Page 9 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

Sarah lifted the repaired shawl from a chair, holding it up so the blue silk caught the light. "The mending held. I have knotted the fringe twice, just to be sure."

Elizabeth examined the work. The new thread was visible only to a person who already knew where to look. That was rather the whole point of good mending.

"You have made it stronger than the rest."

"A mend should not pretend nothing happened, miss. It should stop the same tear from coming back."

Elizabeth considered the shawl, turning it in her hands. "Your father again?"

"My mother, miss."

Jane stirred against the pillows, blinking towards the window. "I like Sarah."

"You have been conscious for five minutes."

"Long enough."

Sarah coloured. Actually coloured, pink rising all the way to her ears. She went to fetch fresh water with rather more haste than the errand required.

After breakfast, the apothecary approved a short change of room for Jane. Bingley ordered a sofa prepared in the small sitting room and supervised its arrangement with an energy that suggested he had been waiting all morning for something useful to do. Caroline protested that the air was cold. Darcy, without comment, directed a screen placed between the sofa and the door.

Nobody consulted him. Everybody obeyed him anyway, as though it had not occurred to a single person in the house that they might do otherwise. Elizabeth saw the habit and disliked it on principle. She also saw him test the screen's height against Jane's sofa before he let the footman leave it, crouching in a way that must have cost his knees something and his dignity rather more. That was considerably harder to dislike.

Jane slept again before noon. Elizabeth escaped to the library for more Cowper, meaning to find a second volume as well. The room stood empty, sunlight pooling on the carpet. A slip of blue silk marked a shelf that had no business being marked. She removed it and found a second book waiting behind it.

"This is very clumsy, Sarah," she told the absent maid, half laughing at the audacity of it.

"I beg your pardon?"

Darcy stood inside the doorway.

Elizabeth held up the marker, unrepentant. "Your valet and our housemaid have developed quite a system of literary recommendations."

He crossed to the shelf and studied the knot with real attention. "That is McKeever's work."

"You recognise your valet's knots?"

"A man who ties my cravat every morning may be trusted to leave evidence everywhere he goes."

She laughed. A real laugh, surprised out of her. Darcy looked startled, as though the sound had touched him somewhere.

"The book is yours."

"You have not inspected the title."

"McKeever would not risk my reputation with a poor selection."

"Your reputation depends upon poetry now?"

"At present, it appears to depend upon a blue thread."

The remark was absurd, and easy, and unlike anything she had expected from him. That was perhaps the most disarming part of it.

They spoke of the book. Then of Cowper generally. Then of whether a writer who observes folly must love people enough to keep observing them, a question that carried them further into the morning than either seemed to notice. Darcy argued that accuracy did not require affection. Elizabeth argued that sustained attention usually betrayed it, whatever a person claimed.

"Then you must hold Meryton in great affection."

"I hold its follies in excellent memory."