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“I cannot purchase the garden without the house.”

“No, but you can tell her you remembered to look at it.”

He smiled and folded the paper. “She asked whether there was a level walk.”

“There was. Put it first, before the chimney.”

Caroline opened her eyes. “One would suppose, from the importance you gave that chimney, that nobody had ever repaired one.”

“One would suppose, from the importance you gave the drawing room, that nobody had ever entertained company in a smaller one.”

“Jane will wish to receive people.”

“I hope you will agree rather better over your bedchamber at the inn,” Charles said. “You are to share it.”

Caroline turned to her brother. “There was no other room?”

“Not another suitable one. There are two beds.”

“Then we need only agree about the window,” Elizabeth said.

Charles looked so relieved by this modest undertaking that she resolved to keep it, whatever Caroline might say about the draught.

The carriage turned beneath the arch into a busy yard. A boy came to the horses while another carried a lantern toward the stables. Mr. Darcy had already dismounted and was speaking to the ostler. He handed over his reins, waited until the man had taken the horse, and came to the carriage as Charles opened the door.

The landlady met them in the passage. Mrs. Neale was a brisk woman with a clean cap, a bunch of keys, and a sufficiently accurate knowledge of the promised rooms that Caroline found nothing to correct.

Mrs. Neale described a private sitting room for their dinner, separate bedchambers for the gentlemen, and a large room with two beds for the ladies. A little chamber opening from it held a truckle bed for Sally.

“I understood there would be a fire,” Caroline said, pausing in the sitting-room doorway.

“It will be lit before you have changed, ma’am. The sweep was here this afternoon, and we have only just put the room to rights.”

Charles glanced at Elizabeth and wisely said nothing about the nursery chimney. She followed Sally upstairs before she could be tempted to supply the observation herself.

Their room was plain and clean. Caroline chose the bed farther from the window, and Elizabeth put Jane’s memorandum upon the table between them. They agreed to leave the window a little open until bedtime, a success which Elizabeth wished Charles could have witnessed. Caroline then went downstairs to ask about hot water.

Sally had been quiet for most of the journey. Now she looked through the open door at her own bed with evident satisfaction.

“You are tired,” Elizabeth said.

“Only a little, miss.”

“You may be tired without disappointing anybody. I am.”

The maid smiled. Elizabeth let her unfasten the traveling gown, then insisted that she take time for her own supper before doing anything further. There was no need to arrange Elizabeth’s hair as though they were going to an assembly. She could manage a few pins and appear sufficiently respectable for the people who had watched her cough in a nursery.

Downstairs, Charles was at the writing table.

“I am sending a line to Jane,” he explained. “Mrs. Neale has a man going toward Pemberley with a parcel. He can take it to the house this evening.”

“Tell her we are comfortably lodged.”

“I have. Will she think I am making too much of the beds?”

Elizabeth read the short note he offered her. Jane was informed that the rooms were excellent, the meal promised well, Elizabeth was not fatigued, and her husband hoped she had not found the day too long.

“You may alter the part about me,” Elizabeth said. “I have told Sally she may be tired, and I should hate to be proved less truthful than my maid.”