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"A remarkable distinction," her uncle observed. "At fourteen, you have acquired a correspondent who is an earl and apparently quite afraid of you."

"He is not afraid of me."

"Then he is a man of considerable courage."

Elizabeth wrote at once to accept. When she completed the letter, she included an inquiry after the driver and the injured horse. She did not know that Lord Matlock would read that inquiry aloud to his wife, who had arrived unexpectedly to care for him, nor that Lady Matlock would declare herself determined to meet this extraordinary Miss Bennet.

The following afternoon, a splendid carriage stopped before Longbourn. Mrs. Bennet hurried to the drawing room in a state of excitement bordering upon alarm.

Lady Matlock entered without any of the grandeur Mrs. Bennet had prepared to admire. She was elegantly dressed, certainly, but her smile was warm and her first words were addressed to Elizabeth.

"My dear Miss Bennet," she said, taking the girl's hand, "I believe I must thank you for returning my husband to me in a fit condition to be troublesome."

"I fear I can take no credit for that, your ladyship," Elizabeth replied. "He was troublesome throughout."

Lady Matlock laughed so heartily that Mr. Bennet began to look upon the visit with genuine pleasure.

Lady Matlock did not leave immediately after the visit. As her footman brought her cloak, she asked Elizabeth whether the Earl had frightened her at the roadside. It was a question Elizabeth had not expected from anyone so grand.

"Not at first," Elizabeth confessed. "He was making such unreasonable objections that I supposed he could not be seriously hurt. Then he stopped speaking, and I thought—" She could not finish.

Lady Matlock's gloved fingers closed for an instant over the girl's hand. She had spent two nights listening for every movement in her husband's sickroom, imagining all the words they might never have the opportunity to exchange. Until this moment she had not considered that the girl who saved him might have carried the same terror home.

"He is not always sensible when he is well," she said, the lightness in her voice requiring more effort than Elizabeth could know. "I should not expect illness to improve him."

Elizabeth managed a smile. Lady Matlock thanked her again, but it was the hand she kept around Elizabeth's for those few quiet seconds that the girl remembered afterward. From the carriage, the countess looked back once at Longbourn. The girl was still standing on the step, looking younger than she had seemed in the drawing room.

That evening Lady Matlock found the Earl attempting to read correspondence by candlelight. She removed the letters from his hands, lowered the lamp, and sat beside him until he slept. When he stirred, she caught his hand in the same way she had caught Elizabeth's.

CHAPTER 4

An Unlikely Friendship

Lord Matlock was a man accustomed to movement. He was therefore a remarkably difficult patient.

He disliked keeping his leg raised, objected to the surgeon's restrictions, and announced on the fourth morning of his enforced stay in Hertfordshire that the whole county must have been designed expressly to test the patience of injured gentlemen.

His wife listened with an expression of long practice.

"I should be delighted to see you returned to your usual pursuits," Lady Matlock answered, "provided you can persuade Mr. Harris that your injuries are healed. Until then, you may employ your energies in behaving civilly."

"I have behaved civilly."

"You have informed three servants that you could prepare your own broth more competently, and yesterday you attempted to walk without your stick."

"The broth was dreadful."

"Then you may be grateful that Miss Bennet's good sense enabled you to survive long enough to complain of it."

That afternoon Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet arrived to pay their visit. The Earl received them with evident pleasure and insisted that Elizabeth take the seat nearest him so that he might interrogate her concerning the accident.

"I am told you applied pressure to the wound for a considerable time," he observed. "It seems to me that you ought to receive some reward."

"I should be satisfied to hear that your lordship intends to obey the surgeon," Elizabeth answered.

Lady Matlock smiled. "Then I fear we shall owe you more than we can pay."

Mr. Bennet was asked about Elizabeth's parents. He spoke of Henry with restrained affection and explained that his brother had met Minna during his naval service. Little was known of her family, he admitted. She had apparently lost her memory before they met, and Henry had never succeeded in discovering her relations.