Page 155 of Twice Chosen

Why Elizabeth had discouraged everyone from teasing Mary before Mary learned to laugh at herself.

Why Darcy had taken George Wickham's arrival in Meryton seriously before any scandal occurred.

Why Georgiana Darcy always said her brother became a different man during the autumn he first went to Netherfield.

Why Charles Bingley swore Darcy had once told him not to allow him to insult a woman Bingley had never heard of.

Why Lydia Howard claimed Lizzy had behaved like a frightened mother toward her during the Brighton summer despite being only five years older.

Why Charlotte Avery credited Elizabeth with opening a door she could not have known Charlotte needed.

Coincidences.

Family exaggeration.

Memory reshaped by affection.

Surely.

Margaret read until the light faded.

At the bottom of one page she found three small marks drawn side by side.

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Beneath them Elizabeth had written:

I am here.

Margaret knew that gesture.

Everyone in the family did.

Darcy descendants tapped three times against the hand of someone they loved when words were insufficient. Parents used it with frightened children. Husbands and wives used it across dinner tables. Brothers and sisters used it beside sickbeds. Clara had tapped Margaret's hand three times when she married. Matthew Darcy had done the same beside his mother's coffin.

No one knew precisely when the gesture began.

Some said during Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth's courtship.

Others claimed during the birth of their first child.

One elderly aunt insisted Mr. Darcy had done it the first night he danced with Elizabeth Bennet at a country assembly in Hertfordshire.

That seemed unlikely.

They had scarcely known one another.

And yet another family story claimed Elizabeth had smiled at Fitzwilliam Darcy before he ever spoke to her.

Not the polite smile of a stranger.

A smile of recognition.

As though she had been waiting for him.

And Mr. Darcy--proud, reserved, formidable Mr. Darcy--had looked at her as though he had just been given back something he thought lost forever.

Margaret closed the journal.