Page 41 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

"It was swift," he said, not troubling to look sorry about it.

Darcy drew prejudice. He studied Elizabeth slowly, as though the rest of the room had ceased to exist. He refused to guess a single thing. Elizabeth understood the joke before Kitty did, which was not saying a great deal, but she felt the small warm shock of it all the same.

"You are impertinent."

"I have had an excellent instructor."

Mrs. Bennet wanted to know what everyone found so amusing. Nobody supplied an answer that would have satisfied her, and in the end she gave up and complained instead that the fire wanted mending.

After the game, Elizabeth and Darcy found themselves standing near the window together, as if by accident, though Elizabeth was beginning to distrust accidents where he was concerned. Rain traced long crooked paths down the panes. The view no longer gave her back only the pavilion and the flood and the fear of it. It gave her his coat settled heavy and warm around her shoulders, his flat refusal to cross the drowned ground, the badly hidden terror underneath all that careful duty.

"Do storms always improve your conversation?" she asked.

"The first one did not."

"The proposal was poor. The conversation before it was not."

Darcy looked at her properly then. "You remember it kindly."

"I remember it accurately."

"You accused me of wanting to play the hero."

"You offered to fight the whole of Hertfordshire."

"Only its men. Its matrons routed me completely."

"A sensible retreat, all things considered."

The ease between them felt, if anything, more intimate than the pavilion had. Nothing forced it this time. No flood, no fear, no coat pressed round her shoulders out of necessity. Only two people who, it turned out, liked one another's company. Elizabeth could no longer pretend that pleasure was too slight a thing to matter. I like him. I have liked him for weeks and called it something smaller because the truth felt too large to carry.

When the rain eased, Darcy did not linger past what propriety allowed. He left with Bingley and the unmarked book. The comedy with the blue thread in it stayed behind with Elizabeth. Inside its cover, beneath Sarah's careful blue knot, McKeever had added one line in his neat, upright hand: A serious household may still require laughter.

Elizabeth read it twice, and found she agreed with him.

The following morning a parcel arrived from Netherfield. It held the Cowper volume Elizabeth had sent back by way of Bingley, along with a note from Mrs. Nicholls thanking Jane for her kindness in writing. Inside the cover, the servants' little reading list had grown by one more line.

Burney remains a warning, McKeever had written. Miss Elizabeth may judge for herself whether the company improves it.

Beneath that, in Sarah's rounder hand: The south path has been repaired. No recommendation is implied.

Elizabeth carried the book to Jane's room and handed it over without a word.

Jane read the additions, smiled despite herself, and passed it back. "Are you unhappy about it?"

Elizabeth sat down at the dressing table. The blue shawl lay draped over the chair beside her, its mended fringe catching the morning light in a way that made it impossible to ignore.

"No. That is the problem."

"Why must it be a problem?"

"Because Sarah and McKeever have decided upon an ending, Jane, before the two people most concerned have even agreed upon a beginning."

"They saw affection."

"They saw interest. Those are not the same thing, whatever a housemaid's blue thread might imply."

"Is there affection now?"