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"I thought we were arranging chairs," she said.

"We were," Bingley replied. He looked down at the paper, as if surprised to find no chairs upon it.

Darcy rose at once. "I brought the old notes to put them in order before they were packed away. We became distracted."

Elizabeth put the ribbon on the mantelpiece. "By me, apparently."

Jane lowered the ruler. "Lizzy, we have not added anything since that morning in the grove. This is the old record."

"I do not want the old record displayed in the room where I shall be married either."

For a moment nobody moved. Then Bingley began rolling his end of the sheet. He rolled too quickly, creasing a corner beneath his knee. Jane instinctively reached to save it, stopped herself, and helped him fold it instead.

Darcy gathered the loose pages. "You are right."

Elizabeth had expected an argument about the value of research. The absence of one left her with the much less convenient possibility of explaining why it hurt.

"There is a mark here for when I began to love you," she said, touching one heading. "I could not tell you the date. I know there was a morning when I hoped to meet you before I knew I hoped it. There was an evening when your letter was the thing I wished to read again. You have made it look like an appointment I kept."

Darcy looked at the heading. His own handwriting, precise and perfectly assured.

"I was afraid of inventing the feeling," he said. "I thought a record might prove it was happening."

"To you?"

"Yes."

"Then say that. Do not make it a fact about me."

He drew a line through the heading. Beneath it he wrote My recollection; not hers. It was a small correction, but she watched him make it before she trusted the apology that followed.

Jane brought the folded chart to him. "I meant to put these papers in order. I did not stop to think how you would feel coming in and finding us all at it, Lizzy. I am sorry."

"Keep your own notes," Elizabeth said. "I do not ask you to stop remembering. I ask you to stop making me an exhibit."

Bingley stood with the last sheet tucked under his arm. "We shall take the chairs out to be cleaned. Actual chairs. I believe we can distinguish them from theories."

Jane retrieved her ruler. She and Bingley left together, closing the door after asking whether Elizabeth wished it shut.

Darcy remained beside the table. "May I stay?"

"Yes."

He did not approach her immediately. He stacked the papers, tied them with the piece of ribbon she had brought, then realized what he had used.

"That was for the flowers," she said.

He looked at the small, offensively neat bow. "I have complicated matters again."

Elizabeth laughed despite herself. He untied it with care and returned it to her. The papers went into a plain envelope without ornament.

"I shall always be inclined to make a plan," he said. "You ought to know that before Thursday."

"I had received some indication."

"If I begin arranging your happiness across the carpet again, I hope you will tell me before I have finished. I would rather spoil the plan than have you put up with it for my sake."

She sat down, tired suddenly by how much easier it was to quarrel about charts than to admit wanting something from him. "I want to remember our wedding. Not whether we performed it efficiently. I want Mama to have time to cry over the flowers, and Jane to sit beside me without a watch, and you to look at me instead of checking whether the rain has begun."