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“I am sure you did not trust Mr. Wickham most of your life, sir,” she sounded almost sarcastic.

“No, but I trusted myself,” Darcy explained, “which I am beginning to learn is a good deal worse.”

There was a pause. Somewhere in the great house behind them, a door opened and closed. Neither of them stirred. It is the oddest thing, thought Elizabeth. They stood in a garden in the dark with a wall between them and the world, and they talked. They talked of pride and prejudice as one talks of an old illness, with the dry curious candour of people who have each been ill of it.

She told him that she had been quick to think the worst, and he told her that he had been slow to think at all. She said that it was dangerous to be too sure of a thing, and he said that it was more dangerous still to be sure of oneself. They did not agree upon everything. When he said that a man of feeling must be allowed to err, she told him with some sharpness that it was a poor excuse, and he laughed, a short, startled laugh, and said that it was.

When she said that a woman had not the leisure to be as wrong as a man, he was silent a moment, and answered gravely that he had not thought of it, and thought of it now. Perhaps a quarter of an hour had passed, but it felt like a great deal longer, and a great deal shorter. She had the odd and persistent impression that she was standing upon a floor she had not trusted, and that it was bearing her weight.

For a moment, they were almost comfortable. Then the stable-clock struck again, a single note, and she remembered where she was, and who he was, and that this was a man to whom she had said, in a lighted room, in his full hearing, the last man in the world.

“There is still my sister,” she said suddenly.

“I know.” His voice was low. “I should like to speak with Bingley on that account.” And then, he was silent; they both were. And then, after some time passed, he said, very quietly, and without looking at her, “I should like to walk you back to the house.” The request was such a small thing, and it was so entirely, so plainly, the smallest thing that a man could ask, and she found she could not refuse it.

“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “That would be quite proper.”

He offered his arm. Elizabeth thought his arm felt stiff, awkward, formal; he held it out at a careful angle, with the forearm level and the hand open. She looked at it for a moment. Then she laid her fingers on it, lightly, as one touches something that might be hot, and felt the muscle go rigid beneath her hand.

They went up the gravel together, slowly, not speaking, with the moon coming out again over the yews. She could feel the warmth of his sleeve through her glove. She was aware of his step, which was shorter than his usual stride, shortened to hers; she was aware that he was breathing carefully, as one breathes when carrying something full to the brim.

At the foot of the eleven steps, in the shadow of the terrace, she took her hand away. She did it quite quietly; though, it was not a rejection but only the plain, tactful, honest withdrawal of a person who has been lent a thing for a purpose and has now accomplished the purpose. He understood at once. He did not so much as look at his arm. He inclined his head. “Good night, Miss Bennet.”

“Good night, Mr. Darcy,” she said calmly before turning to enter the parsonage.

Neither of them mistook it for a promise. She went up the steps alone, and in at the lighted door, and did not look back until she had reached the top; and when she did, she saw that he was still standing in the shadow at the foot of the stair, with one hand still held a little away from his side, looking at the place where she had been.

CHAPTER 13

There is a vice peculiar to the successful soldier, which is that he cannot leave a good thing alone. Colonel Fitzwilliam knew it. He had known it since his first command, when he had taken a hill with forty men and spent the following four hours in a fever of impatience to take the next. A thing well begun should be pressed. The enemy, once shaken, must be given no time to rally; the wavering line must be followed up and broken before it can think. And he had seen, in the week since the night in the lower garden, that something in the field had shifted.

He had not been told, and Darcy had not said a word. But on Sunday Richard had met his cousin in the avenue at seven in the morning and observed that the man had been, for the first time in a fortnight, quite visibly asleep on his feet, in the pleasant state of one who has slept for eight hours in a row and does not yet know why.

He had seen Elizabeth Bennet at church that same day, and she had looked up when Darcy came in at the door, and had looked down again at her book. It was a very small thing. It had lasted perhaps a second. But the Colonel had spent fifteen years watching the movements of small bodies across large landscapes, and he knew a change in the wind when it came. Now, said the voice in his head, the old bright reckless voice. Press it.

He told himself that it was not a plan. That was what made it so insidious. The Harvest Home was held every year on the last Friday of September, in the great barn at the Rosings home farm, and had been since the time of Sir Lewis de Bourgh. There were trestle tables, and a barrel of ale, and a supper of beef, and a fiddler from Westerham who played Sir Roger de Coverley until the roof rang. The tenants came with their wives. The parson came, with his family, and said grace. And Lady Catherine, who had never once in forty years missed the opportunity of being seen to condescend, came at seven, in her carriage, and sat for an hour at the high table with her stick, and was agreeable to the gentlemen and gracious to the poor. It was, in short, an occasion at which a man might go and a woman might go and no one would think it in the least remarkable if they found themselves in the same room.

“You should come, Fitz,” said the Colonel to his cousin.

Darcy disagreed. “I have no wish to.”

“I did not say you wished it. I said you will come. Aunt Catherine expects the family, and I should be sorry to see her annoyed twice in a week. You may sit at the high table, and look at the beef. But, you will not approach Miss Bennet. You will not so much as ask her to dance. You will be in the room, that is all, as a man is in a room when he is a guest at a harvest supper.”

Darcy considered this. “Does Miss Bennet know that I am to be there?”

The Colonel hesitated, which would not have been remarked by anyone who had not known him thirty years. But Darcy had known Richard his entire life, knew something was stirring, and his grey eyes narrowed.

“The Collinses go every year,” said Richard easily. “She will certainly be asked. And it is not as though it were a meeting, Fitz, in the sense that was prohibited. It is a public occasion. Half the parish will be present. She will know very well that you are one of the household.”

Darcy shook his head. “That is not what I asked.”

“It is what I am answering.”

Darcy studied him a moment longer. Then he shrugged, with a short, hard motion of the shoulders, and said, “Very well. I shall go as a guest. I shall sit where I am put. And I shall not speak to her unless she speaks first.” It was not a promise to be proud of. The Colonel took it, nevertheless, and put it in his pocket, and went away rubbing his hands.

It did not occur to him until a great deal later that he had never answered the question.

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