Page 13

“Jane will be tired.”

“She will tell you if she is,” Darcy replied.

Bingley grinned. “Now you sound like Elizabeth.”

That was sufficient reason to put away the cues.

Bingley returned his cue to its place, but did not immediately go to the door.

“It has been good to hear you laugh tonight.”

Darcy looked at him. “You have given me sufficient occasion.”

“I hoped we might.” Bingley picked up his glass from the mantel. “I did not know whether we should be in your way. After your sister.”

“You are not in my way.”

“I should have come in the spring.”

“You wrote.”

“It seemed very little.”

Darcy stood with his hand upon the back of a chair. He had read those letters at his desk, sometimes more than once, before putting them away. Charles had written about Jane, about a horse he ought not to have bought, about the intolerable business of choosing a house. There had been days when Darcy could not have borne a letter devoted entirely to his loss.

“I was glad of them,” he said.

Bingley set down the glass without drinking. “Your last letter about Georgiana had sounded so hopeful. I thought she must be recovering.”

“For a time, she was.”

“I hope she was spared being frightened at the end.”

“She was,” Darcy said.

He looked down at his hand against the chair. Georgiana had held it and asked whether Anna would remember her. He had told her there would be time enough for everything, though he had already begun to fear there would not.

Bingley let out a breath. “I am glad of that.”

Darcy had made him grateful for a lie. A correction would invite the question of what had frightened her, and he could not begin speaking of Anna. He remained silent while his friend accepted the comfort he had offered.

From the drawing room came the sound of the pianoforte. Caroline played a few bars, stopped, and began them again.

“Georgiana used to do that,” Darcy said.

Bingley turned his head toward the door.

“If she made a mistake, she would go back to the beginning,” Darcy continued. “I used to tell her I should never hear the end of anything she played.”

“Did she mind?”

“She told me I ought to remain long enough to earn it.”

Darcy smiled, but could not sustain it. He had thought of her so often as she had been in those last days that the sound of her laughing at him seemed almost unexpected.

“She was less solemn than people supposed,” he said. “When she was at ease.”

“I should have liked to know her better.”