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The gentlemen left in a kind of dignified haste.

Still, the breeze, tangy and cold, that came with them braced those of us they left behind.

Charlotte and Maria glowed at the compliment paid to their father.

Mary and I suddenly thought to practice our singing, and even the maid came to listen while she tidied the parlour.

Newly inspired to preach about the great flood instead of the Leviticus he had planned, my cousin bustled off to read his Bible.

When the distinguished nephews returned, we must have looked much brighter, or so I hoped.

Sir William certainly looked flush with importance, and when we asked after the flood, he said reports were much exaggerated.

He huffed away to write a letter to Lady Lucas about his important adventure, and Charlotte, seeing her visitors standing damp from the rain, asked them to sit by the fire if they could spare the time.

The colonel looked once at his cousin and said, “We would be delighted, Mrs Collins. Let me send the coach forward with news for Lady Catherine. The second team can come back for us if you can bear us for an hour.”

“If you make it two, we shall bear it,” I said lightly.

“Have you been as weary of confinement here at the parsonage as we have been at Rosings?” he asked.

“Indeed we have, sir,” I replied as Charlotte went for hot water. Mr Darcy stepped away to speak to his coachman.

“That cannot be, Miss Bennet. You have a liveliness here that we do not. Did you play cards?”

I paused as Mr Darcy re-entered the room. “Mr Collins does not play, sir. No, my sister and I sang for practice which tells you of our desperation.”

The colonel, it seemed, would speak for both men. Mr Darcy held his jaw firmly shut and reminded me very much of the man I knew in Hertfordshire—taciturn, grave, disinclined to make himself agreeable.

“I am sure you sing delightfully,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam in his warm voice of spiced honey.

I laughed and even Mary’s face lightened into a self-conscious, blushing smile. “We are certainly delighted to make noise,” I said, “but our audience might not be delighted to hear us, particularly if we are forced into an acapella performance.”

We had stood long enough, and I motioned for our guests to be seated. Colonel Fitzwilliam sat by my sister.

“Is that the music you have been studying?” he asked.

“This is a Mozart my sister and I have been learning, sir,” she said in a surprisingly demure voice. “For pianoforte.”

“Sonata Facile ! My cousin, Darcy’s sister, has played that for me.”

“Elizabeth had a music master when she was in London this winter, and he brought it to her notice. Do you like it, sir?”

“You were in London?” Mr Darcy barked the question.

As one, we swivelled to stare at his outburst.

“I went to have my ankle seen by a doctor, sir,” I replied coldly. “My sister Jane went with me, and she liked my doctor very much more than I, it seems.” I turned and said much more warmly, almost confidingly to Mr Darcy’s cousin, “They marry in June.”

“How convenient to have a doctor in the family.”

“His name is Bromley,” Mary said. “Perhaps you have met him?”

My heart beamed at my sister. She had taken Jane’s happiness so much to heart she thought of Mr Bromley as a kind of blessed figure to have entered our lives.

The colonel, who seemed to be improving into another blessed figure, indulged my sister. “I-I may have. I do not know. Tell me about him.”

“He is young for such a learned man. He has red hair and blue eyes, and he has a marvellous way with my nieces and nephews.”

“Blue eyes you say?”

“Yes. Very blue,” Mary said earnestly, unaware of being lightly teased.

“Do you know? He sounds vaguely familiar. My major, Johnson, had to be seen for a torn shoulder.”

Mary nodded sagely. “Mr Bromley did wonders for Lizzy’s ankle.”

Sensing Mr Darcy’s deep discomfort with the pace and tenor of this unenlightening conversation, I added to it with devilish pleasure. “He worked on my nephew’s thumb as well. He is a good man for joints, I think. Is your Major Johnson well healed now?”

“You had a music master?” Mr Darcy asked in another burst of awkward inquiry.

Charlotte and Maria came in with the tea things, and their little commotion gave me time to swallow my ire. What a boor in a parlour Mr Darcy could be!

“Mr Finch came to my uncle’s house in Cheapside. I understand he only made time for me because a distinguished pupil from Mayfair had gone into the country.”

“Finch!” Colonel Fitzwilliam cried. “But this is marvellous. That girl was likely my cousin Georgiana.”

“Oh?” I asked in a disinterested way, taking a teacup and handing it to Maria. “Charlotte, let me help you. Maria, be a dear and take this to your father.”

Mr Darcy subsided back into silence for the remainder of the visit. His cousin made himself agreeable and told my sister Mary of the plays he had seen in London that year. He told me of the doings of his brigade, and when Sir William returned, he spoke generally of places he had.

Mr Darcy sat like a lump to be sure, but his cousin was a guest for the ages. When they stood to leave, I glanced coolly at the one and warmly at the other, but it was Mr Darcy who took my hand and Mr Darcy who held it overlong.