Page 62 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

Elizabeth stopped walking. "Sarah could have lost her place over this."

"Yes."

"She risked her place. For me."

"McKeever says she did."

The servants' scheme had seemed almost comic while it involved only books and glances exchanged across a drawing room. This part was not comic at all. Sarah's livelihood had stood between Caroline and a clean denial.

"I treated her warning as impertinence," Elizabeth said, "before I understood what it had cost her to give it."

"You also defended her to Mrs. Nicholls."

"That does not erase the first part."

"No." His voice was quiet. "It is what you did next."

Darcy's own errors stood behind that sentence, unspoken but not hidden. Elizabeth heard them. She heard, too, the complete absence of any attempt to excuse himself for them.

"Will Sarah stay on at Netherfield?"

"Mrs. Nicholls means to train her as a lady's maid. She has the skill for it, according to Bingley's housekeeper."

"She will be pleased."

"McKeever is insufferably pleased."

"He showed emotion?"

"He approved the embroidered cravat without argument. It was excessive."

Elizabeth laughed — properly laughed, the kind that came up from somewhere she had not planned on.

Ahead of them, Bingley had taken Jane's hand. He let go of it the moment he realised they were being watched, then took it again a second later with a determination that made the retreat pointless.

Darcy watched his friend with something close to fondness. "He has practised a question on me twice."

"Did he tell you what it was?"

"He told me by repeating it."

"How did you answer?"

"I refused him both times."

"Cruel man."

"He required a more representative audience than my own opinion."

The easy conversation carried them the rest of the way around the shrubbery. At the garden door, Darcy stopped.

"Elizabeth."

She looked at him. He had used her name again — this time without the small apologetic pause that had followed it in the orangery.

"Do you object?" he asked.

"No."