Page 14 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

He moved to the other side of the doorway, blocking more of the wind without approaching her. A small adjustment, easily missed. Elizabeth felt it more than she would have felt a grand gesture, and did not examine why.

"Thank you."

"You are welcome."

For several minutes they watched the storm together. Nothing was resolved between them. Somehow that made the quiet honest rather than awkward.

Footsteps splashed beyond the shelter, and voices followed close behind. Bingley called Elizabeth's name. Caroline called Darcy's, considerably louder. Darcy moved away from the door before they appeared. Elizabeth took off his coat and placed it over the back of a stone bench, a useless attempt at order that fooled precisely no one.

Bingley reached them first, hatless again, his hair plastered flat. Sarah followed with an umbrella held at a hopeless angle against the wind. McKeever came behind her carrying another coat, his expression a masterpiece of professional neutrality. Caroline and Mrs. Hurst remained on the drier edge of the path, unwilling to risk their hems any further.

"Thank heaven," Bingley said, breathless. "We saw you turn towards the pavilion, but then the path just — vanished. Are you hurt?"

"No. Only wet."

Sarah wrapped the repaired shawl more firmly around Elizabeth's shoulders, and her fingers shook once against the fringe. Just once, quickly stilled.

Caroline looked from Darcy's coat, still draped over the bench, to Elizabeth. "How fortunate that Charles found you before anyone else did."

Mrs. Hurst's gaze sharpened at that. McKeever heard the sentence too, his face going carefully blank. So did Bingley.

Darcy's face went still in a way Elizabeth was beginning to recognise. "The entire house saw us leave by the south window, Miss Bingley. There is no discovery to conceal."

"Naturally. I meant only that appearances can be cruel."

"Then we shall not assist them."

He took the coat McKeever offered without looking at it. The valet lifted the soaked coat from the bench over his other arm. His glance passed over Darcy's wet waistcoat, over Elizabeth's shawl, over the open doorway behind them, and missed, Elizabeth was quite certain, absolutely nothing.

They returned by a service path on higher ground, single file where the mud demanded it. Sarah kept close beside Elizabeth. McKeever walked near Darcy, half a step behind, the way a shadow keeps pace with the thing that casts it. Bingley talked loudly and at length about drainage, weather, and the reassuring evidence of six witnesses, filling the silence so thoroughly that no one else needed to. Caroline said nothing at all, which was, in its way, the loudest thing she did all afternoon.

In the house, Sarah hurried Elizabeth upstairs. Jane woke as they entered and tried to sit up too quickly.

"Lizzy, what happened?"

"A storm and poor judgement. Neither is uncommon in this family."

Sarah removed the wet shawl carefully. "Mr. Darcy judged the flooded path correctly, miss."

Elizabeth turned. "You were not there."

"Mr. McKeever said the drain drops two feet beside the pavilion. He walked it before breakfast."

Why, Elizabeth wondered, a small suspicious thread pulling tight somewhere behind her ribs, had McKeever walked it before breakfast at all? She could ask later. She filed the question away with the blue silk marker and the conveniently dry terrace.

A knock interrupted her thoughts. Bingley waited outside with a message, looking faintly like a man delivering news he was not sure he approved of. Mr. Darcy requested a few minutes' conversation in the small morning room. The door would remain open, and Bingley would stay in the adjoining library the whole time. Every safeguard had been named in advance, precisely and carefully, which ought to have reassured her and somehow did not.

Elizabeth changed into a dry gown and went down, her hair still damp at the temples. Darcy stood by the morning-room fire, his clothes changed, his hair still not quite dry. Bingley made an elaborate, unconvincing show of selecting a book in the library twelve feet away, holding three volumes at once as though genuinely torn between them.

"Miss Elizabeth," Darcy said, "I will be direct."

"That is usually less alarming before it is announced."

His expression remained grave, all the earlier ease gone out of it. "Our absence may be repeated unkindly. Miss Bingley has already suggested as much. I will not allow your name to suffer through an accident I shared equally in."

Elizabeth's fingers found the seam of her borrowed gown and held it, a small anchor.

"What do you propose?"