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“I wish to be clean, Maggie. That will do.” Elizabeth untied her bonnet and set it on the window-seat. “Will you go and inform Mrs Gardiner? I should like her here before breakfast, if she is not already below.”

“At once, miss.” Maggie’s face brightened. She had been given an errand and a mystery in the same moment. “Shall I tell her it’s urgent? Only, if it’s urgent, Mrs Reynolds will want to know, and if Mrs Reynolds knows—”

“It is not urgent. It is private. You will say so, and you will say nothing else.”

Maggie bobbed a quick curtsy, injured and thrilled in equal measure, and went.

She removed her gloves. Elizabeth used the interval to wash the dust from her cheeks and to decide, with more firmness than she felt, that she would not begin the confession by pacing. Pacing was for Lydia. She sat. Sitting composedly seemed a more elegant way to deliver the news.

Aunt Madeline entered without ceremony, dressed for the day, a light shawl over one arm.

“Maggie informed me that the matter was not urgent and then hovered in the passage in a manner that suggested it was the most urgent event since the Flood. I sent her to press a gown. She will barely survive the disappointment of missing the gossip, I believe.” Her aunt shut the door. “You are pale, Lizzy. Or you are trying not to smile? I cannot tell which, and I should like to know before I commit myself to alarm.”

“Do not be alarmed, Aunt.” Elizabeth saw that her fingers had taken possession of a tassel and made them release it. “Sit with me. I have been dishonest with you since Lambton, and I cannot sit through another meal in this house without mending it.”

Aunt Madeline sat without filling the silence, which was one of her talents.

“Mr Darcy proposed to me in Kent.”

The shawl slid an inch. Aunt Madeline caught it.

“In April, at the parsonage. He had not the art of it. He told me he had struggled with his feelings, and then he explained, at some length, why those feelings were an inconvenience to a man of his consequence. My family, my connections, the inferiority of the match. He offered me his name in the same speech in which he insulted everything attached to me.”

“And since your name is still Bennet and not Darcy, I can safely assume you refused him, did you not?”

“I refused him with a thoroughness I have since had cause to regret. I accused him of ruining a man’s prospects out of spite, and of separating Jane from Mr Bingley out of pride. Both charges felt magnificent at the time. One of them was just. He had interfered with Jane by his own admission. The other accusation was not. I had taken the word of a charming stranger and built a villain out of a gentleman who had merely been rude to me at an assembly.”

Aunt Madeline’s brows rose, which in her was the equivalent of another woman leaping from her chair.

“There was a letter the next morning. I will not repeat what was private in it. I will tell you that it corrected me, that I read it until the paper softened, and that I did not like myself after reading those pages. I was clever, I was wrong, and I had enjoyed being wrong.”

“Oh, my dear girl...”

“There is more, and it is getting better.” Elizabeth drew a steadier supply of air and went on. “He wrote to Mr Bingley, confessing his interference. Jane’s letter—the courtship, the apology, the hour in Papa’s library—is the result of it. He did not boast of it when I told him in the garden, Aunt. Instead, he seemed almost embarrassed to be thanked.”

“The garden?” Aunt Madeline lifted a questioning eyebrow.

“This morning, among the roses. He told me his feelings had not altered, but he did not renew his offer. He sought my leave to court me while we remain at Pemberley. I gave it.”

Aunt Madeline was quiet long enough for a carriage to pass, had there been a carriage. Then she laughed heartily, an unladylike sound she usually reserved for Uncle Edward’s worst puns.

“Lizzy! I am delighted! Not by the Kentish speech, which sounds abominable, but by the man who has since tried to correct his mistake, and is treating us, your inferior connections, with the utmost civility. That is a reformation I can respect.”

“Why are you not shocked?” Elizabeth asked.

“I am a little shocked. The absurdity of the situation with his aunt and the courtship he wants baffles me. I really want to know how he plans to navigate these treacherous waters.” She reached and covered Elizabeth’s fingers with her own, brief and firm. “Are you certain, dearest?”

“I am certain I wish to know him. That is all he asked, and it is all I have granted. But you are correct regarding his aunt. We cannot be obvious.”

“Then we shall be unobvious with great skill.” Aunt Madeline rose and shook out her shawl. “Change your gown. I will wait. And Lizzy, when we go down, you will eat. Confessions on an empty stomach have a tendency to become tragic, and this one is not.”

Elizabeth changed into the green sarcenet, which Maggie had left in a state of hopeful readiness.

They entered the breakfast parlour to find Lady Catherine at the head of the table in a brown morning gown, a cup arrested halfway to her lips. Miss de Bourgh sat at her right, small, shawled, and in possession of a book she had the sense not to open. Miss Darcy was beside her, posture so straight it could only be recently corrected. Uncle Edward had taken the place nearest the ham and was applying himself to it with great gusto. Mr Darcy stood at the sideboard. He had found a coat.

Martin, the butler, presided over the two serving footmen.

“You are late, Miss Elizabeth.” Lady Catherine set her cup down. “One hour, I told you. It has been an hour and a quarter. A household cannot be managed if the females of it treat the breakfast hour as a suggestion.”