Page 44 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

"Miss Bingley believes it will suggest you expected Miss Elizabeth herself, sir. Her maid overheard her say she would deny giving any order at all."

"And Bingley is meant to force an offer out of me?"

"Mrs. Hurst was of the opinion you could hardly refuse without making her sister a laughingstock before the whole household."

Darcy looked towards the door, jaw tight. Caroline's desperation had moved well past flirtation and into something darker. He had let her pursuit run on for months, dismissing it as vanity because dismissing it cost him nothing. Elizabeth had already paid once for his inattention. I will not let her pay for it twice.

"Does Sarah still have the shawl in her keeping?"

"It is at Longbourn, sir. Miss Elizabeth will bring it with her cloak tonight. Sarah has been assigned to the retiring room."

"Convenient."

McKeever met his eyes with something almost like a smile trying not to happen. "Mrs. Nicholls made the assignment this morning, sir. Sarah asked for it herself, once she had heard the plan."

"That is rather less convenient, then. It is a risk to her position."

"She knows it, sir."

Darcy rinsed the razor, watching the water run pink with lather down the basin. "Tell Sarah she is not to confront Miss Bingley under any circumstance. If the shawl disappears, she informs Mrs. Nicholls. You bring any message straight to me."

"Yes, sir."

Sarah was waiting in the passage outside. Darcy called her in. She stood just past the threshold, her hands still at her sides. It was the stillness, Darcy was beginning to recognise, of a woman working very hard to appear calmer than she felt. "I saw her hold a length of blue silk against her gown, sir. She has matched the colour exact."

So Caroline had not merely planned a deception. She had rehearsed its appearance in front of a mirror.

"I will tell Bingley now."

McKeever hesitated. It was an unusual enough event that Darcy looked up. "Sarah asked that Miss Elizabeth not be told before the ball, sir. She feared Miss Elizabeth might stay home rather than make difficulty for Mr. Bingley on his own evening."

"Sarah does not decide what Elizabeth has a right to know," Darcy said, more sharply than he had intended.

"No, sir."

Darcy stood. He understood the maid's reasoning well enough. He even sympathised with it. But understanding it did not grant her the authority to act on it.

"If the shawl leaves the press, Sarah tells Miss Elizabeth at once. Before that happens, there is nothing but an overheard intention that may never become an act."

"Very good, sir."

"And McKeever."

"Sir?"

"Thank her."

His valet bowed, and something in the set of his shoulders as he straightened suggested the thanks had landed exactly where it was meant to.

Bingley was in the ballroom directing the placement of a row of orange trees he had somehow arranged in a straight line across half the windows, as though he meant to plant a hedge indoors.

"They ought to go in the corners," Darcy said.

"Nicholls said as much. I wanted a second opinion."

"You wanted permission."

"That too," Bingley admitted, entirely unashamed.