Page 28 of He Insulted My Entire Family Before Proposing

"Yes. Nothing remains private in Meryton for long."

"That is why I mention it. I would like to attend. Not to force your attention. Not to display anything false. But if an opportunity arises to correct what I have allowed others to believe, I intend to take it."

Elizabeth's throat tightened. "And if no opportunity arises?"

"Then I will behave respectfully until one does."

It was not a grand declaration. It was better. Grand declarations had already failed him. This was practical, specific, and public.

"You understand," she said, "that this does not purchase anything."

"I do."

"Not forgiveness. Not affection. Not an answer."

"I know."

"Then why?"

He looked at her as he had looked at her sometimes before Hunsford, except now the admiration was stripped of argument.

"Because I was wrong where others could hear me. I must be different where others can see me."

Elizabeth had no ready jest. This was inconvenient, as jests were her preferred method of not revealing that her heart had just stepped closer to a cliff.

"Very well," she said.

"Very well?"

"Attend the assembly. Behave. Try not to repair anyone by managing them."

He smiled. "I shall make it my chief object."

They returned to the house to find it transformed by Jane's engagement into a festival of nerves. Mrs. Bennet wept, laughed, planned menus, praised Bingley, forgave him everything she had never been allowed to know, and declared Jane the happiest creature alive. Mr. Bennet looked pleased and quietly moved. Lydia wanted to know whether officers would attend the wedding. Mary observed that marriage was a serious undertaking and then sang.

Darcy stayed only long enough to offer his congratulations. Bingley clasped his hand with feeling. Jane, still glowing, looked first at Elizabeth; the questions would come later, in private, where Jane's gentleness did not have to perform before company.

Darcy bowed to Jane. "Miss Bennet, I owe you an apology."

Jane accepted it softly, with a grace that made Elizabeth both proud and protective.

When Darcy left, Elizabeth stood at the window and watched him go.

Her list was not gone. It would never be gone. But it had ceased to be only an indictment. It had become a record of repairs attempted, some insufficient, some real.

At Hunsford he had asked for her hand while explaining why taking it lowered him.

At Longbourn he had asked for nothing and done the harder thing in a room with worn chairs, nosy sisters, and Mrs. Bennet's best china.

Elizabeth, who distrusted easy transformations in novels and men, distrusted this one too.

But she believed what she could see.

What she could see was harder to dismiss.

CHAPTER 10

The Meryton assembly, when it came, was brighter than Elizabeth had expected and not nearly so harmless. The same kind of public room that had once carried Darcy's insult now waited, with music, candles, and enough neighbors to repeat anything worth repeating before breakfast.