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ELIZABETH OFTEN WALKED with her sisters to Meryton, often after breakfast. Mr. Darcy, hearing this, often happened to be walking the same way at around the same time.

He would fall into step with her, and the two of them would stray to the back of the party, while the other girls took the lead, tittering to themselves about Elizabeth’s match and about the officers in Meryton and every other thing that took their fancy.

She found the conversations with Mr. Darcy both thrilling and maddening.

Maddening because of the things that came out of the man’s mouth from time to time.

He said things such as, “My good opinion once lost is lost forever” and “It has been my intention to avoid exhibiting such weaknesses that expose a person to ridicule” and once, which made her inwardly wince, “Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.”

The picture that emerged of her fiancé was that he was a man who brooked little in the way of mistake or inferiority and who subsequently held himself to a very high standard, which he tended to rise to. He was, however, insufferably smug about it, in a way that made her often wish to hit him.

She was not proud of it, but he thought so very well of himself!

The thrilling bit, however, made it all confusing, because it happened so often as to disrupt her thoughts and make it hard to feel anything except a kind of slavish gratefulness that he was close to her or looking at her or anything at all.

In other words, she thought well of him, too, and she could not seem to think otherwise.

He would look at her, sometimes, look at her with such adoration writ on his features that it would take her breath away.

He sometimes took her hand when they walked together, and whenever that happened, she could only partly pay attention to whatever it was that he was saying, because she was entirely distracted by the feeling of his huge, warm palm engulfing her smaller one, and the way that touching him sent tingles up her arm.

Once, only once, they fell very far behind her sisters and they went round a bend on the road and he glanced at her with a sort of boyishly mischievous look on his face and he said to her, “I should like to try something.”

“Oh?” she said.

He tugged on her hand, pulling her off the road, pulling her over towards a sturdy tree trunk that was growing there, and he stopped them, her back to the tree trunk, his body too close to hers.

“Stop me at any time, of course, Miss Bennet,” he said in a voice that was so deep, it made something unfurl low in her belly.

And then he cupped her cheek with one hand and kissed her.

But it was not like the kiss before, the one after she had agreed to marry him. It was longer, for one thing. It was thorough. He used his tongue.

It was delicious and wickedly good. It made her whole body dissolve into sensations of goodness.

He broke the kiss, slightly out of breath, and tried to back away, and then groaned, actually groaned , and kissed her again, just as thoroughly with just as much of his tongue.

That time, he pressed her all the way into the tree trunk, so that she was trapped between the tree at her back and his warm firm body at her front, and it was the most affecting thing that she had ever experienced.

“I cannot wait to be married to you, Miss Bennet,” he whispered. “May I call you Elizabeth?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling at him, dazed, rather lovestruck. “Yes, please.” A pause. “Fitzwilliam.”

“Fitz, if you would,” he said. “Fitzwilliam is my mother’s brother and my cousins. I have a cousin who goes by it. Colonel Fitzwilliam. It’s confusing.” He smiled.

She felt shy and happy to have been given such an intimacy. “You may call me Lizzy, if you like,” she offered.

He kissed her again, but this kiss was quick and forceful. Then he let go of her entirely. He turned away from her, running a hand through his hair. “We should be careful,” he murmured.

“Is there danger?” she said.

He turned to look at her and she saw the dark hunger in his gaze, and it stirred her. She reached for him. But he took her hand, stopped her, kissed the tips of her gloved fingers, and shook his head. “Patience, Lizzy.”

She found herself thinking about him saying that to her at the most inopportune of moments. His stormy gray eyes were intense, and his voice was so deep and resonant, and every time she thought of him saying it, it made her body lurch in the most pleasant and inappropriate of ways.

But Caroline was pleased to discover that they were getting married within a month, that Mr. Darcy could not bear to wait, that the banns would be read and immediately afterward, they would be wed.

She had not broached the subject of where they would live afterward, however.

It would be late December by then, which would mean they would be in London in January.

Caroline said January in London might be a snore, but that by spring, everyone would be there.

So, by spring, of course, Elizabeth would be in London, with her closest friend, and they would be having the time of their lives, she hoped.

THE NIGHT BEFORE her wedding, Elizabeth somehow convinced her family to let her stay with her sister Jane and with Caroline at Netherfield, even though that likely shouldn’t have been allowed, because she would be under the same roof as Mr. Darcy.

Since the girls were going to spend the night all together, sleeping in one big bed, it was deemed permissible.

Jane drank too much wine and fell asleep by half past nine, so it was just Elizabeth and Caroline, sitting up in easy chairs next to the fire, sipping at port, and giggling.

“I cannot believe,” declared Elizabeth, gesturing with her glass, “that you contrived to have this man brought here for yourself, forging a letter in your brother’s hand, no less, and that—upon seeing he wanted me—you left him to me without any qualm.”

“But of course,” said Caroline. “We are too good of friends for anything else, my Eliza. We are friends in a way that our bond cannot be severed. Certainly not by a man.”

“Also, you never really wanted him,” said Elizabeth. “You just wanted his money.”

Caroline giggled so much that she snorted. “No, not his money, you silly girl. I’m not saying Charles has an income like Mr. Darcy’s, mind you, but Charles doesn’t have any land. And land is not the way to make money, anyway.”

