Page 115 of The Engagement at Longbourn

Darcy frowned. Bingley sat opposite him. “After the accident. You told me you were wrong about Jane.”

“I barely remember it.”

“I do.”

Darcy looked down. “I was wrong before I fell.”

“Yes.” Bingley smiled slightly. “You were.”

Darcy looked up.

Bingley held his gaze. “I do not want us to pretend it did not happen. I listened because I trusted you. You spoke because you thought you were protecting me. We were both wrong.”

“Yes.”

“But when you knew more, you changed.”

Darcy was quiet.

Bingley said, “That matters.”

Darcy thought of Mr. Bennet. Of Elizabeth. Of Georgiana. Apparently everyone in Hertfordshire had conspired to teach him the same lesson.

“Thank you,” he said.

Bingley smiled. Then he stood and held out his hand. “Tomorrow?”

Darcy took it. “Tomorrow.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Morning

Wedding morning arrived bright.

Not warm. Not soft. But bright. Sunlight entered Longbourn before seven and caught the frost along the garden wall. The sky was a clean March blue. Mrs. Bennet declared it providential. Mr. Bennet declared it weather.

Neither convinced the other. Elizabeth woke before Hill came to call her. For several minutes she remained beneath the covers, listening.

Longbourn was already awake. Floorboards creaked overhead. A maid hurried down the corridor. Somewhere below, Lydia exclaimed “La!” at a volume suggesting catastrophe or a new ribbon.

Elizabeth smiled. Her last morning as Elizabeth Bennet. The thought was both enormous and strangely ordinary. She rose and went to the window. Beyond the glass lay the path she had walked a thousand times. The hedge. The kitchen garden. The distant line of trees beyond which, out of sight, was the lane where she had found Darcy.

Three months earlier she had knelt in mud beside a man she disliked and promised to marry him to keep him from moving a broken leg. Today she would make the same promise in church because she loved him. Life had a sense of humour she could only admire.

Jane entered wearing her wrapper, hair loose down her back. “You are awake.”

“So are you.”

“I have been awake for an hour.”

“Nervous?”

Jane smiled. “Yes.”

Elizabeth turned. “You admit it?”

“I have learned from Mr. Darcy.”