“Monday last week was the morning of her seizure. She stood up at half past nine to ring for the tea-pot and fell before she had reached the bell. The mere read the seizure as it happened. The two clocks are within a quarter hour of each other on the meridian; the mere was at most ten minutes off.”
“Then Northmere knew before anyone else did.”
“Northmere always knows first.”
“Then Jane and the colonel know first as well. Or Jane did—the colonel was at Mr Ellison’s office in Lambton that morning on lease business. Jane shall have walked backfrom the bank in her muslin and her boots in the wet grass, and explained the mere to her husband over dinner that evening, and the colonel shall have understood not one word of it, and shall have nodded at her as he always nods at her when she explains a matter he does not understand, which is some three times a day.”
“He would have understood enough. He has been tired of our aunt’s business for years, and I wager he was relieved by the news from Kent. No doubt the earl wrote to him as well.”
“Jane wrote me last week that the Hadley cottages have come up by twelve shillings a quarter on the strength of the meadow drainage, and that the south fields have let to a Mr Yates at a sum she had not, in any letter, been able to bring herself to repeat. The colonel has been talking, by Jane’s report, of investments in such Lambton sundries as he had not, in fourteen years of being his father’s third son, ever supposed he should be in a position to invest in. He is enjoying being a man with rents. Jane is enjoying being a woman whose husband has rents. And I daresay the mere has been profiting by it.”
“The mere and the entire estate has had an excellent quarter.”
“It has. We shall write to them tomorrow. The day after, when we have had Jane’s reply, we should go down to Northmere before the harvest.”
Darcy pulled her hand from the table and into his. “I would like that very much. I believe Georgiana is eager to see Nan again, too.”
“Then we shall go in August.”
“We shall go in August. I shall write to Richard by the noon post asking him to make up the parlour for us again.”
“Oh! Jane will be very put out to lose the use of her parlour just as she had put it to order.”
Darcy chuckled. “Then Richard will have to direct his attention once more to the repairs needed to put the south wing back into service. Come, my love, we shall be doing your sister a favour. He has been far too occupied with Hadley to mind the house repairs before winter.”
“And I am certain she will express that when I write to her!” She rose from the chairs and put it on his face beneath his jaw. “Walk with me to the lake before you go to your study. The day is too good for letters before the afternoon.”
They went out by the south door. The morning was the morning of any other Tuesday in July, by the small evidence of the weather, the gravel, and the gardeners at the south border with their hats off. He had her hand through his arm. She did not lean on the armany further as they walked down than she had been leaning for the four months of the marriage.
They went out by the south door. He had her hand through his arm. They walked down the gravel toward the lake, and at the top of the slope she slipped her hand from his arm.
“Race me to the water, Fitzwilliam.”
He stiffened and his hand stayed rigid in hers. “Race! I shall do no such thing.”
“Then you will be left behind. Come along!”
She had already begun running. He stood at the top of the slope and watched her go some seconds, and then went after her. She had put her hand in the water before he had reached the bank.
She was laughing when he came up to her, with her hand still in the lake.
“You have not, in the four months of our marriage, given up a single chance to put yourself near a body of water. I have, in the same four months, pulled you out of one and walked you away from a dozen. I am beginning to think it is a thing in your constitution.”
She did not at once answer him. She kept her hand in the water and looked at the surface and the sky in it.
“It is a thing in my constitution. I am happiest, Fitzwilliam, when I am at the edge of some piece of water in the sun, watching the light on the surface and asking nothing of myself or the day but to look at it. The mere cleared for me once at Northmere, and no water has, in the time since, cleared for me on the same terms, and shall not. I have stood at three lakes since and they have held the sky and given me nothing else. It was once. It is not to be again. I am at peace with that.”
He sat down on the bank next to her and put his hand at the small of her back. “And yet you stand at every water you can find.”
“And yet I stand at every water I can find. I cannot help it, Fitzwilliam. Whenever my hand touches water, my bones know it. I felt it just now in the lake. I feel it every morning at the basin in my dressing-room. Some piece of the mere is still in me, and it is glad to be brought back to water. I think it will not leave me. I do not want it to. You will think me foolish. I have not told anyone—not even you. I was afraid I would sound like a madwoman. But it has not gone away. It is on my hand now.”
“I have thought you enchanted since that morning at Northmere. I did not say so because I thought you would not want to hear it. I am saying it now because you havesaid it first. There is nothing wrong with you, Elizabeth. The valley has been kind to you. It will go on being kind.”
She did not at once answer him. Her hand was still wet from the lake. She brought it up to his face. The water was on his skin under her palm.
“If I am a sort of charm for the valley, Fitzwilliam, then you are mine—and a great deal more so. The water came up for me once. You have come up for me every day since. I will keep you.”
He covered her wet hand with his. “Keep me.”
