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"Apparently they're your defining physical characteristic. I've been informed of this by the narrative approximately seven times."

"How flattering. My turn?" Elizabeth struck a pose. "Mr. Darcy, you are the most prideful, disagreeable man I have ever encountered, and yet I find myself thinking of you with alarming frequency."

"Excellent delivery. Very convincing."

"Thank you. I was afraid the wet stockings might show."

They looked at each other and burst out laughing. Darcy ran a hand through his hair, which naturally fell back into artfully disheveled perfection.

"Did your hair just... rearrange itself perfectly?" Elizabeth asked.

Darcy touched his hair, looking betrayed. "Apparently. I have no control over it. It does this."

"Mine has made no such recovery." Elizabeth pushed a damp strand behind her ear; it fell forward again.

Darcy looked at it and wisely declined to praise his own advantages.

Elizabeth had been staring at him. Rain clung to his coat, and he was trying to wring water from one cuff without splashing her. His care made it difficult to look away; his handsome face did not assist her.

Oh no, she thought. I'm being attracted to him. The narrative is making me...

But she had begun looking before the voice said anything. She could not prove the distinction mattered. She wanted it to matter.

He glanced up and caught her looking. Elizabeth ought to have had some observation ready about his troublesome hair. Instead she smiled at him, and when he smiled back she forgot the observation altogether.

"Mr. Darcy," she said carefully. "I need to conduct an experiment."

"What kind of experiment?"

"I should like to discover whether I find you agreeable, or have merely been instructed to do so."

Darcy looked at the notebook. "And how do you propose to test that?"

"I'm going to think about you objectively. List your qualities. See if my feelings change." She opened her notebook. "Ready?"

"This is mortifying, but proceed."

Elizabeth began writing. "Tall. Handsome, which I had hoped would matter less. Inclined to look as though you disapprove of the whole county."

"I don't disapprove of the whole county."

"I'm recording appearances. Patient with a frightened acquaintance." She paused over that entry. "You've been patient. I should not like the first items to obscure it."

Darcy waited while she considered the page.

"It has not helped," she admitted.

"I'm sorry." He hesitated. "Not altogether sorry."

Elizabeth closed the notebook before he could read the list. "I am glad you came. I had hoped that deciding to dislike you would settle matters. It has proved inconveniently difficult."

He looked at her, then at the rain beyond the roof. "You need not decide anything on my account."

"I had not meant to decide today. I meant to get through a walk without being ordered about."

"A reasonable ambition."

"And now I find I should be sorry if you left."