Page 18 of Twice Chosen

Darcy threw a cravat at him. Bingley ducked.

"Go to bed."

"One more question."

"No."

"Why did she know how you take coffee?"

Darcy's hand stilled.

Bingley had heard that too.

"I do not take coffee with cream."

"Precisely." Bingley's humor faded. "Darcy, I was teasing before. Now I am actually curious."

Darcy looked toward the window. "I do not know."

That answer sobered Bingley completely. "You truly don't."

"No."

Bingley stood. "Well, whatever is happening, you seem happier."

Darcy stared.

Bingley shrugged. "Stranger, certainly. But happier."

He left.

Darcy remained standing beside the bed. Happier. Elizabeth was alive. Whether she remembered him or not, she was alive. Of course he was happier.

If she remembered--what then?

Could he walk into Longbourn tomorrow and say, My dearest, it appears death has been inconveniently temporary?

No.

Even Elizabeth would require better evidence.

And if he was wrong, he would terrify a twenty-year-old woman by behaving as though they had shared half a century.

Darcy lay down.

He needed proof. Private proof. Something no one else could know.

He thought of hundreds. The scar behind her left knee from falling from a pony at Pemberley. The ridiculous nickname their youngest son had given a marble statue. The exact place she hid Christmas gifts. The three strokes.

Darcy swallowed.

Too intimate.

He would wait. Observe.

He had been good at observation once.

Elizabeth had informed him that staring was not the same thing.