the shoulder, and says nothing at all about either.

He only pours himself a large glass of Bingley's brandy, and drinks half of it standing, and says, "It is done."

In the morning, Bingley's groom rides into Meryton for the post, and comes back with the news before breakfast is on the table.

Lieutenant Wickham's room at the Red Lion is empty. His bed has not been slept in. His trunk is gone, and his horse, and the forty pounds he owed the landlord. He was seen on the London road a little after midnight, riding hard.

He has left the county overnight.

Chapter Seventeen — Elizabeth

"I keep thinking," says Mr. Darcy, at the top of Oakham Mount, "that I should very much like to kiss my betrothed."

I have brought him up here to show him the view.

That is what I told Mama, and Jane, and Anne, when I put on my bonnet after breakfast. I am going to show Mr. Darcy the view from Oakham Mount. Mama said, "Oh, yes, Lizzy, you must, it is the finest view in the county," which is the first time in my life she has ever expressed an opinion about any view whatsoever. Jane smiled and said nothing. Anne said, "Kitty and I shall walk as far as the stile, and sit there, and look for a very long time at some very interesting cows," and Kitty, who has decided in the space of a week that Anne de Bourgh is the most fascinating person she has ever met, said, "Oh, yes, the cows," and went to fetch her shawl.

So here we are. The two of us, alone, on the top of my favorite hill, with all of Hertfordshire spread out green and gold beneath us in the May sunshine, and the larks going up on every side.

And he is not looking at the view.

I knew he would say something like it. I have known since breakfast. I have known since he came into the parlor this morning, with his hat in his hand and Wickham gone from the county and his face so light and easy that Mama dropped her teacup. I have known, I think, since the foot of the stairs a week ago, when I put my hand on his heart and said his name, and Mama came through the door.

I have spent every hour of every night since then deciding what I would say when he asked.

I have not decided.

"Pettigrew," I say, "said no excitements."

"Is a kiss an excitement?"

"I believe it may be."

"I have never been kissed," he says gravely. "I have no means of knowing. You will have to tell me afterwards."

I laugh. I cannot help it. He has turned toward me, and the wind is in his hair, and the bruise at his temple has faded to the faintest shadow, and he is smiling at me with his eyes, the way he has learned to smile since Kent.

"You have never been kissed," I repeat.

"Never. Not properly. My aunt kisses the air an inch from my cheek every Easter, but I do not think that counts." He considers. "There was a dairymaid at Pemberley, when I was fourteen. But she kissed the stable boy first, and then me, and then the stable boy again, so I do not think that counts either. It was more in the nature of a survey."

"Fitzwilliam—"

"And you?"

I look away, across the valley. "That is not a question a gentleman asks."

"I am not a gentleman. Not by your standards. I am sure you have said as much, on at least one occasion." He says it lightly. He does not know what he is saying. He does not know that the words go into me like a blade. "My cousin tells me you once had a very low opinion of my manners."

"I had," I say. "Once."