Chapter 6: A Lesson in What Irony Costs

The remark was not even particularly good.

That was the part she kept returning to afterward, in the hours of cold reconstruction that followed — not the consequences, not the method by which the words had traveled from her mouth to the wrong ears, but the sheer inadequacy of the provocation. She had said better things in her sleep. She had thought better things in the moment itself and had the sense not to say them. This one had escaped at precisely the wrong juncture, in precisely the wrong room, with precisely the casualness that made it impossible to claim as anything other than what it was: an honest observation, undressed, unguarded, belonging entirely to Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn rather than to the grey and featureless Lady Elspeth of Wren.

She had been Elspeth for fourteen days. Apparently that was not long enough.