“Forgive me,” he said. “I—forgive me. I shall not press you this morning.”
She did not lift her face. She had no use for the sight of his face making the apology, and he had not the words for it either. She heard him at the door. She heard the latch tried, and held, and tried again, and let go of until he was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Darcywasinthesouth field with Ashby examining the fresh timber laid by the lower gate when Hadley came up the path. The wind had grown sharp through the morning. The mere, beyond the rise, showed a skin of steel-grey at the edges and something blacker beneath.
“A second one, sir. At the gate this morning, asking after Mrs Marsden by name.”
Darcy set down the rule. The reading of the timber had not been in his head, only in his hand.
“When?”
“An hour back. I sent Martha in and kept him talking till I had the shape of him. He came up from Bakewell direction, not the lower road. Asked at the smithy after Wetherthwaite House. The smith pretended deafness. Asked at the posting-yard whether the place now called Northmere—the one kept by the gentleman with the invalid sister—had lately received letters or parcels for a Mrs Marsden. The postmaster denied any such. Pemberton lad on the lower road, when he was asked the way up to the ridge, gave him the wrong path and watched him take it. Mrs Hadley would not let him stand at the cottage door. She said two sentences to him I have not heard her speak in two and twenty years. Only then did he come to the lane.”
“His name?”
“Calls himself Briggs. Town hands and country boots, which usually means somebody else’s money. Represents, by his own telling, no magistrate, no solicitor, and no relation fit to sign his own name openly. I gave him to understand that gentlemen’s houses are not to be counted like sheep from a lane, and that if he wanted answers from the master he might ask them standing where a horse could see him. He declined the invitation.”
Ashby, driving a peg into the thawing ground with more force than required by mere carpentry, said, “Reckon if a man wants t’ old house name he has been given it southward. That is how such things travel. Some servant’s memory, some carrier’s guess, some foolwi’ a good ear for gossip and no honest trade.” He looked up. “Want I should tell t’ men to turn him off if he shows again?”
Darcy looked toward the house.
Northmere stood pale against the hard light, all its windows innocent as if no roof in England had ever sheltered ambiguity. Somewhere inside were Georgiana, who must not be frightened; and Mrs Reeves, who would fight the county with ladles if pressed; and Fitzwilliam, who had stayed the night and ridden out to the Hadleys’ at first light because Darcy had not been able to leave a parlour to do it; and Elizabeth, alone since this morning, with the danger he had brought into her room in his coat now doubled by the danger that had come to find her on its own.
“No public scene,” Darcy said. “Not yet. If he returns, send for me at once and let no one else engage him if it can be helped.”
Hadley nodded. Ashby muttered something about scenes being public whether chosen or not.
Darcy went back to the house with the cold on his face and something nearer shame beneath it.
Fitzwilliam met him in the hall—coat still on him, the morning’s ride not yet warmed out of his face. “Mrs Marsden would not come back today. She means to remain where she is for now.”
Darcy set his hat aside. “Did she say anything else?”
“Not to me. Mrs Hadley says she is resting for once, and she is sitting by her. She has eaten broth, twice. She has wept. She has not been asked one question by anyone. Mrs Hadley thinks tomorrow, not today, for bringing her up.”
Darcy let out a breath. “Thank you.”
“She did not ask after you.”
“No. I did not suppose she would.”
“She asked after her sister. I told her her sister was indoors,alone, and as well as could be expected. She seemed to accept it.”
“Thank you. For all of it.”
“It was not nothing, Darcy. The bit of road between here and the cottage was a long bit of road.”
“I know it was.”
Fitzwilliam looked at him. “Hadley says a second hound has been sniffing the gate. I assume from your manner this one bites nearer the truth.”
“Too near. He went to the Hadleys’ as well.”
Fitzwilliam’s face went still. “To the cottage?”
“To the cottage.”
