Page 16 of He Insulted My Entire Family Before Proposing

Elizabeth lowered her glass.

"Mr. Darcy," she said, not loudly, but with enough clearness to reach him, "you seem much engaged by your thoughts. I hope Longbourn has not supplied too many subjects for them."

Conversation thinned.

Jane looked at her in alarm. Bingley blinked. Mr. Bennet's brows rose with immediate interest.

Darcy met Elizabeth's eyes. He understood her. She watched him understand, and with understanding came a faint tightening around his mouth. He could avoid the challenge. He could call it impertinent. He could retreat into rank.

Instead he said, "No, Miss Elizabeth. I have made too many observations where I had too little understanding."

Mr. Bennet's attention sharpened.

Mrs. Bennet looked delighted and confused. "Well! I am sure that is very handsomely said, though I cannot think what it means."

"It means," Darcy said, and his voice grew firmer, "that I have often mistaken liveliness for impropriety, reserve for indifference, and unfamiliar manners for inferior feeling."

Silence.

Elizabeth felt it move through the room like a change in weather.

Bingley looked at Darcy sharply.

Jane lowered her gaze.

Mr. Bennet smiled, but not mockingly. "A comprehensive confession, sir. I hope it did not injure you."

"Less than the mistakes injured others," Darcy replied.

Elizabeth looked down at her plate because triumph, she discovered, could be dangerously close to tears.

It was not enough. It could not be enough. One good sentence could not undo a winter. A public correction did not mend every private hurt.

But it was the first thing he had said in a room where the damage could hear him.

CHAPTER 6

After Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy dined at Longbourn, the house became intolerable.

Mrs. Bennet had acquired hope in quantities unsafe for domestic use. She spoke of Mr. Bingley at breakfast, luncheon, and dinner, with additional remarks inserted between meals in case providence had not been listening. Jane bore it with grace. Elizabeth bore it by leaving rooms.

Mr. Darcy called twice with Bingley.

On the first occasion, he spoke to Mr. Bennet about estate improvements and received a series of answers so dry they might have preserved fruit. On the second, he endured Lydia's complaint that officers were scarce and Mary's opinion that scarcity improved moral discipline. He did not flee. Elizabeth noted this against her will.

She was in the shrubbery on the third afternoon, pretending to inspect a rosebush that had done nothing to deserve the intensity, when Darcy found her.

"Miss Elizabeth."

"Mr. Darcy. Have you come to apologize to the shrubbery too?"

"If I have injured it."

"It has been silent on the matter, which in this house counts as forgiveness."

He almost smiled. The almost was modest and therefore more dangerous than his former smiles, which had often looked like judgments taking exercise.

"May I walk with you?"