Elizabeth could not speak. The two devastations—the leg and the husband, the saw and the churchyard—weighted into one space in her mind, neither yielding.
Jane was a widow. Penniless. Standing beside the bed arguing for amputation because she had already buried someone. Elizabeth could not speak because her mouth was full of grief that was not hers and terror that was—not dread, but something—too large for words.
Aldridge nodded—not agreement, but weighing. His hand rested on his case, the saw within. A careful man, a professional who had seen infections advance and retreat, knowing that a quarter-inch of improvement was no cure, no guarantee, only a single data point in a disease that moved swifter than hope.
Elizabeth’s body shuddered again, head to toe, and she tasted blood again from her tongue. The shaking would not stop.
“Mrs Marsden makes a reasonable argument,” he said. “The improvement encourages, but it is not—”
“Is it safe to wait?”
Darcy had not moved—had not leaned closer or approached—but his voice cut through Aldridge’s bitter assessment with a quality Elizabeth had never heard before. Not loudness—Darcy did not raise his voice—but authority. The authority of a man who owned the house they stood in, who was paying the surgeon’s fee, who had carried the woman on his bloody shirt, and who would not allow her leg to be taken unheard.
“You told me yesterday that one day would not kill her. The day has passed. She is alive. The wound has improved, the fever softened. I ask you again, Mr Aldridge—is it safe to wait?”
Aldridge looked at Darcy. The look between them was that of a professional asked by a layman to make a judgment beyond the layman’s knowledge, and the professional recognising the layman was right.
“One more day will not kill her. Two more days will not, if the improvement holds. If it reverses—if the margin advances by a fraction of an inch—I am taking the leg. On that point, Mr Darcy, I will not be argued with.”
“I am not arguing. I ask you to let the improvement continue.”
“You ask me to gamble my patient’s life on spring water and an old housekeeper’s faith.”
“I ask you to gamble on a quarter-inch. You have seen it yourself. The blackening retreats. You cannot explain it. Neither can I. But it is happening. Taking the leg today is not caution. It is haste.”
Haste.A surgeon who amputated a limb that might have been saved was a surgeon guilty of haste. That accusation a careful professional could not bear. Aldridge’s jaw locked. He studied the wound, the retreating margin, the cloths soaked in mere’s water, then Jane’s taut face, clenched hands, her entire body strained with the effort not to seize him and demand the leg taken at once.
“Continue the fomentations,” Aldridge said slowly. “Every two hours. Warm, not hot. Change cloths each time. I will return tomorrow at the same hour. If the margin holds or retreats further, we wait. If it advances—by any measure, Mrs Marsden—I amputate. Mr Darcy, I will need a word before I leave.”
He repacked his case. The saw remained inside. Elizabeth watched as he closed the clasp—the small, reluctant motion of a man putting away an instrument he expected to use but did not—not yet—and the sound was the most beautiful she had heard since the ice broke.
The two men stepped into the passage. The door closed.
Jane sat on the bed’s edge. Her face was wet. Elizabeth had not seen her cry—had watched Aldridge, the case, the clasp—but Jane had wept silently while her voice remained composed, while she argued for the amputation. She wept because the leg was spared. She wept because sparing it was a risk that terrified her as much as the prospect horrified Elizabeth. She wept because the words she had withheld for days came too soon—in this room, at this time, before the wrong audience.
Elizabeth reached for her sister’s hand, and Jane took it. The grip was firm—not the desperate clutch Elizabeth had inflicted on Darcy in the night, but the hold of a woman spanning a distance newly uncountable.
“Jane. When?”
Jane’s chin fell. The composure rebuilt for argument, held through Aldridge’s presence, could not hold here.
“Four days before your letter arrived. He went in the night. I had sat with him three weeks, and on the night he died, I had fallen asleep in the chair beside the bed. When I woke, he was gone. I do not know the hour. The doctor told me a week before to expect it soon, and I waited—and then I stopped waiting because waiting grew unbearable—andthe night I stopped was the night he died. I have not decided whether the two are connected.”
“Oh, Jane.”
“I buried him on the second day. The vicar at Wetherthwaite knew us and arranged the grave. Six villagers attended, none I called friends. I walked back from the churchyard alone. On day two, I sorted his papers. On day three, I had your letter came from Northampton telling me you were coming. I had intended to write to tell you not to come—that the cottage was no more, that he was gone—but your letter arrived instead, and I did not reply.
“There was no time for my letter to reach you. You would already be on the road. I did not know where to send it. I sat for a day holding your letter, trying to decide. On the morning of day four Mrs Hadley brought Mr Darcy’s note telling me of your accident.”
Elizabeth did not know when the tears began, but they were running off her chin and filling her eyes until she could not see. “Oh, Jane. I am so—”
“Do not. Not that word here, not from you, not while you lie with—” Jane stopped, drew a breath. “I told myself I would tell you when you were strong enough. I think you have been since waking this morning, and it was I who was not strong enough. Forgive me for how you learned.”
“There is nothing to forgive.”
“There is. I told Mr Darcy before I told you. I told him because I could not bear him to think I could offer you a home, support while you healed. He thought…” Jane sniffed. “Well, never mind what he thought. I told him the truth because he deserved it, and because I was frightened. I should have told you first—yesterday when you asked, and I deflected. The deflection was for me, not you. I wanted one more day not to say the words aloud.”
“You have said them now.”
