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“You know me well enough to know that nothing untoward happened in your study. I have since come into possession of information that proves Elizabeth’s total innocence of any ill intent. I am sorry I cannot give you the details, but it is so.”

Bingley looked up with hope sparking in his eyes. “You are certain of that?”

“Entirely. Though I am not in a position to share the proof with you, Bingley, there is not the slightest doubt. I give you my word.” He held his friend’s gaze steadily. “I have not always given you sound guidance on this matter. I am giving it now. Whatever has been circulating through the neighbourhood about the Bennet family is not a reason to hold back from Jane Bennet. She is an excellent woman, and you are a better man in her company than out of it. I believe you would be very happy together.”

Bingley set down the cup. He stared thoughtfully out the window, seeming like a man who strives to work through a difficult puzzle — and finds, in the end, that the answer is much simpler than he feared.

“She has not encouraged anyone else,” he mused.

“No,” Darcy said. “She has not.”

“She has been — I have seen her at the assemblies, and she has been —” He stopped, collected his thoughts, and continued. “She is too well-mannered to show it openly. But I think she has been waiting,” Bingley said.

“I believe she has.”

Bingley looked at him for one moment longer. Then he straightened in his chair, and something in the set of him changed entirely. His hesitation was gone; his smile brilliant. “I will call this afternoon,” he said.

“Good.”

“Will you —” Bingley began.

“I will follow later,” Darcy said reassuringly. “Give it an hour.”

Bingley nodded. He reached for his tea, found it had gone cold, and stood instead. “I should get ready,” he said. His friend appeared as if he suddenly found he had a great deal to do, and left the breakfast room with a decisive energy he had not possessed in weeks.

Darcy poured himself a second cup of tea and drank it in the quiet of the empty room, entirely content.

∞∞∞

Bingley rode out at half-past two.

Darcy watched him from the library window and waited the hour he had promised. Then he rode to Longbourn himself. Not only was there the incentive of witnessing his friend’s happiness, but better still, there was the incentive of Elizabeth’s company.

He was shown into the drawing room, where the scene that met him required a moment to fully apprehend.

Mrs Bennet was on the sofa, her handkerchief deployed, producing sounds that were in the region of weeping, but were fundamentally joyful. Kitty Bennet was beside her, tearful in sympathy. Mary Bennet stood near the bookcase with the expression of someone who had not anticipated having feelings about the occasion and was discovering that she did with considerable surprise.

Jane Bennet was standing near the window with Bingley, in the manner of people who have just said the essential things and are still in the warmth of having said them. Miss Bennet’s face had the expression Darcy had seen once before, briefly, in early November, before painful uncertainty had taught her to hold it back. It was now present without reservation, and it was truly radiant. As if the declarations of feeling had enhanced her loveliness tenfold.

Bingley, beside her, looked like a man who could not quite believe his own good fortune and had decided to accept it entirely rather than examine it too closely. Darcy thought it was likely the correct approach. It was certainly the one he intended to take himself.

Elizabeth was at the far end of the room.

She turned when he entered and he saw her face in the unguarded moment before she had composed it for company, and what was there was not the careful management of recent weeks, not the pleasantness that had covered everything, not the composed brightness of a woman performing ease she did not feel. It was simply joy, clear and entire. The joy of someone for whom another person’s happiness is, in the moment, wholly sufficient.

She crossed toward him. Her eyes were bright, and she said very quietly, “You spoke to him.”

“This morning,” Darcy said, smiling. The good humour of the room was contagious, and he had no desire to hide his own satisfaction.

She looked at him for a moment, and then back at Jane, and then at him again with an expression of pure gratitude. “Thank you,” she said.

Mrs Bennet, upon registering his presence, descended upon him with an enthusiasm that was well-intentioned, if rather uncomfortable. He bore it with the equanimity he had been developing for that lady since November, and said the appropriate things about how delighted he was, and how well Bingley looked, and how he hoped the day found everyone in good health.

It found everyone in excellent health, Mrs Bennet confirmed at length. Everyone was very well, everything was wonderful, everything was exactly as she had always known it would be, and how astonishing that Mr Bingley had proposed this very afternoon, and was it not the most wonderful thing, and would he take some tea?

Darcy took the tea.

He sat with it, and talked when talking was required, and watched Elizabeth across the room where she had settled beside her eldest sister. He observed the two of them together — the quality of their closeness, the things communicated in a glance that would have required several sentences from anyone else — and thought about what Elizabeth had sacrificed and carried alone to preserve this. The proof held and not used, not once, while the engagement pressed down on her and the neighbourhood talked and Caroline Bingley circulated interpretations designed to damage. All of it. For this room, this afternoon, that expression on Jane’s face.