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The anteroom was small and lit by a collection of candles on a side table. Then there was a settee, two chairs, and a window that looked onto the street. It was empty, for now, though the noise from the assembly drifted through the open doorway, reminding them that they were not truly alone.

Mr Darcy turned to face her.

“I am sorry,” he said. “For what you were subjected to this evening. That should not have happened.”

“You did not invite her.”

“No. But her objection is not surprising, and her methods were —” He stopped and selected something more accurate, or perhaps more genteel, than whatever he had been going to say. “She should not have spoken to you that way. Not here. Not in that manner. Whatever her opinion of the match, it was not her right.”

“Her opinion of the match appears to be shared by a number of people whose opinions carry weight.” Elizabeth kept her voice light, because the alternative was something she was not prepared to admit in an anteroom. “I am not unaware of that.”

“What she thinks,” Mr Darcy said, with a precision that suggested he had considered every word before releasing it, “does not determine what is true, or what is right. Still less what is mine to decide.”

“I do not want you to think,” he continued, more quietly, “that her view of this is mine. That her assessment of you —” He paused again. Something moved in his expression that he was not, this time, entirely quick enough to clear. “It is not mine. It is not accurate. And I am sorry that you had to stand in that room and hear such views.”

The careful distance he maintained was still there. He stood two paces away, the distance of propriety, the distance he always kept, but his expression was not the composed evenness she had grown accustomed to reading as his ordinary state. For the first time she could remember, he was obviously pained.

“You defended the engagement,” Elizabeth said softly.

“Yes.”

“You did not have to do it so directly.”

“I disagree,” he countered, flat and certain. “I did.”

“And you said —” Elizabeth stopped. She had been going to say, you said I was your decision, because that was what the words had meant, and she had been turning them over since he spoke them. Standing in a cold anteroom with the candles perfectly still, she found she wanted to hear what he would say if she said it back to him. But she did not, because she was managing herself very carefully. She did not trust what she might say next.

So, she said instead, “Thank you. For what you said. And for —” She gestured, slightly, at the anteroom. “This.”

“Are you all right?” He said it directly, without the social preamble the question usually carried. Not I hope you are well. Just the question, plainly, as though he actually wanted the answer.

She considered giving him an accurate answer. She looked at the candles and thought about what accuracy would require and what it would cost, and arrived at a version that was more honest than what she would have given anyone else but Jane.

“I will be,” she said, which was as close to the truth as she could manage.

Mr Darcy received this in silence for a moment. “That is not quite the same as yes,” he said.

“No,” she said. “It is not.”

They stood in the anteroom with the assembly noise around the edges and the candles between them, and neither of them said anything further. It was not comfortable, exactly, but it was something that sat between endurance and its opposite, in the space she had not yet learned to name.

“We should go back,” Elizabeth said at last.

“Yes.” He did not move immediately. “Miss Elizabeth.”

She looked at him, waiting.

“For what it is worth,” he said carefully, “Lady Catherine has never been a reliable judge of what I value.”

“That is worth a great deal,” Elizabeth replied quietly.

Mr Darcy offered his arm, and they returned to the assembly. But Elizabeth felt the pressure of his arm and his words all the way across the room, and she spent the rest of the evening being pleasant to everyone and thinking about nothing else.

∞∞∞

Caroline had watched Lady Catherine’s dramatic arrival with careful, focused attention. What followed, she suspected, would be as relevant for her campaign as any news of troop movements towards the front or political upheaval in Paris could be for the struggle against Napoleon.

What she had observed was considerable. She had catalogued the position of the room when Lady Catherine entered, the quality of the silence, the shape of attention, and Mr Darcy’s defence of the engagement. His behaviour was composure and nothing more; she would not assign it a warmth it did not contain. He had stated the fact of the engagement and defended it from interference. That much was surely duty, not attachment — it must be so. He would have done the same for any commitment he had made. Honour was not affection, and Mr Darcy was nothing if not honourable.