Page 16 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

She could leave Netherfield. Jane's fever had broken. A carriage could be arranged by morning, and propriety would support a swift return to Longbourn before further gossip took root anywhere. That was the safe course, and no one would blame her for taking it.

But safe was not the only thing worth considering. Darcy had proposed badly. He had not, she was fairly certain, proposed falsely. His admiration had shown itself in the library, on the terrace, in the pavilion before the storm made everything urgent and clumsy. She had seen it plainly, and had begun, against every sensible intention she owned, to answer it in kind.

If she left now, she confirmed that the pavilion had ended something between them. If she stayed, she confirmed that something remained unsettled, waiting to be worked out properly.

Neither choice was comfortable. Elizabeth had never much required comfort from a decision. Only honesty, which was a considerably harder thing to come by.

She would stay. She would give him room to show whether duty had been the whole of his motive, or only the shell he had wrapped around something he had not yet learned to say plainly. If it proved the former, she would bear the knowledge without regret. If the latter — well. She would decide then what that knowledge deserved.

Upstairs, Sarah had laid the blue shawl near the fire again to dry properly this time. The repaired fringe had held through wind, rain, and thoroughly careless handling. Not one blue knot had slipped, not a single one. Elizabeth touched the stronger thread, turning it between her fingers.

He had proposed. She had refused. Neither fact, somehow, meant quite what it ought to have.

CHAPTER 4

Mr. Darcy

McKeever cut the damaged ribbon from Darcy's watch fob. He did it at the dressing table with a watchmaker's exactness, scissors angled just so, as though the ribbon might yet be saved by sheer force of professional pride. It had survived three years of careful handling. One wet afternoon had ruined it entirely.

"The watch is uninjured."

"I had not asked."

"No, sir."

Darcy stood at the window, hands clasped behind his back, one thumb pressed hard enough against the opposite wrist to leave a mark. The storm had passed. It had left behind a yellow evening and a garden full of standing water that caught the last light like scattered coin. The south pavilion was just visible between the trees. From this height, at this distance, it looked harmless, which struck Darcy as a particularly unkind joke. Elizabeth had refused him there, in all but location. He had proposed in the morning room afterward, before an open door, with Bingley turning pages in the next room like a man performing the part of chaperon. No scene could have been more proper.

No proposal could have gone worse.

"You knew the drain had flooded."

"I knew it might, sir."

"Why were you on that path before breakfast?"

McKeever set the watch down with great care. "Sarah told me Miss Elizabeth had slept little and might take the air this morning. I wished to know which path was sound before anyone walked it."

"You discussed Miss Elizabeth's movements with a Netherfield housemaid."

"We discussed the weather, sir."

"You marked a book together."

"We discussed Cowper."

"You left a strip of her mending silk upon my shelf."

McKeever considered the charge with the gravity of a man weighing a genuine legal accusation. "That was careless of me."

"It was matchmaking."

The word should have embarrassed him. It embarrassed Darcy instead, and far more than McKeever.

McKeever folded the old ribbon into a neat square, unbothered. "It was a book, sir."

"And the walk?"

"You invited Miss Elizabeth."