“Then he has shown you the meadows in earnest.”
“He has shown me chiefly that my cousin was careless, and that neglect is always dearer than repair.”
Miss Bennet moved her book a little upon the coverlet. “What is a drowner, exactly? I have heard the word several times and can make nothing respectable of it.”
Mrs Marsden answered before he could. “Water meadows, Lizzy. Channels, sluices, drains. Men like Mr Hadley keep the fields from going wrong in winter and feed right in spring. We had nothing of the sort in Hertfordshire.”
Miss Bennet’s hand went still upon the page, and her eyes flashed suddenly to his face. It was no more than that—a flicker of… alarm? And it passed quickly. Mrs Marsden did not even appear to notice it.
Yet Darcy saw, in the sharpened look Miss Bennet turned upon her sister, something very like… like terror.Hertfordshire.The word had been innocently spoken and not innocently heard. He stored that away without examining it.
“Then I owe Mr Hadley an apology,” Miss Bennet said, too lightly. “I had imagined a figure out of murder ballads.”
“No,” said Darcy. “Only a man with a spade and a profound contempt for gentlemen.”
Mrs Marsden smiled at her work. “Then he is well suited to the district.”
Darcy crossed to the mantel and set the letters there while he bent to stoke the fire. Up close, he saw that the book in Miss Bennet’s hand was one of Georgiana’s. The sight made the room feel at once stranger and more at peace.
Miss Bennet had tilted her head to glance upward. “Will the roof hold?”
He took an instant to place the question, until her eyes moved to the pale water-mark above the far wall where the earlier leak had dried.
“Ashby says yes. With work.”
“Then I am glad. I have lately become attached to this ceiling, though acquaintance has not improved its appearance.” Her voice was light, but the words were not.
Darcy met her eyes and, to his discomfort, believed she meant them. “As am I,” he said.
Something altered in her face then and was smoothed away at once. He ought to have spoken of some proper matter to Mrs Marsden about Miss Bennet’s comfort, to Norton about the mail, to Mrs Reeves about stocking the larder. Instead, he stood too long in the middle of the room with sealed letters cooling on the mantel, Mrs Marsden at her sewing, and Miss Bennet watching him with one brow lifting faintly.
He collected the letters once more and said the first practical thing. “Norton must ride within the hour. If either of you has a note for the village or the post, send it now.”
“Oh, that is very kind,” said Mrs Marsden. “I started a letter this morning for—”
“Nothing for the post,” Miss Bennet interrupted. “Thank you.”
Mrs Marsden’s hand stilled on her sewing and she regarded her sister with a quizzical look. Darcy did not mean to stay for whatever explanation would be required.
“Well. I only came to look in. I beg you will excuse me.” He bowed shortly to each one, then went out. In the passage, with the door shut behind him and the voices within reduced again to domestic quiet, he stood with the letters in his hand.
Norton found him and took the letters without remark. Darcy returned to the study, sat, and looked for several minutes at the blank blotter where the instructions had been.
The commitment was made. The money would be spent. The men paid. The channels cleared if labour and weather allowed. There was satisfaction in that.
There was also unease of another sort, and he had not yet determined which disturbed him more—the valley depending upon him in earnest, or the possibility he had already begun to think far too often upon Miss Bennet.
Chapter Fourteen
Byevening,Elizabethhadlearned three truths about invalidism at Merebank.
The first was that Mrs Hadley and Mrs Bannon could disagree without raising their voices and yet make the air between them more perilous than a quarrel in any other house.
The second was that Jane, ordered to sleep for an hour after dinner by a woman whose authority she half accepted, could indeed be compelled if enough competent females conspired against her.
The third was that Georgiana Darcy wrote notes with the gravity of a cabinet minister and the curiosity of a girl starved for new friendship.
The second note arrived before the light had fully faded, again borne by Nan Reeves, whose expression now resembled a trusted envoy on active service.
