Page 9

Elizabeth tilted her head, studying him. "You don't know why you're apologizing, do you?"

"I..." He frowned. "No. That's not quite right. I do want to apologize. But I also feel as though I'm supposed to apologize. As though something is... suggesting I should."

Elizabeth held the fan still. It was too little to trust; she had been disappointed by an ordinary answer once already.

"Mr. Darcy," she said carefully. "How long have you felt like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like someone is suggesting things to you. Like you're following directions you can't quite see."

His jaw clenched.

He glanced toward Bingley, then back at her, evidently unwilling to be overheard.

"It's the strangest thing," he said slowly. "All evening, I've felt as though I'm..." He struggled for words. "...watching myself from outside. Observing my own actions and wondering why I'm doing them."

Elizabeth leaned toward him before remembering how little she knew of him. He had described the feeling she had failed to explain to Charlotte.

"That must be very unsettling," she said carefully.

"It is." He looked at her with something like desperation. "Miss Elizabeth, have you ever felt as though your own thoughts were not entirely your own? As though someone else was... narrating your life?"

She nearly seized his sleeve. He had said it. A stranger, whose good opinion she had been determined to despise, had said the very thing she needed to hear.

"Mr. Darcy," she said slowly. "I have felt that since waking. I have tried to explain it in several ways. The most alarming one has so far proved the hardest to dismiss."

He stared at her.

"What if we are in a story? What if some of the words are being supplied to us?"

Darcy took a step back. "You cannot expect me to accept that."

"I do not know what I expect. I know I tried to remain at home and found myself here."

"People may mistake a strong feeling for a command."

"Then let us part. Go to Mr. Bingley. I shall go to Charlotte."

He bowed, plainly relieved by the proposal. Elizabeth turned toward Charlotte. Her feet carried her around the same chair and brought her back to him. Darcy had reached the other side of it. He stopped with one hand on its back.

"You meant to come back?" she asked.

"No."

They tried again. This time Darcy took the longer way. A passing couple obliged him to turn; three steps later he faced Elizabeth once more, with a lady's abandoned shawl caught on his cuff. She freed it. Neither laughed.

"There may be another explanation," he said.

"I should be grateful for one."

He looked at the shawl in her hands. "So should I."

Elizabeth set it on the chair. She told him about the title which had appeared with the borrowed knowledge: Pride and Prejudice. It seemed they inhabited some altered telling of it. The words about their courtship were mixed with expressions neither of them had learned.

"I cannot see whoever is doing this," she said. "I cannot even tell you whether there is a person to see."

Darcy tried to say the strange title himself. He stopped after Pride, looking abruptly ill.