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“I — I am so sorry, madam—”

“Sorry!” Mrs Hurst repeated, her voice sharp with indignation. “Sorry will not restore this gown. It is quite ruined. It is silk. Look what you have done to it!”

Elizabeth felt a tightening in her chest. She had seen the moment clearly: the careless movement, the inevitable consequence.

The maid had been at fault only in being young and inexperienced. The girl’s lower lip moved. She was holding herself very still, trying desperately not to cry. A frozen, uncomfortable silence fell over the table as Mrs Hurst drew in a sharp breath to continue berating the girl.

“I beg your pardon.” Elizabeth’s voice was clear and calm. “It was my fault entirely. I reached for the salt and must have disturbed her tray without realising it. I am sorry, Mrs Hurst — if it cannot be cleaned adequately, please do send a bill to my father.”

Every guest at the table looked at her. Mrs Hurst blinked in surprise, her anger suddenly interrupted. The housemaid stared at her, looking as much terrified as grateful.

“It was —” Mrs Hurst began.

“Entirely my fault,” Elizabeth repeated, pleasantly and with absolute finality, and picked up her fork.

There was a tenuous beat of silence to see if anything further would transpire from the incident. When Mrs Hurst turned her attention away from the girl and to the tending of her stained sleeve, the conversation resumed, filling the space left by the incident with smooth efficiency.

The housemaid withdrew from the room with her tray, and supper continued.

∞∞∞

Darcy had seen it all.

He had seen Mrs Hurst’s sleeve catch the glass, had seen the wine spill, and watched the girl’s face crumple in distress. From his position down the table, he had observed the entire sequence, from Mrs Hurst’s quiet viciousness to Elizabeth’s intervention, with a degree of intensity he was glad no one else had noticed.

He set down his own fork and picked it up again, and said nothing. There was nothing he could usefully say, and because anything he said would draw attention to Elizabeth’s fiction and undo the thing she had done.

But he thought about it.

He thought about it during the remainder of the fish course and throughout the meat. Though Darcy noted absently that it had been cooked as flawlessly as his own cook at Pemberley could have done, he hardly tasted it.

Other things were of greater importance — of consuming importance. Elizabeth had not hesitated. A few words, an assumption of blame for something that was not her fault, a bill that would probably never be sent, and the incident was soon forgotten. But there had been no calculation visible in it, no pause for assessment. She had seen the thing happening and had simply stopped it in the most efficient way available to her and had returned to her supper.

Darcy knew he was cataloguing her virtues with a thoroughness that was not entirely consistent with the careful distance he had been maintaining. He was not sure when he had begun to do it. Even aware of it as he was now, he did not stop.

After supper, the party moved to the drawing room. Georgiana was persuaded to play, which required very little persuasion. She went to the instrument with the relief of someone who has been making conversation for three hours and is ready to let music do it instead. As always, she played well.

Elizabeth was standing near the window when Darcy came to stand beside her.

“Your sister plays beautifully,” she said lightly, entirely free from calculation or flattery.

He swept his gaze to his sister. “She does,” he said. “She has worked very hard at it.”

“It does not sound like work.”

“No,” he said, returning his attention to Elizabeth. “That is how you know how hard the work has been.”

She glanced at him with a quizzical expression, a slight crease between her brows, as if she were assessing him anew. It ought to have made him uncomfortable, her scrutiny, yet it did not.

Elizabeth gestured to Georgiana, who positively glowed as she played. “She seems happy this evening.”

“She is.” Darcy paused, weighing briefly the risk of sharing more. “As am I. She was nervous about meeting you.”

Elizabeth looked at him expectantly.

“She need not have been,” he said, hoping and believing that Elizabeth would understand what he had left unsaid.

She smiled and turned back to the music. Georgiana’s playing filled the room, soaring and beautiful.