Page 48 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

The maid's fingers tightened on the wool until her knuckles paled. "I cannot explain it here, miss. Your shawl will stay in this press until you ask for it yourself."

Elizabeth studied her a moment. The answer was incomplete. But it was not a lie, either, and that distinction mattered. "Very well."

Caroline swept in before Sarah had even shut the press.

"Miss Eliza. How sensible of you, to bring the blue. I have always thought it your most becoming colour." Her fingers found the repaired fringe and lingered there.

Sarah drew the shawl gently but firmly beyond her reach. "May I take your wrap, madam?"

Caroline's eyes settled on the maid with a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. "You might remember whom you serve."

"Yes, madam."

Mrs. Nicholls appeared in the doorway just then, as though summoned by the temperature of the room. "Sarah serves this household by attending its guests, Miss Bingley. Your brother asks for you in the ballroom."

Caroline released the fringe at last. "My brother can wait."

"Mr. Bingley said the musicians require your decision directly."

That, of all things, proved effective. Caroline left in a rustle of silver silk.

Elizabeth looked from the housekeeper to Sarah and back again. "What is wrong?"

Mrs. Nicholls answered before Sarah could. "A small private household matter, miss, that may come to nothing at all. If it touches you, I will tell you myself, and at once. You will not be left in the dark."

The assurance was careful and deliberate, the kind of thing a woman says when she has chosen every word in advance. Elizabeth accepted it, mostly because other ladies were waiting behind her to enter, and partly because Sarah looked close to saying something she had been told not to.

"At once," Elizabeth repeated, holding the housekeeper's eye.

"At once, miss."

She walked with Jane towards the ballroom. It opened up before them bright enough, for one whole blessed moment, to erase the uneasy little scene.

Then Elizabeth saw Darcy, and forgot the retiring room altogether.

Darcy wore an embroidered cravat.

Elizabeth noticed this before the musicians had even lifted their bows, which suggested some serious defect in her priorities that she chose not to examine. She had seen him only in plain linen at every previous meeting. The narrow white pattern softened nothing about him. Darcy was not, and never would be, a man softened by needlework. But it made the care he had taken with his dress visible at last, and something about that small vanity undid her rather more than she cared to admit.

"You approve," he said.

"Of the music? It has not begun."

"Of something."

"Your confidence is improving faster than your modesty, sir."

"I have a very severe instructor."

The first notes struck up just in time to spare her an answer, for which she was, on balance, grateful.

They joined the set. The ballroom held, by Elizabeth's rough estimate, half of Hertfordshire and the whole of her mother's hopes for the future. Jane stood nearby with Bingley, her colour high and lovely, and this time it owed nothing to fever.

Darcy bowed. Elizabeth curtsied. The figures of the dance drew them apart and brought them back together again, as dances do.

"You came," he said, the first moment the steps allowed him to speak.

"My mother began preparing before she had even received the invitation. Resistance was never a possibility."