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Darcy remembered the words. At Pemberley he was accustomed to arriving at decisions after hearing the advice of stewards and solicitors. He had rarely asked whether the women of his family might observe something the professionals missed. Georgiana was still too young to participate in estate matters, but he saw suddenly that she might one day wish to. He resolved to invite her questions rather than answer only the ones he supposed she would ask.

That evening he wrote his sister a letter describing the proposed schoolhouse and asking what sort of room she had liked best when learning music as a child. Her reply came promptly, filled with more detail than he had expected. He could not say whether the plan had improved his understanding of architecture, but it had given him another way to know Georgiana, and for that he was grateful.

The following week brought a musicale at the Matlocks'. Georgiana accompanied Darcy, having recovered from a cold that had detained her at Pemberley. Elizabeth greeted her with such genuine pleasure that the younger girl's reserve eased almost immediately. They withdrew to the pianoforte after supper and considered a difficult duet.

"I shall ruin your part," Georgiana whispered.

"Then I shall ruin mine in sympathy," Elizabeth answered. "We may call it an experiment in modern composition."

The duet was not ruined. Georgiana played well, and Elizabeth turned the pages with careful attention, singing softly through a difficult passage when her friend hesitated. Darcy saw the relief in Georgiana's face when the piece ended. Elizabeth never made a spectacle of her kindness. She gave the young girl space to be capable without insisting that she demonstrate it for the room.

Saye later stood beside Darcy as guests took their leave.

"Elizabeth has improved our household," Saye said.

"I agree. Georgiana is always happy in her company."

"And Richard has discovered a worthy opponent."

"He has discovered several. His chief difficulty is admitting defeat."

Saye watched Elizabeth consulting Lady Matlock about the next morning's appointments. "She was frightened when she came to us. I did not think such a lively child could doubt so deeply whether she was welcome."

"Your family has given her reason to doubt it no longer," Darcy said.

"She has given us more than we expected in return."

Darcy thought of Elizabeth's laughter in the library and her steady encouragement of Georgiana. "Yes," he answered. "I believe she has."

A month later, with Lady Matlock's approval, Elizabeth returned a note he had sent concerning a volume they had discussed. She disagreed with his conclusion in three neatly written paragraphs and added a postscript: I have taken the liberty of telling Colonel Fitzwilliam that you possess a fault more grievous than stubbornness. You sometimes abandon an argument just when it becomes interesting.

Darcy sat in his study at Pemberley and read the postscript twice. He answered with equal care. She replied after a fortnight, enclosing a short quotation in German that she translated with a deliberate mischief he could detect even across the distance.

The exchange was easy and harmless. She was still young, and he had more pressing concerns than interpreting the private opinions of his uncle's ward. Yet her letters became the ones he opened before the others. He regarded that preference as a tribute to her conversation and thought little more of it.

CHAPTER 11

The Queen's Drawing Room

For the preceding fortnight, Lady Matlock had converted an otherwise respectable room into a school of backward locomotion. A temporary hoop petticoat widened Elizabeth's skirts, a length of spare silk stood in for the train, and a visiting dancing master had insisted that the deepest reverence in the world was of little use if the young lady could not rise gracefully from it. She learned to let the train fall behind her, bend without pitching forward, and then retreat backwards without once turning her back to an imaginary sovereign. On the first day her heel caught the fabric. On the second she backed into a chair. By the third, Lady Matlock pronounced her progress entirely satisfactory, while Elizabeth suspected that the furniture had merely become more cautious.

Richard had witnessed one rehearsal and proposed that Saye stand behind the chair as a precaution. Saye refused the honour, explaining that their father's ward must learn to negotiate the dangers of court without assistance from estate management. Elizabeth informed them both that when they were called upon to bow in a gown as wide as a dining table, she would happily offer instruction. Neither brother found a suitable answer, which she counted among her more encouraging achievements.

On the morning of her presentation at a March Drawing Room, Elizabeth regarded the elaborate structure above her head and concluded that the feathers had been designed by an enemy of women.

"I am quite certain," she told Lady Matlock, "that any creature obliged to carry so much decoration would give up flying altogether."

"Then you must be grateful you are expected to walk, curtsy, and depart without showing Her Majesty your back," Lady Matlock replied.

The court dress had occupied several appointments with a dressmaker, two lengthy discussions with Lady Matlock, and a distressing number of pins. White crape, lightly worked with silver, fell over a white satin petticoat; beneath it, the broad side hoops gave her a width wholly unlike the easy muslin gowns she wore every day. A long white satin train descended behind her, and fine lace lappets hung from the arrangement of three high white ostrich feathers above her carefully dressed hair. White kid gloves and a modest string of pearls completed an appearance at once splendid and astonishingly inconvenient. Elizabeth had protested at the cost, only to be reminded that the arrangements were Lady Matlock's pleasure and not a bill to be presented to her ward. Now that the dress was finished, she could not deny its beauty. She merely doubted that anyone could look dignified while calculating whether a feather might catch in a doorway.

Anne stood back to judge the effect. "You look very fine, miss."

"That is because you have been obliged to look at me for two hours," Elizabeth said. "Your judgment has grown sympathetic."

Lady Matlock approached and adjusted a fold near her shoulder. "You look as you ought to look: a young lady prepared to be presented, with a perfectly respectable fear of making a fool of herself."

"I thought only I possessed the last accomplishment."