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The morning air was bright and mild, the sky a serene and thoughtless blue—as though the world conspired to ignore Elizabeth’s unease. From her window, the countryside lay in its usual charm: hedgerows thick with summer green, the road to Netherfield quiet, and still no sign of Fitzwilliam Darcy.

He had not come. Nor had he sent word.

She stood at the window longer than she meant to, her tea cooling in hand.

It was early still—too early to worry, certainly—but the silence unsettled her.

He was not a man to forget his word, nor one to vanish without cause.

Surely, if delayed, he would have found some means to inform them. Wouldn’t he?

Shaking the thought away, she dressed with care and quiet resolve. There was no sense in letting uncertainty govern her manner. Fitzwilliam had always been a man of honour; she would not doubt that now.

Downstairs, the household was in full disorder.

Mrs. Bennet, wholly consumed by wedding preparations, had begun to despair over lace and imported silk, her own headaches, and Mr. Bingley’s unreasonable fondness for restraint.

She bemoaned her daughters’ taste in trim, declared the household in chaos, and waved off every attempt at practical suggestion.

"Three months is far too soon!" she exclaimed, fanning herself with a crumpled letter. "Weddings require time. November would be perfectly genteel—that is when I married, and everything turned out just as it ought!"

Mr. Bennet, behind his paper, muttered, "The timing may be the only part of that statement I am prepared to agree with."

Mrs. Bennet did not hear him—or, more likely, chose not to. "And November is a lovely season, I grant you, but August! August is for harvests, not for weddings. "

Elizabeth, seated beside Mary, stirred her tea with a quiet intensity. Her eyes drifted toward the door as footsteps sounded in the hall. For one fleeting moment, her heart rose.

Mr. Bingley entered, cheerful as ever. He greeted Jane with a smile that softened all lines of doubt, then bowed to the room with his usual amiable good nature.

But he was alone.

Jane, ever composed, inquired gently, "Still no Mr. Darcy, then?"

Bingley set down his gloves with a rueful smile.

"No—but I would not worry. There are any number of reasons a gentleman might be delayed—a broken wheel, a lame horse, a lost courier.

If he was forced to stop at an inn and could not secure an express rider, he would have no way to send word. He may well arrive today."

He said it kindly, and it was likely true. But Elizabeth, listening, found little comfort in the words. It was not the delay that troubled her most—it was the silence.

Before Elizabeth could summon a reply—or even finish the thought—Lydia, who had been picking idly at a half-eaten scone, pushed back her chair with a sudden scrape and leapt to her feet with sudden purpose, her bonnet swinging in one hand and triumph in her step.

"I am off to Aunt Philips again," she declared, with the air of one announcing a royal engagement. "She has promised to show me her new lace caps and I promised to tell her all about the wedding."

Mrs. Bennet, who never objected to an errand that involved her name being spoken in Meryton, clapped her hands. "Yes, yes, take Kitty with you. The two of you must show yourselves about more. People must see how happy and advantageous these connections are!"

Kitty, who had just entered behind her sister, looked faintly stricken. "Must I go?" she asked, her voice uncertain. "I was hoping to—well, perhaps I ought to stay. I have a headache."

"Nonsense," Mrs. Bennet replied sharply. "A walk will do you good. And you have nothing to stay home for—what would you do, sit with Mary and read sermons?"

Mary, for her part, looked up from her breakfast book and said, with rare determination, "I thought Kitty and I might begin work on making over my gown for the wedding.

With the date so near, it seemed practical—and if we save the cost of a new dress, Mama, you might put that toward bonnets for the younger girls. "

Mrs. Bennet blinked, then looked pleased. "Well, that is a sensible notion. Mary is plain enough that no one will notice the difference, and we might yet afford a bit of trim for Lydia if we do not overspend."

Lydia, who had paused mid-pirouette, pouted for a moment, then brightened. "Very well—I'll go alone. I shall have more fun without a chaperone. Walking by the river is far more entertaining than watching stitches and hems."

She swept out with the triumphant energy of someone unaware they had lost.

Kitty sat down beside Mary, shoulders folding in on themselves. Elizabeth gave her a small, approving nod, and Mary, in an unusually sisterly gesture, reached for her hand beneath the table.

Elizabeth tilted her head slightly, watching the two of them. "Kitty," she said gently, "why did you not wish to go with Lydia this morning? You’ve never objected before."

Kitty’s eyes dropped to the tablecloth. “She… she doesn’t always think about what she says.”

Elizabeth waited.

Kitty’s voice came low. “Yesterday, she told me she knew a place by the river where you could see Mr. Pratt without his shirt on. When I said she shouldn’t be watching boys like that, she called me a prude.

And when I said I might tell, she laughed and said she was only joking—but she always says she’s joking, even when she means it. ”

Mary’s mouth pressed into a firm line. “That was unkind—and foolish.”

“I didn’t want to walk with her again. I don’t like how I feel when I do,” Kitty said, her fingers fidgeting with the edge of her sleeve. “I thought I’d rather stay and help. I told Mary I would, and I meant it.”

Elizabeth gave her a small, warm smile. “That is reason enough.”

“I think I shall begin unpicking the sleeves,” Mary said, rising. “Kitty, will you find the muslin we set aside?”

“Yes,” Kitty said, already standing.

Jane, entering just then, took in the scene with a soft smile. “If you both are to work on the dress,” she said, “I should be glad to help as well.”

“Oh, please do,” Kitty said eagerly. “You do the best embroidery. ”

Jane blushed modestly. “I think yours are coming along very well. At your age, I was not half so neat with my stitches. I am sure that with practice, you shall soon surpass me—and your seams are already the finest of us all.”

Kitty looked up in surprise. “Do you truly think so?”

“I do,” Jane replied with a warm nod. “We shall make it beautiful between us.”

Elizabeth said nothing, but her gaze lingered on the quiet circle at the table—Jane and Kitty bent over a swatch of fabric, Mary adjusting a stitch with practiced care.

It was not the scene she had once dreamed of, but something gentler had emerged in its place.

Perhaps that was the gift of remembering: not to undo the past, but to notice what might have been missed the first time through.

A glance shared. A kindness not demanded. A beginning, not perfect, but true.

Across the room, Mr. Bingley was still seated, idly folding and unfolding the corner of a newspaper. As Elizabeth rose to pour herself another cup of tea, he looked up and smiled.

"You are not to worry, Miss Elizabeth," he said, his tone light but sincere.

"Darcy is the most dependable man I know.

If he said he would come, then he will come.

It may not be as soon as we hoped, but I daresay the delay will have a cause—and not, I think, a dramatic one.

Letters do go astray, you know. The post is not half so reliable as we pretend. "

She smiled in return, grateful for the kindness beneath his levity. "Indeed, I suppose the world does not halt for every promise made."

"No, but Darcy is not the sort to leave such a promise unattended," Bingley said, standing now and brushing a bit of lint from his cuff. "If he could send word, I am sure he would have."

Elizabeth nodded, but as she looked again to the window—the road still quiet, the sky still untroubled—something in her heart resisted the comfort. The hours were beginning to stretch. There were no mishaps left to invent, no new reason to offer.

It might have been nothing more than the ache of wanting. Or it might have been something else entirely.

She turned away, the matter unresolved. Behind her, the letter remained where it had fallen—unnoticed, unmissed, but not without consequence.