“I’m confused,” said Elizabeth, who was giggling, too.

“What I mean is, I am positive that within a generation or two, Charles and his progeny will be better off financially than Mr. Darcy will.”

Elizabeth sat up straight, not giggling. “What? No.” She shook her head. “That’s preposterous.”

“There are ways to make money, Eliza, and getting it from tenants is not the best of them. No, trade is the future. Product is the future. Mr. Darcy and his way of being, the way of the peerage entirely, it’s the past.”

Elizabeth considered this.

“What he and men like him do have, of course, is a tie to tradition and to the structure of power,” said Caroline, who was still smiling, but not laughing anymore.

“I suppose,” said Elizabeth. But being concerned with power was, well, sinful, was it not?

“And you, my darling, you have the key to power right in that beautiful brain of yours.” Caroline reached across and tapped Elizabeth’s temple. “You understand people, you see. You see what they want, what they hate, and you know just how to use it in order to get them to act.”

“Perhaps,” said Elizabeth, but her voice was hesitant. “It’s only that I don’t know if it’s a good thing, exactly, Caroline. I’m not sure if I should.”

“Of course you should,” said Caroline. “Listen to me, men don’t wish women to have access to power, but that is only because they see how very powerful we already are, and they seek to limit it.

They seek to pit us against each other, to have us fight over them for our very existence.

They keep property and wealth and all of that from us.

They are our only path to it, and they wish us to squabble amongst ourselves to fight over them. ”

“I don’t know if they wish it,” said Elizabeth, spreading her hands. “I think maybe that does happen, however, what you’re saying, women fighting with each other.”

“You and I could have fought over Mr. Darcy, certainly,” said Caroline.

“I could have gotten in a snit over his wanting you and not me, and I could have sulked and schemed against you. But I decided immediately not to do that, not to play that game. You see, we are stronger if we’re united, are we not?

It’s a sort of sisterhood. The things we can accomplish together, Eliza, are much more impressive than the things we could accomplish apart. ”

Elizabeth tapped her bottom lip. “You can simply turn that off, then?”

Caroline looked away.

Neither of them were laughing anymore.

“Men aren’t going to want me in that way,” said Caroline, shrugging. “I see that already. I know. The way men interact with you and the way they interact with me… it’s nothing the same.”

“Men don’t want me either,” said Elizabeth.

“Mr. Darcy does indeed want you! ”

“No, he doesn’t even know who I am. He wants a woman I created and presented to him, one that doesn’t actually exist,” muttered Elizabeth.

Caroline lifted her gaze and met Elizabeth’s. “Ah, yes, I see what you’re saying. But I don’t think anyone really has that, you know.”

Elizabeth turned to look at her sister Jane, spread out on the bed, lightly snoring. “Our siblings do.”

Caroline looked at her as well. “Perhaps,” she allowed. Then she turned back to Elizabeth. “Anyway, it’s rare. And it fades. I mean, look at your own parents’ marriage. At one time, there must have been true regard between them, but now—”

“Yes, now, they simply tolerate each other,” said Elizabeth, nodding. “I did not want that for my own marriage, but look what I’ve done to myself. I don’t even know why I did it.”

“We have it,” said Caroline, quite serious. “You and me. We have true regard for each other. We see each other exactly as the other really is. We see each other’s faults, and we value each other for all that we are.”

Elizabeth hesitated, because she did, well, judge Caroline and think badly of her more than she might like.

But she supposed that it was true, in the end.

Whatever Caroline’s flaws, she was loyal and true to Elizabeth.

And they did have an alliance, and they did look out for each other.

They made sacrifices for the other, too.

Caroline had given up her dream of Mr. Darcy for Elizabeth, and Elizabeth had acquiesced to this marriage for Caroline, and it was all…

madness, perhaps, but sort of a tribute to their friendship as well.

She nodded, finally. “We do value each other.”

“A vow, then,” said Caroline, offering Elizabeth her hand. “A vow between us, a solemn vow, a vow of sisterhood.”

Elizabeth let out a giggle. “Oh, truly?”

“Truly!” Caroline waggled her hand insistently.

Elizabeth took her hand. “What are we vowing, then?”

“Loyalty to each other, first and foremost, come what may,” said Caroline .

Elizabeth squeezed her hand. “Loyalty,” she agreed.

“We vow that we will protect each other and help each other,” said Caroline.

“We so vow,” said Elizabeth. “But I fear I must tell you something.”

“What?” said Caroline, looking shocked.

Elizabeth giggled. “I hate being called Eliza.”

Caroline let out a loud guffaw. “You do? But you have allowed me to call you that only a thousand times, you churl!”

“I know, and I said nothing, and I cannot keep it in. But if we are to vow this solemn vow, I can no longer keep my silence,” she bellowed.

Both girls dissolved in giggles.

“I shall never say it again,” said Caroline, giggling wildly, groping for her glass of wine. “Oh, we must toast to our vow, seal it with a drink.”

“Yes, yes,” said Elizabeth, getting her own glass. She lifted it aloft. “To never calling me Eliza!”

“To loyalty,” said Caroline, laughing so hard that she spilled her wine.

Elizabeth clinked her class against the other woman’s. “To loyalty,” she breathed.

Their laughter died out.

They held each other’s gaze and they both drank long and deep.

There was no sound but the fire crackling beside them.