Something cold opened in the pit of Darcy’s stomach and stayed there.
“Go on.”
“It has fallen three inches since Tuesday. Cleared four days ago, like I’d not seen, but then dropped again middle of the day. With no weather to explain it. The southern spring—the one your cousin Edmund had piped to the still-room—has stopped entirely since Sunday. Two of the other four are running thin. The outflow at the lower hatch is no quicker than it was. The water is going somewhere that is not the hatch.”
“The middle?”
“Dark as I have known it. Nan saw it from the south chamber yesterday and said so to Martha. Mrs Pemberton said the same at the cottage.”
He closed his eyes. It was worse with the light out of them. He opened them. A cold came up through him from somewhere below his feet.
“Do you have an opinion as to cause?”
“I have an opinion, sir. Whether it is fit for the study I cannot say.”
“Give it.”
Hadley looked at the carpet. “The mere has gone dark before. I have seen it dark three times in my life. Once when Wetherthwaite the grandfather died. Once in the autumn before your cousin Edmund sold it to you. Each time it has had a reason, and each time the reason has been a matter of faith broken in the house. I would not presume to say the mere knows such things. I would only say that when such things have occurred, it hasdarkened, and when they have been mended, it has cleared. I have never known it darken without a cause, and I have never known the cause to be weather.”
Hadley kept his eyes on the carpet. It was a mercy. Whatever was on Darcy’s face just now, he was not equal to governing.
“Thank you, Hadley.”
“Sir.”
“I shall not keep you.”
Hadley went out. The door closed behind him.
For three breaths he did not move. Then he rose—the room gave its small lurch—took Wainwright’s letter from the drawer, put it in his coat pocket, and went out.
Theparlourdoorstoodopen by an inch.
He pushed it back. She was at the writing-table with her hand around the stem of a pen. Her leg, under the skirt, was stretched out along the second chair she had drawn up to hold it, the crutch against the far wall.
She did not turn. She knew his step. “Mr Darcy.”
“Miss Bennet.”
He closed the door behind him—all of it—and the sound of the latch going home was the first sound in the room she reacted to. One shoulder moved. Only the one.
He crossed to the fire because the alternative was to cross to her, and he did not yet trust his hands.
“Jane is at the cottage with Tom Pemberton, who has taken a turn again. Georgiana is upstairs with Nan.”
“I know.”
Something in his voice, which he had not been able to keep out of it, made her turn. She turned the chair slowly, bracing on the seat, and when she had got round far enough to see his face her hand went to the writing-table for a different reason than it had been there before, and did not grip it to rise but to hold herself where she was.
He had never seen her look at him with that sort of fear.
It sharpened his own. She had just understood, from his face, that he could destroy her if he chose, and that the world would stand by him while he did it. Her hand on the writing-table was holding her in the chair against the impulse to stand.
He could not look at her like this.
He walked from the fire to the window and turned and walked back. The seven paces did nothing. He did them again. He did them a third time, and stopped at the mantel with his back to her, because the sight of her face arranged the way it was arranged just now was a thing he could not keep looking at and govern his voice at the same time.
“A man has been at the Lantern this morning asking after your sister.”
