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"In a drawer."

"Good. They were useful once."

"And now?"

She leaned against him. "Now I should like to look out of the window without entering the result."

He put his arm around her. They watched the wet fields pass, occasionally disagreeing about a distant shape, neither able to prove whether it was a cow until the carriage brought them close enough to see.

* * *

They reached Pemberley on the third afternoon. Elizabeth met the household, drank tea, and learned that the splendid house contained a door which stuck in damp weather. Darcy apologized for it as though the estate had committed a personal discourtesy.

"Leave it," she said. "I should like to become acquainted with the imperfections at a manageable pace."

That evening the fire was lit in their sitting room. There were candles, and quiet, and no appointment beyond the one they made together. Darcy asked whether she was tired. She was; she was also unwilling for the day to end quite yet.

She went to him and put her hands in his. When he kissed her, she answered without waiting to discover what anyone had intended.

The narrative, with unusual tact, withdrew. Elizabeth shut the door herself.

CHAPTER 27

Six months after the wedding, the third parcel arrived while Elizabeth was trying to retrieve a letter from beneath Darcy's elbow.

"You are sitting on Jane," she said.

"Only her letter, I hope."

He moved, and the parcel took its place. The library table had gradually ceased to be a table and become a sorting office with occasional opportunities for tea. Elizabeth cleared a space for the tray before anyone could improve matters by sending another treatise.

Wickham had supplied four hundred pages on Gothic villains. His covering note asked whether Darcy considered the charming scoundrel undervalued in comparison with the brooding tyrant.

"He wishes to know whether I have thoughts," Darcy said.

"You generally do."

"Not four hundred pages of them."

They had stopped answering his literary inquiries months ago. The manuscripts nevertheless arrived with the confidence of guests who had mistaken silence for an invitation to stay. Elizabeth put this one on the stack awaiting return and turned to Jane's letter.

Jane and Bingley had married the month after them. They were happy, occasionally disorganized, and newly in possession of a cupboard which could no longer contain Jane's papers. Bingley had suggested a second cupboard. Jane had instead discarded a quantity of figures which, upon examination, had failed to tell her anything she wished to know.

I nearly kept them because I had spent so long making them, she wrote. Then Charles asked whether we might go out before the light failed. I left the sorting unfinished. We had a very pleasant walk, and I did not ask whether it had improved either of us.

P.S. I have enclosed a diagram of our improved arrangement. It concerns shelves, not your marriage. You may congratulate me.

Elizabeth laughed and passed it to Darcy.

"A considerable advance," he said.

There was also a request from Jane's newly formed literary circle. She and Wickham had continued the correspondence begun during Lydia's crisis, though Jane described his criticism as better when he forgot to compare himself with the hero. They wished to quote one of Elizabeth's old letters about compelled speech and asked her permission.

"That is a new development," Darcy said.

"The asking, or the size of the circle? You know they have exchanged papers for months."

"The possibility that Wickham may accept a refusal."