Anne accepted this verdict with a small, grave nod. She did not beam or clap or bounce on her heels. She simply absorbed the praise and waited for the next instruction.
Elizabeth studied her. The late May sunshine fell warm across the garden, gilding the gravel path and the roses beginning to unfurl along the south wall. A perfect afternoon for lessons conducted outdoors, away from the nursery’s familiar walls. Anne stood in a patch of light, her blonde curls bright, her posture immaculate—and far, far too composed for a child of six.
“Shall we practise walking?” Elizabeth gestured to the far end of the path. “At the wedding you must move withoutrushing, and you must not turn your head to observe the guests, no matter how curious you become.”
“I shall not turn my head.”
“Even if Colonel Fitzwilliam makes a face at you from the pews?”
Anne considered this. “The Colonel would not make faces in church. It would be disrespectful to God.”
“And if he did?”
“Then God would note it in His ledger, and the Colonel would have to answer for it later.” She paused for a second. “I would not wish to be noted in God’s ledger for turning my head. I shall keep my eyes forward.”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together. The logic was impeccable, the delivery earnest, and the child speaking was not yet seven years of age.
She had noticed it before—the gravity, the precision, the way Anne approached every task. Other children of her years fidgeted, protested, grew bored. Anne listened, absorbed, and executed. She asked questions not to delay but to understand. She did not whine or sulk or test boundaries with the cheerful persistence that Elizabeth remembered from her own childhood, from Lydia at this age, from every small creature who had not yet learned that the world would push back.
Anne already knew. Somehow, impossibly, she already knew.
Elizabeth decided that it was not the moment to examine it—not with the sun warm on her shoulders, the lesson half-complete, and the prickling awareness that she was being watched.
She knew, with the certainty of almost three months’ proximity, that Mr Darcy stood at his study window. She could feel the weight of his unrelenting attention on her back, as tangible as the heat of the afternoon.
Her skin warmed, and the sun was not responsible for it.
“Miss Bennet? Shall I walk now?”
“Yes. To the sundial and back. Steady pace. Eyes forward.”
Anne set off down the path, her steps measured, her small shoulders squared. Elizabeth clasped her hands behind her back and watched—and did not watch. Her eyes followed the child, but her mind was elsewhere.
It was in the way he had dropped to his knees before her as though she were something sacred. The sounds that had escaped her throat, broken and desperate, sounds she had not known she could make. The shattering pleasure that had torn through her body and left her gasping, trembling, undone.
And then the flight back to her own room, her heart slamming against her ribs, her legs unsteady. The hours spent staring at the ceiling, replaying every moment, every touch, every word—and the slow, creeping realisation that she had not fled because she was frightened.
She had fled because she wanted more.
The admission had lived inside her for weeks now. She had turned it over in the dark hours, examined it from every angle, tested its weight. It did not diminish. It did not fade. It sat in her chest, warm and insistent, and it coloured every glance across the dining table, every accidental brush of fingers when Anne passed between them, every chargedsilence in a room that had grown too small to contain what neither of them would admit.
She wanted more. She wanted his mouth on hers again. She wanted his hands, his weight, his voice rough against her ear. She wanted to know what came next—what lay beyond the boundary she had crossed and then fled from, what he would do if she stayed.
Anne reached the sundial, pivoted neatly, and began the return journey. Her face was solemn with concentration.
Elizabeth breathed. In. Out. She was standing in a garden in broad daylight, instructing a child in deportment, and her blood was running hot under her skin because a man was watching her from a window forty feet away.
This was untenable. This was madness. This was—
She heard footsteps on the gravel. Long stride, unhurried, approaching from the house.
She did not turn. She kept her eyes on Anne, her hands clasped, her posture irreproachable. The footsteps drew closer and stopped beside her.
“She has improved remarkably.”
His voice was low, warm, carrying the particular resonance it held when he spoke of his daughter. Elizabeth permitted herself to turn.
Mr Darcy stood at her shoulder, his eyes on Anne.