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“Allow me.”

Mr Darcy had come to stand behind them. He reached past Elizabeth's shoulder to turn back the page, and for a moment his cuff was so near that she caught the smell of starch and cedar from his coat. He stayed there after that and turned the pages for them. Once he turned too soon. Elizabeth said nothing, and he did not apologise, but at the next page he was exactly right.

They played it through twice. When Georgiana began to try over a new lesson, humming the tune under her breath, he went to sit in the window seat beside Miss de Bourgh.

Elizabeth's fingers stayed on the keys, but her attention did not. Her husband and his cousin were talking in low voices, leaning towards each other. Miss de Bourgh did most of the talking, and Mr Darcy listened with a look Elizabeth had never seen on him before. It was serious, but not cold. Once he shook his head. Once his cousin put up her hand, as if to stop him answering, and he stayed silent.

Then Miss de Bourgh looked past him, straight at Elizabeth.

There was surprise in her face. It was not unfriendly, but it was very frank. She looked as though she had just been told something she had not expected at all, and was trying to fit Elizabeth to it.

Elizabeth remembered everything Mr Collins had said at Hunsford about the two great estates, and the late Lady Anne's dearest wish, and a match fixed while both of them were still in their cradles. She had laughed at it then. It seemed a good deal less funny now. The lady in question was sitting by the window of her husband's house, wrapped in her shawl, watching the woman who had taken her place.

Georgiana touched her arm. “Shall we try the duet once more?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “Once more.”

She found the first chord without looking at the keys, because she was looking at the window. Miss de Bourgh had not turned away. After a moment she smiled, a small, uncertain smile, and Elizabeth could not have said whether it was meant kindly or as a reproach.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Elizabeth

“We are going home to Rosings this morning.”

Elizabeth had not heard the door. She had been at the little writing table in the morning room for most of an hour, with a letter to Jane that said My dearest Jane and the date and nothing else. When she turned, Miss de Bourgh was already inside, keeping so close to the wall that she might have been hoping to be mistaken for part of the paper.

“This morning?” Elizabeth got up. “I thought her ladyship meant to stay the week.”

“So did she, until last night. She made up her mind at about two o'clock and sent her woman to wake me and tell me so.” Anne came a few steps further in. The Norwich shawl was gone, and she wore a grey pelisse buttoned to the chin, but she had not taken off her gloves. “Mama says she will not sleep another night under a roof where she has been threatened with her own carriage. It is ordered for eleven.”

The clock on the chimney-piece said twenty minutes to ten.

“Will you not sit down?”

Anne hesitated. Then she sat on the very edge of the sofa, with her reticule on her knees, and looked at its clasp for a while.

“I came to beg your pardon, Mrs Darcy. We have brought you nothing but trouble since we came. You cannot have wanted us in the first place, and Mama said things to you last night that nobody ought to say in another person's house.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” Elizabeth sat down again, facing her. “Your mother's opinions belong to your mother. I do not suppose you have ever had the management of them. And I am quite sure she was every bit as difficult before I came along to give her an excuse. She was certainly difficult at Hunsford, when the worst thing I had done was walk about the lanes too much.”

The corner of Anne's mouth lifted. “She still speaks of your boots.”

“I am glad they made an impression. Nothing else about me did.”

The smile stayed a moment and then went. Anne turned the clasp of her reticule between her fingers. Elizabeth waited. Somewhere below, a trunk was coming down the back stairs, and Lady Catherine's footman was being begged to mind the paintwork.

“There is something else I must tell you. Fitzwilliam asked me not to.” Anne looked up. “I am going to tell you all the same.”

Elizabeth folded her hands in her lap. The ring slid round on her finger, and she closed her hand to stop it. She had lain awake half the night over the smile Miss de Bourgh had given her from the window seat, and she had not been able to decide whether it was kind. Now, it seemed, she was to find out.

“If it is about the engagement, Miss de Bourgh, I assure you...”

“It is not. There never was an engagement, except in Mama's head.” Anne said it quite simply, as if she were remarking on the weather. “It is about Mr Wickham.”

Of all the names in England, it was the last Elizabeth had expected.

“Fitzwilliam told me last night that he is one of the reasons you think so ill of him.”