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“What would you have expected?” Mr Darcy asked curiously.

“Well…someone who was certain to let me know who he was, and who expected to be deferred to because of it.”

Mr Darcy’s smile faded away. “Like me?” he said softly.

Elizabeth looked at him until she couldn’t hold his gaze anymore. “I do not believe that you are like that,” she said with some difficulty.

“You did at one point. Not without reason,” he allowed.

“Well, as I told your uncle, I am endeavouring to improve in some areas,” she said, uncomfortably aware that she had precisely no control over this conversation at the moment.

He watched her for a moment, then seemed to take pity on her, and started walking along the path she had just come down with his uncle, giving her time to follow. “Have you heard from Miss Mary?” he asked.

Elizabeth took a deep breath, relieved to move the conversation to more predictable ground. She told him of Mary’s assessment that there was less gossip, then the evidence she provided, which indicated that there was actually more.

“Did she have anything else to report?” he asked, frowning.

Elizabeth smiled slightly. “Only that Lydia is making everyone quite miserable with her complaints about the militia leaving. I confess I am not unhappy to be here and out of her range.”

“The departure of the militia will help matters,” Mr Darcy said, though Elizabeth noticed he did not seem overly convinced of this. She bit her lip, then broached a topic she had been meaning to raise with her for some time. It seemed the day for such conversations.

“Mr Darcy,” she said, “there is something I have been meaning to ask you for some time. Before the night of the ball, when Jane and Mr Bingley were still very much in each other’s company, I had the distinct impression that you disapproved of the…the growing connection between them.” She kept her eyes forward and her tone even, though she knew that the question was uncomfortable. “But despite this engagement, and all that has occurred, it has become rather apparent on this visit that the…rapport between them has not changed, and if our plan succeeds and Mr Bingley and I are extricated from our engagement, Mr Bingley will likely marry Jane.” She looked at him, finally, as she said it, wanting to see his face. He did not look away.

“I know,” Mr Darcy said simply.

“Do you still disapprove?” she asked. “It would be rather ironic if you went to such lengths to free your friend from a match you deplore, only to see him immediately contract another such.”

He was silent for a moment. “I did disapprove once,” he allowed, with the directness that she had come to expect from him, and to value more than she could have predicted. “I thought — that is, I believed that Miss Bennet’s regard was less sincere than Bingley’s, and her feelings not so deeply engaged, and that the connection would therefore not serve him well.” He hesitated again and looked up at her. “But I came to realise that I had made that conclusion with insufficient evidence, and that I was wrong.”

Elizabeth pinkened, disarmed both by his reference to her earlier words to his uncle and to the unqualified admission of his own misapprehension. “When did you know you were wrong?” she asked.

“The night of the ball,” Mr Darcy said, “when I saw your sister’s face after the proposal. Before, I had been quite certain that I was correct in my belief regarding her feelings toward him, but at that moment, I was equally certain that I was wrong.”

Elizabeth absorbed this in silence. It was not at all comfortable to have been so certain, and then to find oneself so very wrong. That he could say so without dressing it up as anything but a mistake was greatly to his credit. “Then you will not oppose the match,” she said, “if we can manage to set things right?”

“To the contrary, I will do everything in my power to assist my friend and your sister, for they deserve to be happy,” he said, and Elizabeth believed him.

“We must find a way, then,” Elizabeth said.

“We must,” he agreed, his eyes moving thoughtfully over her face.

They had reached the steps, and paused at the foot of them. The light had shifted and grown warmer as the morning progressed, and it lay in bright strips along the length of the garden, painting a path down toward the stream glinting between the trees.

She looked down to the stream, then back to Mr Darcy, who was looking out with the expression of one whose thoughts are far away. He was, she thought, quite astonishingly handsome in the spring light.

Elizabeth pulled her gaze away and reminded herself of several important points in rapid succession: that they were allies and nothing else, that he thought her family quite unsuitable, that she was technically engaged to his best friend, and that even if none of these situations applied, he had never given her any indication that he saw her as… Well, she didn’t see him as anything besides the allies they were, so it hardly mattered.

“We should probably go in,” she said, with rather more composure than she felt. “Your uncle will wonder where we are.”

“He will not,” Mr Darcy said, smiling faintly. “My uncle never wonders. He simply waits and eventually learns all he wants to know.”

Elizabeth laughed a little at that, surprising a pleased look from him, and started back toward the house. Mr Darcy accompanied her up the stairs, then held the door for her, and she was quite careful not to look at him as she stepped through.

Chapter 17

A small fire flickered in the grate, more for the pleasure of the flames than for protection against the mild spring air. As the hour had grown late, the house had taken on the stillness of a place that had completed the business of the day and had now composed itself for rest. The ladies had gone up more than three hours earlier, and the older gentlemen had followed them after joining the younger in a glass of imported spirits. Darcy, Fitzwilliam, and Bingley still remained, ensconced by the fireplace in the library. The brandy decanter Darcy had brought from his study was considerably lighter than it had been at the start of the evening, and the conversation had grown correspondingly less guarded.

“Three weeks,” Fitzwilliam was saying, an unaccustomed bitterness in his usually even voice. “Three weeks, then it’s back to it. Bonaparte does not take into account a man’s desire to spend the summer with his friends, more’s the pity. The papers print only what will keep the drawing rooms calm in London, which is a poor policy for anyone actually wishing to understand the situation on the Continent. It will end well — I believe that thoroughly — but it will not end soon, and a great many good men will not see the end of it at all.” He spoke without fear or self-pity, his voice carrying only the calm certainty with which a seasoned professional discusses the conditions of his trade.