Page 34 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

"Then my ignorance is complete, and I intend to preserve it carefully. You and Kitty will not walk into Meryton without one of your elder sisters."

Lydia protested. Kitty echoed her, a half-beat behind as always. Mrs. Bennet accused Mr. Bennet, not for the first time, of ruining their daughters' every chance at marriage.

Elizabeth watched her father over the rim of her teacup, hiding her smile in the steam. His attention to the younger girls had sharpened lately, though he would never say so. He had not forbidden Meryton outright. He had simply set conditions, and let Lydia exhaust herself hurling protests against them like a wave against a rock that had no intention of moving.

"Why are you smiling?" Lydia demanded.

"I am not."

"You are. Jane, Lizzy is smiling at nothing at all."

Jane glanced towards the clock. "Perhaps it is not nothing."

Elizabeth escaped upstairs before the conversation could go any further.

Hill had laid the brown gown out again. The green muslin hung beside it, freshly brushed and ready despite Elizabeth's earlier lie about it. Elizabeth reached for the brown. Then stopped, her hand hovering. Choosing the less becoming gown would not prove indifference. It would only prove she had dressed to prove something, which was, if anything, worse.

She wore the green.

Jane came in while Hill arranged Elizabeth's hair, pinning it with quick sure fingers. "He asked permission to call."

"I remember."

"Then why do you look as though the visit has surprised you?"

"Expectation and arrival are two very different things."

"You have been speaking with Mr. Darcy far too often."

"He says there is a difference between them. I say things are still not the same thing at all. Our methods remain entirely distinct, I promise you."

Hill caught Elizabeth's eye in the looking-glass and looked away, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Longbourn's servants knew perfectly well a gentleman was expected. They simply lacked Sarah's particular interest in managing the outcome. Elizabeth found that, in the same breath, both restful and faintly disappointing.

"What will you say to him?" Jane asked.

"Good afternoon."

"After that?"

"I shall depend upon civilisation to carry the rest."

"And if civilisation fails you?"

Elizabeth thought of Darcy standing in a wet pavilion, asking what would help rather than insisting he already knew. "Then perhaps honesty will have to do instead."

The sound of wheels reached the front of the house. Jane went to the window at once, though Bingley's carriage was familiar to her by now, down to the particular creak of its axle.

Elizabeth stayed before the mirror one breath longer. The woman looking back at her seemed neither indifferent nor conquered.

She looked curious. That, Elizabeth thought, will have to do.

That afternoon, Bingley's carriage stopped outside Longbourn. Mrs. Bennet reached the hall before the servant could so much as open his mouth to announce them.

Bingley entered first, his eyes finding Jane at once, as though the rest of the room had simply ceased to exist. Darcy followed behind him. He bowed to the room, greeted Mr. Bennet properly, and looked at Elizabeth only once every courtesy owed had been paid in full. It was as though he had made himself wait for it on purpose.

He had come because she had permitted it. Not because the weather demanded it, or Bingley had dragged him, or any reason but the one that mattered.

That knowledge did more, somehow, than his proposal ever had. It left, for the first time, real room for choice.