Page 30 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

"Only when affection makes accuracy unavoidable."

The sentence escaped before Darcy could call it back. Elizabeth looked up. He could have withdrawn it. He chose not to.

"I told you yesterday that the storm did not create my admiration. I meant it."

Her thumb stilled on the book's spine. "I believe you."

"That is more than I had."

"Do not spend it carelessly."

"I shall not."

Across the room, Jane laughed at something Bingley said. Caroline glanced towards them, then towards Darcy and Elizabeth, and her face looked, briefly, lonely. If it was, Darcy thought, the loneliness was partly of her own making. That did not make it any less real to watch.

Elizabeth followed his gaze. "She will not forgive this easily."

"I have asked for fairness, not forgiveness."

"And if she refuses even that?"

"Then Bingley and I will deal with what she does. You will not be asked to carry it."

Elizabeth studied him, unhurried, measuring what she found. "You are learning."

"Painfully."

"That is often how learning becomes memorable."

Jane tired soon after. Bingley rang for the maid before she had even admitted it aloud. Sarah arrived with the medicine tray. Darcy watched Elizabeth rise to support her sister, and watched Bingley step back the instant Jane asked for room to stand.

Love, he thought, might be less a grand gesture than a series of correct distances kept.

He had spent years mistaking distance itself for virtue. It was a strange thing to unlearn.

Bingley came down the stairs a little later with the news that Jane might return to Longbourn tomorrow. Elizabeth smiled at that. Then she looked back at Darcy, and the smile changed into something harder to name.

Tomorrow. He had one night in which to work out how a single departure could come to matter so very much. He had not expected her leaving to feel like a loss. Expectation, he was beginning to suspect, had become entirely useless where Elizabeth Bennet was concerned.

McKeever entered behind Bingley, carrying the repaired shawl. He handed it to Sarah, who had followed with Jane's medicine tray. The transfer was ordinary, witnessed, and entirely exact. Nothing hidden in it at all.

Darcy understood the message perfectly well.

If he wished to see Elizabeth again, no servant would arrange it for him this time.

He would have to go to Longbourn himself.

CHAPTER 7

Elizabeth

Jane left Netherfield on Sunday, once the apothecary had declared her fit for a short journey. Bingley offered his closed carriage, his mother's old travelling carriage, and a phaeton which even he admitted was unsuitable before anyone had the chance to say so themselves. Mrs. Nicholls selected the closed carriage without discussion. The household accepted her decision the way households accept weather.

Sarah packed Jane's medicines and Elizabeth's borrowed gowns with brisk efficiency. She wrapped the blue shawl last, folding it with a care that seemed almost ceremonial.

Sarah tested the fringe between finger and thumb, frowning. "The fringe is dry now. The silk may fade before the wool does, mind."

"Then I shall know which part of it is Netherfield."