“Then we wait.”
The path, where it took the second bend above the dairy, gave them sight of the eastern half of the lower meadow and the smoke rising from Hadley’s cottage, very thin and very white in the cold. The cottage was a quarter mile off across the open ground. Darcy could make out the back of the kitchen garden and the shape of the byre. There was no person in the yard.
He looked at the smoke and did not speak for a while. “Fitzwilliam, how does Mrs Marsden this morning?”
“I do not know how she does this morning. The letter she sent up by Mrs Hadley was given to Miss Bennet half an hour ago. You and I were both in the study. I have not been back across the meadow since I left there last evening.”
“Mrs Hadley must have sent word when she brought the letter? neI cannot believe she would not have.”
“She only affirmed that Mrs Marsden had slept well in the night. That she had eaten her breakfast. That she had asked, twice, whether her sister had passed a tolerable night, and would not be answered with less than the truth. Mrs Hadley gave her the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That her sister had not passed a tolerable night, but had passed a survivable one.”
“That was honest.”
“That was Mrs Hadley.”
They walked a little further. What Darcy had next to say was harder to say than he had been prepared for.
“I want her brought back.”
“Darcy.”
“Today, if she can be brought. Tomorrow at the latest. Elizabeth needs her sister, Fitzwilliam.”
“Darcy, you cannot—”
“I shall send the carriage down for her at one o’clock. I shall send Mrs Hadley with the carriage. If Mrs Marsden will not come to it, Mrs Hadley will hand her up. I shall notpress my own person on her. I shall ride to Lambton on some pretext and be out of the house when she comes in.”
“Darcy, listen to me!”
He stopped with a hiss. “What is it, Fitzwilliam?”
“Have you any conception at all of what that woman requires this morning?”
He turned to look at his cousin. His cousin’s tone made no sense to him. “I have a conception. She requires her sister. She requires rest, distance, the absence of pressing demand, the absence of pity from a quarter she would refuse pity from, and the absence of the persons in the house most responsible for her present state. She requires those things in some order I had hoped you would help me arrange. I have proposed riding to the Hadley's precisely so that she might have the last of them.”
“That is well thought, Darcy. But it is not the half of what is required.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What is the half I have not thought of, Fitzwilliam?”
“You will not like it.”
“I have not liked anything for thirty-six hours. Tell me.”
“Darcy. You are a stupid blockhead. Will you ever in your life observe a woman in your own house who is not also Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”
“I…”
“Mrs Marsden is in love with you.”
Darcy walked four paces, slowed, did not turn. His back was to his cousin. He was watching the smoke at the Hadley chimney. “Impossible.”
“Darcy.”
“No, Fitzwilliam. No. You are mistaken in this. You have not been in the house above a day. You have seen Mrs Marsden at one supper and one breakfast. You have escorted her down a meadow in tears. You have not the standing to make such a claim about a woman in mourning whom you have known some twenty hours.”
