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A carrier summoned through the housekeeper came to the hall. Charlotte gave him the packet, the direction of the Colonel's separate lodgings and instructions to obtain an acknowledgement of delivery. She kept his written receipt.

At the front steps she turned once towards the house. “The chair has not arrived,” she said.

Elizabeth did not understand until Charlotte gave a small, tired laugh. She explained the improvement ordered without her asking. Then she stepped into her hired carriage, and Elizabeth followed her. Behind them the housekeeper closed the door upon the remaining furniture.

* * *

That evening there were too many people at supper and insufficient room for the dishes. Mrs. Gardiner apologised for neither circumstance. Sir William had taken lodgings nearby for his visit and stayed to eat; Charlotte answered his questions about the immediate arrangements, then asked him after her mother. Jane passed bread to Elizabeth without remarking that she had scarcely touched what was on her plate.

The meal was noisy and kind. Elizabeth found herself listening for a footstep which would not come. When someone paused outside the parlour, she turned so quickly that Jane noticed, and the shame of it made her look away.

Later, upstairs, Jane helped her unpack the travelling bag. Elizabeth took out the novel and found a loose thread from Darcy's chair caught against the binding. She pulled it free before her sister could ask what had made her stop. Jane set the empty bag aside and sat beside her on the bed. “You needn't be pleased every moment.”

“I wanted to go. I still want to be here.” Elizabeth pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “And I keep expecting him to come into the room.”

“You have been living with him. It would be strange if you forgot him between breakfast and supper.” Jane drew one of Elizabeth's hands down and held it. “You may miss him tonight. You needn't decide anything more because of it.”

Elizabeth leaned against her sister. The room smelled of the soap Jane used, and somebody had left a child's stocking on the chair beneath the clean towels. She looked at it until she could breathe without the ache catching. This was not the life she had imagined on her wedding day. Neither had that day been one she could willingly imagine again.

Before bed she went down to her uncle and asked that no account of her movements be sent to Darcy. Gardiner agreed without requiring her to justify the request. A letter from her husband had arrived during supper. He showed it to her, the seal intact, and asked whether she wished to take it.

“Not tonight,” she said.

He put it in the small desk at her request. Elizabeth watched the drawer close, then went upstairs to Jane.

CHAPTER 8

DARCY

Darcy had the second place removed from the breakfast-table on Saturday, then found himself looking at the space where it had been. The servant had done exactly what he asked. There was no fault to correct, and no reason to ring again.

Elizabeth had disliked the quantity of silver laid out for a meal at which she generally wanted only toast. He remembered her asking whether the sugar required two attendants or merely enjoyed their company. At the time he had been amused, then occupied with answering a letter, and had failed to remember her precise expression. Now he tried to recover it and found only the image of her entering the hired carriage.

He could have offered his own. He had nearly done so, though the means of leaving was hardly the deficiency in an arrangement whose entire purpose displeased him. Instead he had watched another man's driver take her bag, and stood while she passed him without touching his hand.

His letter sent the previous evening had received no answer. He had asked for a few minutes' conversation, nothing more. Even now the modesty of that request presented itself as a reason he might repeat it. She was half an hour away, perhaps less, in a house whose occupants would admit him with the courtesy due to their niece's husband. He knew exactly how he could reach her, and the knowledge had kept him awake longer than any uncertainty.

He took a fresh sheet of paper into the library and wrote an invitation to walk with him on Sunday. The sentence was restrained. He read it twice, looking for an offence which would justify destroying it, and found none that could be located in the wording. She had asked for time without having to refuse the next thing he arranged. He was proposing to occupy the following morning.

Darcy folded the sheet and put it in a drawer, unsent. The decision brought no relief. He wanted her to read it, wanted the turn of her head when he made an observation she enjoyed, wanted to be forgiven before he had learnt how to behave in a house where forgiveness could not be requested as promptly as a carriage.

When the servant announced Colonel Fitzwilliam, he was still standing beside the desk.

* * *

Richard entered without his customary enquiry after the household. He had been to Brook Street that morning and found Charlotte gone. The housekeeper had given him her message. Her belongings had been removed, a packet was being returned to him and no one appeared to have thought it necessary to consult him.

“She has gone to the Gardiners,” he said. “I assume your wife has contrived it.”

“Mrs. Collins has a father. She is capable of making arrangements with him.”

Richard stopped before the fireplace. “Have you spoken to Sir William?”

“No.” Darcy would not improve a guess into information merely because it might strengthen his answer. “I have no account of her departure beyond what you have just told me.”

His cousin looked at him more closely. “Elizabeth is there too.”

Darcy inclined his head. Richard sat down with a sharp exhalation, as if a difficulty which had appeared personal could now be approached with the assistance of a fellow sufferer.