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Her sisters went quiet. Mrs Bennet sat down on the sofa, got up again, and then sat down once more with a cushion pulled into her lap.

“Well, and what if it was? It was never meant for you, Lizzy. I would never do such a thing to you. It was meant for Mr Collins and Charlotte Lucas.”

“Charlotte!” cried Lydia.

“And why not Charlotte? She is seven-and-twenty and she wants a husband. He wants a wife, and I am sure he does not care which one. I have been meaning all week to shut him up somewhere with some young lady or other, only I could not think who. Then last night you told me what Charlotte said to you, that you were ungrateful and she would have been glad of him. I saw at once it was the very thing. They will suit each other perfectly.”

Elizabeth remembered her mother's sleeve lying across the list the night before, and the line at the bottom she had not been able to read.

“Then why did you shut the door, when you saw it was me who went in?”

“I did not shut it! I was not even there. I had gone to fetch Charlotte. I was going to tell her that I heard a child crying in the cellar and to ask her to check. But I could not find her. I hurried about rather quickly and then the boy I had tasked with shutting you in found me and told me that it was done.” She exhaled. “I thought it was all done, that Charlotte had found her own way there by happenstance, so I rallied the crowd toward the cellar – under the guise of rescuing the child. But the boy, that silly boy … he had the wrong woman!”

“What boy?”

“One of the stable boys from Netherfield that was sent down to help with horses. I gave him a shilling and promised him another. He was to watch the door, and the minute he saw Charlotte go in, he was to put the bar across.”

“Did he know me? Or Charlotte?”

“How should he? I told him to look for a young lady of middling height, with brown hair and a sensible face. How was I to know there would be two of you? And that Charlotte should use this moment to go milling about?” Some of her usual spirit came back into her voice. “But what were you doing down there, Lizzy? You had no business in the cellar at all.”

“That does not matter now.”

“It does not matter in the least,” said Mary. She had taken the chair by the window and folded her hands in her lap. “Nothing matters except that Lizzy was shut in a cellar with Mr Darcy, and half of Meryton saw them come out. There is only one thing to be done. They must marry.”

“No.” Elizabeth's voice came out louder than she meant it to. “I will not.”

“But Lizzy, you must,” said Kitty.

“If he will even offer,” Mary said.

“He will have no choice,” Mrs Bennet replied. “And Lizzy must accept when he does.”

“I must do nothing of the kind. I have done nothing wrong. I went down a flight of steps, and somebody shut a door behind me. I will not be married for that.”

Her father stood by the fireplace with one hand on the mantelpiece. He had not said a word since they came in. Now he spoke.

“Nobody in this room thinks you did anything wrong, Lizzy. That is not the trouble.”

“Then what is?”

“Mrs Long.” He did not smile. “And everyone Mrs Long talks to between now and Sunday, and everyone they talk to after that. You know our neighbours. By the end of the week you will have been meeting Mr Darcy in that cellar since Michaelmas.”

“Papa...”

“Let me finish. If you refuse him, who will have you? No sensible man wants a wife who has been talked about like this. And it will not stop with you. Mary and Kitty and Lydia will be the sisters of the girl who was found in the cellar. Their chances were never very good. After today they will be a great deal worse.” He paused. “Then there is Bingley. He married into this family knowing exactly what we are, and we are not the easiest relations a young man could have. I should not like to repay him with a scandal before Jane has been his wife a single day.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth to argue, and closed it again. There was nothing to argue with. She had known it on the cellar stair, the moment the door swung open on all those faces. She had only not wanted to know it.

Lydia, for once, had nothing to say. Kitty picked at a loose thread on her sleeve.

Elizabeth went to the window and stood with her back to the room. Down below, the guests were going back into the house in twos and threes, with their heads close together. Mr Darcy was not among them.

She would rather have married Mr Collins. She told herself so, very firmly.

It was not quite true. For a day or two she had let herself believe there might be more to Mr Darcy than she had ever given him credit for. He had spoken up for Mr Bingley so warmly on the Meryton road. He had gone after the actress with her and made the woman tell the truth. He had looked at her in the vestry as though her good opinion were worth having. If he had come to her then, and asked her properly, in a drawing room and not a cellar, she was not sure she would have said no.

But he had not come to her then. He had come to her in the dark, and told her in the same breath that he had meant to part Jane from Bingley a second time and that he cared for her a great deal. He was exactly the man she had always thought him. Miss Bingley had only reminded her of it.