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“Who?” Jane asked quietly.

“I cannot tell you that.”

Jane absorbed this. “Because you do not trust me with it?”

“Because I trust you completely, and because telling you would make you responsible for knowing it. It is bad enough that I know.” Elizabeth looked at her. “I am sorry. I know that is not satisfying.”

“It is not,” Jane said honestly. “But I understand it.” She was quiet for a moment. “You cannot use the information to ease your discontent?”

“No. I must not. The cost would be too high.” Elizabeth paused, choosing her words carefully. “It is not enough to know what happened and how. To clear my reputation, I would have to prove it.”

“Surely you could do that if you know the guilty party,” Jane said.

“I believe I could,” Elizabeth said heavily. “The problem lies in what would happen if I did. The damage would be devastating. Some would fall to a guilty party, but would be still worse than they could deserve. Worse still, some would fall to the innocent. I cannot do that. Not for my own freedom.”

“Even though your own freedom —” Jane took a breath. “Even though the cost to you is considerable.”

“Even then.”

“Lizzy. You have been carrying this alone for much too long.” Jane looked at her with a blend of sorrow and reproach. “You might have told me sooner.”

“I did not want to distress you.”

“You did not want to burden me.” Jane made a slight sound that was not quite a laugh. “Which is a different thing, and I wish you would stop doing it.”

“It is rather ingrained,” Elizabeth said.

Jane looked down at her hands. When she looked up again, her expression had settled into something steadier. “And Mr Darcy? Does he know any of this?”

“He knows the investigation has stalled. He does not know why,” Elizabeth paused. “I told him I thought we had exhausted the lines of inquiry.”

“Which was not true.”

Elizabeth felt guilt rise up in her chest. “No, it was not.”

“So he believes the matter unresolved.”

“Yes.”

Jane was quiet for a long moment. “He has behaved well throughout all of this, I think,” she said.

“He has behaved,” Elizabeth said carefully, as if her words were fragile, “with more consideration than the situation required of him. That is all I will say.”

“That is not all you could say,” Jane observed mildly.

“No, but it is all I am going to.”

“You are very sure?” Jane pressed gently.

Elizabeth looked away, not wanting her sister to see the tears rising in her eyes. “I am. I must be. Because any alternative would cost more than it would gain. Because —”

She stopped.

“Because?” Jane asked.

“Because I made a decision and I am holding to it.” She heard the incompleteness of this and did not supply the rest, and Jane, who heard it too, did not press. That was the mercy of being known very well by someone who also loved you.

Jane looked at her hands in her lap. Outside, a robin appeared on a near hedge, alert and briefly vivid.