Page 39 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

Elizabeth understood, he could see, that he spoke of Wickham, and of the pavilion, and perhaps of himself as well.

"Will I meet her one day?" she asked.

The question surprised them both in equal measure.

"I hope so."

No promise followed it. It was far too early yet for promises. The hope alone was enough, for now.

When Darcy and Bingley finally took their leave, Mrs. Bennet praised Bingley for a full ten minutes and Darcy for five, as though keeping careful score. Elizabeth escaped the room before the proportions could shift any further in his favour.

In the carriage home, Bingley said nothing at all until Longbourn had vanished behind the hedge.

"You like them."

"Some of them."

"You stayed to dinner."

"So did you."

"I am in love." Bingley said it simply, as though remarking on the weather.

Darcy looked out at the dark road unwinding ahead of them. "Yes."

"That was not a denial."

"No."

Bingley's satisfaction filled the whole carriage like warmth from a stove. Darcy let it sit there, unchallenged, and found he did not mind it in the least.

Back at Netherfield that night, McKeever took Darcy's coat with his usual quiet efficiency.

"Longbourn was agreeable, sir?"

"Yes."

"Sarah will be pleased to hear it."

Darcy turned to face him directly. "And precisely how will Sarah come to hear of my visit?"

McKeever folded the coat over his arm without so much as a flicker. "Mr. Bingley will have told half the household before breakfast tomorrow, sir. He generally does."

"And the other half?"

"Miss Bingley already knows, sir."

From the corridor came Caroline's voice, low and furious, speaking to Louisa about an invitation list and a certain woman who badly needed to be taught her place.

McKeever heard it too. His hands went still over the coat for just a moment. Darcy looked towards the door.

Elizabeth had given him reason enough to return to Longbourn. Caroline, it seemed, had given herself every reason to interfere.

One of those prospects pleased him a great deal. The other, for the first time in a long while, no longer frightened him at all.

Before sleeping, Darcy wrote to Georgiana that Wickham was in Hertfordshire and asked what, if anything, she permitted him to disclose if a general warning proved insufficient.

CHAPTER 9