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"Then I had better find a horse who knows to duck."

Papa looks at me for a long moment. Then he takes off his spectacles and rubs his eyes, and when he puts them back on, his mouth is twitching.

"You will not go alone," he says.

"I know."

"And you will not go until after your sister is married."

"Jane says she will not marry until I am happy." I swallow. "She told Mr. Bingley so last night. She means to put it off until July. He says he will wait until Christmas if she likes. He says Mr. Darcy taught him patience."

Papa gives a short, surprised laugh. "Did he." He hands me back the letter, all eleven pages, very carefully. "Then you had better find someone respectable to take you to Derbyshire, my dear. Your mother is quite out of the question. I am too old. And your sisters would only want to look at the officers."

"There are no officers in Derbyshire."

"There are officers everywhere, Lizzy. It is one of the great trials of the age."

***

Anne finds me in the shrubbery that afternoon, sitting on the bench with the letter in my lap.

"Have you finished it?" she asks.

"Almost. There is one line more."

"What line?"

I shake my head. She does not press me. She sits down beside me on the bench and draws her single shawl around her shoulders, and we look at the roses together for a while.

"I called him an idiot," she says presently. "At Netherfield. At dawn. A great proud idiot. Mrs. Jenkinson screamed."

In spite of everything, I laugh.

"You may tell him I still think so," says Anne. "Put it in the letter. A postscript. Your cousin Anne says you are a great proud idiot, and she has never been wrong about anything."

"You were wrong about the cows. You told Kitty the brown one was a bull."

"I was right about the important things." Anne looks at me sideways. "I was right about you."

I look down at the letter.

"Anne," I say. "What if he will not read it?"

"He will read it."

"What if he reads it, and it changes nothing?"

Anne is quiet for a moment. Then she reaches over and lays her thin, cold hand on top of mine, on top of the letter.

"Then you will have told the truth," she says. "All of it. To his face. Which is more than anyone ever did for me, in eight-and-twenty years." She squeezes my fingers. "And I think that is worth a hundred and fifty miles, whatever comes of it."

***

My Aunt Gardiner arrives on Saturday.

She has come from Gracechurch Street to help with Jane's wedding clothes, which are not now needed until July, and she says she does not mind in the least, because it gives her six more weeks to quarrel with Mama about the lace. She comes into the drawing room in her traveling dress, all brisk good sense and kindness, and kisses Jane, and kisses Kitty, and is introduced to Anne, and looks at Anne with great interest.

Then she looks at me.