“You are very well-drilled, Mr Darcy.”
“Mrs Reeves holds drill in this house thrice daily.”
“She has been at you, then.”
“She has been at everyone. I have been easier to reach than some.”
Elizabeth regarded him longer than the exchange required. Then she said, in a lighter voice than he was prepared for, “Sir, you have been so invisible these two days that I was beginning to think the house had swallowed you. Has the study become its own county?”
He had meant to answer this kind of thing stiffly. “It has lately been a county requiring a degree of administration I had not anticipated.”
“Mm. Correspondence of such character that it requires a man of your size to remain pinned behind his desk for thirty-six hours? I hope nothing disagreeable.”
“Nothing disagreeable,” he said.
“Well. I am glad of it. I came to ask a favour.”
“By all means.”
Elizabeth’s eyes lifted to his. “I should like to walk to the mere.”
He did not at once answer.
She had said the word as anyone in the house said it—the nearest body of water, the one that had broken her leg in January. She did not know it was also the word written out in black ink on the paper in his drawer.
“To the mere,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Only to the mere, or to the lower meadow, or the full length of the eastern path?”
“To the water’s edge, I think. I should like to stand on it briefly. Then turn round and come back.”
“Alone?”
She gave a short laugh. “No, Mr Darcy. Mrs Hadley would have me drowned in the bath if I attempted alone.” A very slight hesitation. “I came to ask whether you would walk with me.”
There it was.
He had known she would ask. He had known from the instant he heard the crutch coming down the passage why it was coming. A woman in her condition did not cross a floor she did not need to cross except to deliver a specific request, and he had been the person to whom she would deliver it for a month now. It was not guesswork. It was arithmetic.
He waited a breath before answering, for the same reason a man waits a breath before drinking what he has reason to suspect is poisoned.
“And Mrs Marsden,” he said. “Is she agreeable?”
The hesitation was small. But it was there.
“Jane is—Jane has reservations. She is cautious where my leg is concerned, which is her privilege and her duty both, and I have told her that I mean to prove the leg in the shortest walk I can devise. I should be very grateful if my escort were a person she could trust to bring me back promptly if the leg proves the caution was warranted.”
“Itiswarranted. The last time you tried to leave this house—”
“I was trying to runawayfrom the mere. She studied his face for a moment, letting him consider. This time, I propose to go toward it. To answer… whatever it is I must answer for.”
He watched her.
She was not lying, he saw. She had selected. Chosen the words most likely to provoke him into agreement.
He noted also that she was watching him with a degree of hope she had not entirely concealed. Her hand had come to rest on the crutch where it leaned against the chair, and the fingers had tightened very slightly on the wood.
