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Over their early dinner she described Charlotte's table. The account had the quality he had missed most in her letters: she could make a small domestic grievance expose the entire character of the person enduring it, including her own. By the time she reached the piece of wood under the leg, Darcy had begun to laugh.

“You attempted to improve a woman who had calculated the cost of improvement,” he said.

“I was advocating beauty.”

“An expensive principle to introduce after the sums have been settled.”

Elizabeth regarded him over her glass. “You have acquired a most objectionable sympathy with Charlotte.”

“I have always respected economy when other people practise it.”

That made her laugh in turn, with enough surprise to encourage him. He asked about the house, listening while she distinguished what Charlotte had chosen from what she herself would have preferred. When he suggested that the awkward cupboard might be altered, Elizabeth asked who was to pay the carpenter. He conceded the point without sending for one.

After dinner they returned to the sitting-room. The afternoon had lengthened into the hour at which he had intended to leave. His hat was somewhere in the hall, the carriage available at his direction, and the desire to remain had become strong enough to make him distrust every possible way of expressing it.

“I should like to stay,” he said at last.

Elizabeth looked up. He had spoken too abruptly, but at least the words concealed no proposed improvement to her comfort.

“Tonight?”

“If you would welcome it. If not, I shall go as we arranged.” He stopped before adding that the inn was a poor place to spend an evening. It had been good enough when he planned it, and its beds had not worsened because he wanted her.

She set aside her work. Darcy watched her consider, fighting the impulse to fill the interval with reasons. At last she asked what time he would leave the following day if he stayed.

“Whenever would suit you.”

“Ten,” she said. “I have promised to walk with the housekeeper to look at something for the kitchen garden. You would find it intolerably dull.”

He doubted that. He accepted the hour without offering to improve the excursion by accompanying it.

Elizabeth rose and rang. Only then did the housekeeper receive instructions to prepare a guest room and send to the inn for what he would need. The coachman would lodge at the inn. Darcy gave the man the altered hour of departure himself. The carriage would come for him in the morning because Elizabeth had invited its owner to stay, not because some difficulty had been discovered in removing him.

When they were alone again, she stood beside the window. “I am asking you to stay tonight. I am not saying that we have settled where I shall live.”

“I know.” He had wanted her to change that decision all afternoon. He could still accept the one she had made. “Thank you for inviting me.”

* * *

The household grew quieter around them. They sat together while the last light left the windows, speaking at intervals and allowing the intervals to remain. He found that Elizabeth sometimes wished to say something only after several minutes in which no one required her attention.

She told him that her first hours alone at Ashbourne had been miserable, before the bench. The admission surprised him enough that he almost said her letter had not read so. He stopped. Her lonely afternoon did not prove she should have remained with him.

“Jane had gone,” she said. “I had wanted to be alone. It seemed very ungrateful to discover I disliked it.”

“Was the next afternoon better?”

“Different. That was enough.” Elizabeth drew her feet back from the edge of the hearth. “I have had some very pleasant days here.”

“I am glad.” Darcy meant it and disliked it, both with a force which made him look at his hands. Then he told her so, because she had been candid and deserved something less polished in return.

She smiled faintly. “I think I can bear your being a little displeased.”

He looked up. It was the gentlest account of what he must learn that she had ever given him. He reached towards her, stopping short of taking her hand until she put it in his. The touch was familiar; the waiting was not. He could feel how badly he wanted the evening to continue and how little that desire told him of what she wished.

Elizabeth moved nearer and kissed him. He answered with care, then drew back sufficiently to see her face. She was smiling now, though her eyes shone in a manner which made his own throat tighten.

“I want you here,” she said. “You need not persuade me to change my mind.”