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"Elizabeth," I say to the swans. "I have read your letter—" No. Of course I have read it. She will know I have read it. "Miss Bennet. I came to tell you—" Not Miss Bennet. Never Miss Bennet again, if I can help it. "Elizabeth. I was wrong. In the garden. I was wrong, and proud, and a great—"

A great proud idiot.

One of the swans turns its head and looks at me with deep contempt.

"You are no better critic than my horse," I tell it. "Or her."

I walk faster.

Footsteps on the gravel behind me. Quick and light and precise.

"Your hat, sir."

Lowe. He is not even out of breath.

"I do not want my hat, Lowe."

"No, sir. But a gentleman without a hat looks as though he has run all the way from the house."

"I have run all the way from the house."

"Yes, sir. It would be better if the lady did not know it."

I take the hat. I hold it in my hands and do not put it on.

"Lowe," I say. "You told me once how a man tells a woman he has been wrong. Briefly, you said. And with flowers."

"I did, sir."

"I have no flowers."

Lowe reaches inside his coat and takes out a small fold of paper. He opens it on his palm. Inside, brown and crumbling and very nearly dust, are the forget-me-nots, with her plain little collar pin still through the stems.

"I took the liberty, sir," says Lowe. "From your room. I thought they might be wanted."

I look at the flowers. Then I look at him.

"You knew," I say. "All along."

"I knew you wrote to her, sir, and that you rode out at dawn to give it to her. I guessed the rest at Rosings, when you told me you were engaged." He folds the paper closed again, very carefully, and holds it out to me. "It was not my place to say, sir. But I will say this much, if you will forgive me. She looked at you the way Mrs. Lowe used to look at me. I knew that look for eleven years. I should know it anywhere."

I cannot speak. I take the paper from him.

"Thank you, Lowe."

"Sir." He bows, and turns back toward the house, and does not appear to see me at all.

I have rehearsed speeches before. All the way down the lane to the parsonage, and it was the worst thing I ever said. All the way into Mr. Bennet's library, and he stopped me after two minutes. On the black's back under the oaks, madam, be not alarmed, and the bough came down before I could say it.

And she made one up for me, in my aunt's sickroom. Out of nothing. Out of what she wished I had said.

If you can bear to have me—

I stop on the path.

I know what I am going to say. I have known it since I was lying in bed at Rosings with my head bandaged, listening to her tell it. It is the only speech I have ever been given that was any good. And it was written for me by the one person in the world who knew exactly what I ought to have said.

I start walking again. Faster. I come round the end of the lake, where the path turns up through the trees toward the bridge, and the willows hang down over the water, and the light comes through them green and gold.