Page 28 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

The conversation moved to lanes and distances and which tenant had let his hedge grow shamefully high. Mrs. Bennet possessed firm opinions on all three, and delivered them at length. Darcy listened. She grew less shrill the moment somebody treated her local knowledge as knowledge worth having. Elizabeth watched him across the room, something working behind her eyes.

He had wanted her gratitude. Now, he found, he wanted her ease. The distinction between the two struck him as unpleasantly instructive.

After luncheon, the visit prepared to depart. Servants fetched wraps. Sarah came downstairs with Elizabeth's blue shawl folded over one arm, though Elizabeth was not, in fact, leaving.

"Mrs. Bennet spoke of the repair, miss," Sarah said. "I thought she might wish to inspect it."

McKeever stood near the hall table with an expression of profound innocence. "At my suggestion, miss."

Darcy looked from the shawl to Sarah. "Then the work is hers and the display yours."

Mrs. Bennet examined the repair with a housewife's practised eye. "That is neat work. Our Hill never knots fringe so evenly, and she has been at it thirty years."

"Sarah repaired it."

"Then Mr. Bingley keeps useful servants. That is always a good sign in a house."

Bingley accepted this praise of his establishment with the delight of a man complimented on something he had never once thought about. Sarah coloured. McKeever passed the shawl back to her and settled Lydia's red cloak over its owner's shoulders, all without the smallest change of expression. The small display had accomplished one thing, at least. Mrs. Bennet had praised Sarah before the whole household, and the maid's face showed plainly that such praise did not come her way often.

Darcy looked at McKeever. His valet adjusted the red cloak's collar and remained the very picture of a man who had never arranged anything in his life.

When the Bennets had gone, the hall considerably quieter for it, Elizabeth followed Darcy into the library. The door remained open.

"You treated my mother with consideration."

"I asked about hedges."

"You asked about a subject she could discuss without injuring anyone. That was kind of you."

"I meant only to divert her."

"She was easier for it, whatever you meant."

"I have not always understood that — how to do that."

She studied him for a moment. The fatigue beneath her eyes had deepened over the course of the visit, but her gaze stayed steady.

"You also stopped Miss Bingley."

"Bingley can choose his own guests."

"You did not pretend my family was faultless."

"They are not."

"That honesty should offend me. It does not."

Darcy took a breath before he spoke, feeling the weight of what he was about to admit. "I once made their faults an excuse for my own pride. That was neither honest nor fair of me."

Elizabeth's fingers touched the empty place at her shoulder where her shawl would have rested. "You improve quickly, when you are corrected."

"I have received excellent correction."

The colour at her cheeks now had nothing whatsoever to do with embarrassment.

That evening, Jane came downstairs for half an hour. Mrs. Nicholls arranged a sofa near the fire and set a screen against the draught. Bingley carried a footstool from one side of the room to the other, and then back again, until Jane told him exactly where she wanted it.

"There."