Page 76 of Mr. Darcy Forgot I Said No

It is not planned. Nothing is planned, these days. She has gone in to fetch a jar of her mother's quince preserve, and I have followed her, on the pretext of carrying it, and the stillroom is very small and very dim and smells of dried lavender and beeswax, and she turns round with the jar in her hands and finds me in the doorway, and the jar goes on the shelf, and I do not remember how.

She tastes of the quince. Or I imagine she does.

"Fitzwilliam," she says against my mouth. "Mrs. Hill—"

"Is in the kitchen."

"She will come."

"Then she will come."

She laughs, very softly, and stops arguing.

Mrs. Hill does come. She comes in with a basket of eggs, and stops dead in the doorway, and looks at us, and at the quince preserve on the shelf, and says "Oh, my" in a voice of deep interest, and goes out again, backward, with the eggs. Elizabeth puts her face against my shoulder and shakes with laughter for a full minute together.

I kiss her again on Thursday, in the orchard, under the last of the apple blossom, which comes down over us in a pink and white shower when I lean her back against the trunk. And again on Saturday, in the hall, behind the door of Mr. Bennet's library, very quickly, while Mr. Bennet is setting up the chessboard on the other side of it and humming to himself in what I can only suppose is a deliberate manner.

She kisses me back every time. Every time, as though it were the first. Every time, as though it might be the last.

I do not think about that. Not then.

***

The first flicker comes on Wednesday evening, in the drawing room.

It is nothing. Mrs. Bennet's clock on the mantelpiece is ticking. It is a cheap, loud clock, much louder than it needs to be, and I am sitting in the chair by the window with my coffee, listening to Mary play, and watching Elizabeth across the room, and the clock ticks, and ticks, and something in me goes very still.

A parlor.

Not this one. A smaller one. Narrower. A different clock on a different mantel, ticking, and the light coming in at the window low and gold, and a woman's voice. Raised. Sharp as glass. I cannot hear the words. I can only hear the tone of it, cutting, and my own heart pounding in my ears, and the ticking of that clock going on and on underneath it like a pulse.

And then it is gone.

Gone so completely that I cannot say what I saw. I sit there with the coffee going cold in my hand and the pain beginning at my temple, and I try to catch hold of it, the way one tries to catch a dream on waking, and it slips through my fingers and is gone.

"Mr. Darcy?" says Jane Bennet, beside me. "Are you quite well? You have gone pale."

"Quite well," I say. "Only a little headache."

Across the room, Elizabeth has turned her head. She is looking at me. She has gone pale too.

***

The second comes on Friday.

Kitty is sitting in the window seat with Anne, winding wool. A skein of green worsted, held between Anne's two hands, while Kitty winds it into a ball. And I look at it, and something tugs at me. I think, green worsted. I think, Mrs. Collins's workbasket, all across the carpet. A skein of it in my hand. I wait for the picture to come. I want it. I want to see myself standing there in the parsonage parlor like a fool, holding a skein of wool, with Elizabeth laughing at me.

Nothing comes.

Nothing at all. No wool. No carpet. No workbasket. Only, very faint, very far off, so faint I am not sure it is a memory at all, the picture of Elizabeth standing very straight and very still in the middle of a small room, with her hands folded in front of her, and her face perfectly white.

I blink, and it is gone.

***

Mr. Pettigrew comes into Hertfordshire on the following Monday.

He arrives at Netherfield in a hired chaise, rather dusty, very anxious, and clutching his bag in both arms as though he expects highwaymen. Bingley greets him with such warmth that he is quite overcome, and has to be given a glass of Madeira before he can speak.