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“Thank you,” the girl said.

“You are welcome, my dear.”

When she lifted her head to find the second ribbon and began to work on it, Mr. Darcy was standing near her.

“May I assist?”

She held up the ribbon. “Are you as good at untying knots from ribbons as you are at chess, Mr. Darcy?”

The tug of his lips into a lopsided smile told her he was in jest. “Are you impugning my ability to play chess, Miss Elizabeth?”

“No,” she replied with an impish smile. “Not at all.”

“Eleanor made it worse,” Margaret interjected with a sigh. She held up a light blue ribbon with a knot pulled impossibly tight. “And it is my favourite one.”

From the side table, Eleanor insisted, “I was helping.”

“You pulled both ends.”

“That usually works.”

“Not with these kinds of knots,” Margaret said importantly.

Mr. Darcy extended his hand. “May I?”

Margaret surrendered the ribbon, and Mr. Darcy came to sit beside Elizabeth. There was a perfectly respectable distance between them, but Elizabeth was painfully conscious of every inch—or lack of it—between her arm and his.

He worked one part of the ribbon loose.

“You have done this before,” she said approvingly.

“Once or twice.”

“You are too good at this to have only done it once or twice,” she said with a chuckle. “I do not believe you.”

His lips turned up slightly. “My cousin Richard was forever tying knots in everything I owned. That was when he thought he would like to go to sea.”

“Richard of the greenery? I thought he was a colonel in the army.”

“He is. At the age of ten he discovered, in a rather unpleasant way, that the ocean does not agree with him. When my sister was small he taught her many of the knots, and she often required help getting them out of her ribbons.” He offered her a small smile. “So you see, I come with some experience.”

The knot loosened and after he pulled the ends free, he put it into Elizabeth’s hand rather than Margaret’s. His fingers touched the inside of her wrist which for some reason made her shiver a little, though he did not seem aware of it. She smiled when Margaret took the ribbon, thanked Mr. Darcy, and immediately tied it into her hair.

“Goodness, Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth said, attempting to compose herself, “if you continue in this way I shall be obliged to revise my understanding of your accomplishments.”

He held her gaze with his—dark, intense, almost unfathomable. “May I hope that the revision will be favourable?”

Her throat went dry.

“Because,” he said softly, “your good opinion matters to me.”

Elizabeth forgot all about the ribbon.

Henry emerged from beneath the table on his hands and knees, holding something aloft between two fingers. “I found a button!”

“A button?” Mr. Bingley leaned forward with immediate interest. “Has anyone mislaid one?”

There followed a brief inspection of all coats and waistcoats—except for Mr. Darcy, whose eyes never left hers.