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"Why us?" Elizabeth asked. "Why not Mama, or Mr. Collins?"

"Perhaps the principal characters have more scope for independent thought."

"That is a handsome theory for two principal characters to invent."

Darcy looked at the notebook in her hand. "Write unproved beside it."

"I shall underline it. Mama may appear chiefly concerned with husbands, but she remembers every household that has turned a widow out of doors. I should dislike to discover that we had mistaken fear for a lack of mind."

He considered that. "Then we must not assume we know what is happening inside anyone else." A drop fell from the gazebo roof onto his immaculate boot. Elizabeth moved the notebook before the next could reach it. Their grand philosophical assembly had acquired a leak.

Darcy moved his boot away from the leak. "You woke without anyone speaking to you. I had doubted my own conduct before we spoke, but your question made me examine it. Perhaps a question can help somebody else."

"Then I may have frightened Charlotte when I meant to help her."

"You asked a question. We do not yet know what she made of it."

"But even with connection, not everyone awakens immediately," Elizabeth pointed out. "Charlotte flickered but did not fully wake. Why?"

"Perhaps she hasn't yet been made to choose something she doesn't want," Darcy said.

"When she finds she cannot give the answer she wishes to give," Elizabeth said. She looked down at the notebook. She had wanted Charlotte awake without considering what it might cost her.

"You were aware before you resisted. Your question made me certain. Charlotte might require more—a marriage proposal, perhaps. Though I should be sorry to recommend one as an experiment."

Elizabeth absorbed this, her mind racing. "So there are rules to consciousness in our world. Requirements."

"Possible conditions," Darcy cautioned. "We have two cases, one of them my own. I would not purchase a horse on so little evidence."

Elizabeth wrote possible above the new entry, then tried to shield the page from a second leak. Darcy held his hat beneath it.

"We ought to settle one thing," she said. "Whether this roof has more holes than our theory."

A drop struck the brim and splashed his sleeve.

"The roof has supplied evidence," he said.

His smile faded. "If a question can wake someone, we must be careful whom we ask. They may not thank us."

"Like my mother."

"My aunt, Lady Catherine, would resent being told she had not chosen her own opinions. I should not care to tell her while she was frightened as well as angry."

"Then we must be judicious," Elizabeth said. "Offer explanations when someone asks for them. And stop when they ask us to stop."

"Agreed." Darcy bowed. "Until the ball, Miss Elizabeth. Where we shall dance our required dance and pretend we have not already conspired to undermine the narrative at every opportunity."

"I shall look forward to it, Mr. Darcy. Though I shall tell Mama I'm looking forward to dancing."

He smiled, and tipped the accumulated water from his hat before putting it on. Elizabeth had to look at the notebook until she could trust herself not to laugh. It was a comfort to have a companion in a dreadful mystery. It was a greater comfort to like him.

She watched him go until he turned out of sight. Three days until the ball. She had spent the afternoon objecting to it; now she wanted to know whether he would seek her out before their dance. She hoped he would. She hoped, rather more dangerously, that she would not have to invent a question to keep him beside her.

CHAPTER 7

Three days later, the night of the Netherfield Ball arrived. Elizabeth dressed in her blue gown (attempts to wear brown, green, or literally any other color had been systematically overruled by the narrative) while mentally preparing for the evening ahead.

Tonight's Objectives: