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Darcy watched the bread fall back to her plate. He had broad shoulders, admirably displayed by his evening coat, and a capacity for making stillness seem an answer. She refused to supply the answer for him. At length he rang and gave the returning servant directions in her hearing: a note to Mrs. Collins, asking whether she could receive Mrs. Darcy at three the following afternoon; the carriage to be ready upon her acceptance.

“I might walk,” she said. “It is not half a mile.”

“The porter has instructions that you are not to go out on foot unless one of my men attends you.”

He said it as he might have mentioned the hour of dinner. Elizabeth felt the cold begin at the back of her neck, the same cold that had come at Hunsford when he laid out her danger in that even voice and waited for her to see that she had no other road. She had walked out alone all her life.

“Instructions from you.”

“For your safety.”

She left unasked whose safety he meant. The answer would be hers. It would be true. It would not help.

“And our conversation?” Elizabeth asked after the servant had gone.

“I shall not remain in the room.”

“Thank you.” She meant it. She wished the fact of meaning it did not leave such an unpleasant taste.

They ate for a time. Then Darcy asked whether she wanted the other volume of the book upstairs, and the conversation wandered, somewhat stiffly at first, into a disagreement concerning an author who appeared to believe that no young woman could go outdoors without either fainting or discovering a titled relation. Elizabeth, who had lately been forbidden the pavement herself, maintained that the two accidents might usefully be combined. Darcy suggested that the relation would have to be remarkably well placed to catch her.

She laughed again, this time without surprise. For several minutes they were merely two people who had read the same absurd book and remembered different absurdities. She could see the life which such minutes might have made. It was near enough to tempt her, and interrupted not by any fresh cruelty but by the returning servant, carrying Charlotte's acceptance on a small tray.

Three o'clock would be convenient. Elizabeth read the two lines herself before handing them to Darcy. He returned the note after reading it, and she put it with her gloves.

* * *

Later she sat at her writing-table while the household grew quiet around her. Her note to Jane required only a single sheet. They had arrived safely in London. She would see Charlotte on Friday. Jane should not suppose any letter from this house reached its destination unread.

She paused over that last sentence. Its plainness offended every instinct which had made the flower names seem useful. Yet Jane deserved to know that the old device had failed. Another list of flowers would expose Charlotte's affairs to the same reader while flattering Elizabeth that she had concealed them.

She finished with an enquiry after their father and an affectionate message for her sisters. When the ink was dry she folded the sheet, left it unsealed and rang.

“Will this go tonight?” she asked the servant who answered.

“The other letters are being made ready, madam. I can enquire whether the footman has gone.”

Elizabeth kept her fingers upon the folded paper. If she waited until tomorrow, she could soften the warning into a joke, and Jane would read the joke instead. Her sister would worry. There was no honest sentence which could prevent that.

“Please ask that it go with the others, if there is still time. If not, tomorrow's post will do.”

“Shall I return to tell you, madam?”

“Yes, please.” She gave him the sheet. It would go to Darcy's study first, but she need not spend the night imagining it had travelled farther. She had written nothing she was unwilling for him to see. She washed the ink from her finger while she waited. The servant came back to say it had gone.

Afterwards she opened Charlotte's acceptance once more. There was relief in having an hour to look towards. She put the note beside her unfinished book, extinguished the lamp, and went to bed in the room which she could lock for herself.

CHAPTER 2

ELIZABETH

Charlotte was waiting in the drawing-room at Brook Street when Elizabeth arrived at three on Friday. She wore black silk, beautifully made, and her first words concerned the journey. Nothing in her voice would have troubled a visitor who had come to be reassured.

Elizabeth crossed to her and took both her hands. They were cool, the fingers narrower than she remembered, though perhaps she remembered them chiefly occupied with something useful. Charlotte had always made other people's awkwardness easier by finding employment for her hands. Now she permitted them to be held and looked beyond Elizabeth towards Darcy.

Charlotte released Elizabeth's hands to offer Darcy a chair. “I hope London has received you kindly, Mr. Darcy. Will you take some tea before you go?”

He declined the chair, his hat still in his hand. “London has received us as kindly as it receives anyone in a carriage. I shall leave you to recover from the account of our journey.” He looked at Elizabeth. “I shall return at five, unless you wish for another hour.”