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Lady Catherine arrived after luncheon with the conviction that prompt obedience would have saved everyone the inconvenience of discussion. She accepted the best chair, inspected Elizabeth's dress and enquired whether the household was prepared to travel. Darcy remained beside the fireplace. Elizabeth sat opposite his aunt, her hands resting quietly in her lap.

“There is no journey agreed,” she said.

Lady Catherine looked towards her nephew. “I had understood you were taking the necessary steps.”

“I have read your letter,” Elizabeth said before Darcy could answer. “I should like to know what you believe you have discovered.”

Her ladyship's attention returned to her with visible reluctance. She spoke of questions which ought never to have arisen, of the unfortunate intimacy between two young women ill qualified to judge their own interests and of the duty of a husband to exert a proper influence. Elizabeth allowed the speech to continue until the earlier report was mentioned. A man near the embankment, where Mr. Collins had been carried in the dark to make the accident credible, had seen a lantern at an hour which did not agree comfortably with the story of an accident.

“Did you see it yourself?” Elizabeth asked.

“Do you suggest that I am in the habit of walking about my estate at night?”

“No. I wish to distinguish what you saw from what was told to you.”

Lady Catherine drew herself higher in the chair. “I have had an account from a person who was there. I have no reason to suppose him dishonest.”

“What did he see besides a light?”

“I shall not submit my enquiries to your examination.”

“Then you cannot expect me to treat your conclusions as if I had examined them.” Elizabeth heard the steadiness of her own voice with a distant surprise. Beneath the quiet surface her stomach had tightened so painfully that she was afraid to move. Charlotte was not in the room. Every question must be asked without letting Lady Catherine make her absent friend into the answer.

Darcy stepped forward. “My aunt's letter proposes arrangements which concern us both. They cannot be imposed upon my wife without my agreement.”

Elizabeth turned towards him. “Or mine.”

He looked at her, and in the pause Lady Catherine found a grievance she preferred to questions about her evidence.

“This is precisely the spirit I have warned you against. A young wife who imagines that every reasonable precaution is an affront will bring misery upon herself and everyone connected with her.”

“Your precaution is to separate me from Mrs. Collins.”

“Mrs. Collins would be far better under my care. Her present position is most unsuitable. You would do her a service by ceasing to encourage notions which can only increase her difficulties.”

Elizabeth remembered Charlotte laughing about the curtains, then saying she wished to choose where she went. Lady Catherine would count the laughter as ingratitude and the wish as folly. There was no form of Charlotte's answer which could satisfy someone who objected to her having one.

“I will not answer for her,” Elizabeth said. “For myself, I decline the journey.”

Darcy made a small movement towards her. She met his eyes, refusing the wordless invitation to leave the matter in his hands. He stopped. Lady Catherine rose, and the conversation ended not because agreement had been reached but because she could not remain seated while being refused by someone she thought ought to stand.

Her parting remarks concerned consequences. She described none precisely enough for Elizabeth to answer, and departed with Darcy attending her to the hall. Elizabeth stayed where she was until she heard the outer door close. Only then did she discover that her fingers hurt from their pressure against one another.

* * *

Darcy returned to find her standing beside the window. Outside, a servant was helping Lady Catherine into her carriage with the patience employed throughout London for people who believed haste entitled them to delay everyone else. Elizabeth watched until the vehicle moved away.

“I shall have the preparations stopped,” Darcy said.

“Yes.” She turned from the window. “I am going to my aunt's.”

He stared at her. She had never seen him take quite so long to understand a plain sentence. She had not known the sentence was ready until she heard it. Her hands had gone cold, and she had no wish to take it back.

His first question concerned the hour, as if punctuality were the remaining difficulty. Elizabeth told him she meant to go as soon as her aunt could receive her, the next day if the room was ready. He crossed to the table and put his hand upon the back of her empty chair.

“You would leave because I ordered a trunk packed?”

“No. I would leave because you heard me ask to be consulted and decided that preparing my departure without telling me was compatible with it.” Her throat ached. She kept her hands at her sides because she did not trust them to remain still. “You mean to protect me from your aunt by doing what she recommends. Where in that arrangement am I allowed to refuse either of you?”