Jane lifted the tray. “I shall take these out before Mrs Reeves accuses us of founding a second household in this room.”
She left.
Elizabeth watched her go with a sudden, uneasy certainty that the withdrawal was not wholly accidental.
He rested one hand on the arm of Georgiana’s chair. “You have done my sister more good in one afternoon than I have managed in months.”
Elizabeth answered too quickly. “I did nothing.”
“You received her. Do not diminish the thing because it looks small from outside. She has been afraid of rooms, of stairs, of meeting pity before she was equal to it. She did not meet pity with you.”
Elizabeth looked down at her hands lying quiet on the coverlet. “Then I am glad.”
“So am I. More than I know how to say without embarrassing us both.”
The honesty might have driven a less stubborn woman into softness. Elizabeth, because softness was too like surrender, chose the nearest shelter instead.
“Mr Darcy, if you grow grateful at me in that tone, I shall demand a fresh ledger in compensation.”
His mouth changed. “Extortion under cover of benevolence. I begin to think your recovery dangerous to the peace of the house.”
“Only because the house has been too long accustomed to being dull.”
“If it was dull before, it has lately been instructed otherwise.”
There it was again—the live current beneath his words, undeniable now that neither gratitude nor necessity could wholly explain it. Elizabeth knew it and saw, in the altered set of his mouth, that he knew it too. Everything around them became at once less safe and more vivid.
Jane came back before either could make it worse. Mrs Hadley followed close upon her, took one look at Elizabeth’s colour, Darcy’s chair, and the length of the visit, and announced that everyone had had enough improvement for one afternoon.
There was no arguing with her.
Even this much company had exacted its price. By the time Jane had lowered Elizabeth more gently against the pillows, eased the weight of the blankets, and laid the next warm cloth over the wound, she was too tired even for wit.
But exhaustion did not prevent thought.
Later,afterdusk,whenthe house had quieted and Mrs Marsden dozed unwillingly over her mending by the hearth below, Darcy sat beside his sister’s bed and watched her sleep.
The south chamber was warmer than the landing and still held the faint after-scent of the tea she had taken downstairs. The fire burned low. On the table beside the bed lay the sheet music Nan had triumphantly brought up after the visit below, as if placing it within reach already counted for progress.
Georgiana slept with one hand outside the coverlet, fingers no longer rigid, face younger in sleep than it had been in the chair beside Miss Bennet’s bed.
She had come down. She had laughed. She had spoken with Miss Bennet as if the acquaintance had begun not two days ago by the exchange of notes between invalid rooms but months before, in some calmer country where friendship needed no negotiation with pain.
The sight ought to have filled him wholly with gratitude.
It did fill him with gratitude. That was not the difficulty.
The difficulty was that gratitude no longer came alone.
With it came the image of Miss Bennet in the winter light, one hand lying quiet on the coverlet, the other near the closed book, her face animated not by fever or fear but by attention. With it came the sound of her voice sayingbeyond your managementand the immediate knowledge that she had spoken in jest yet touched, by chance or instinct, the very nerve of the thing.
Change had entered Merebank not as catastrophe—catastrophe he understood well—but as possibility. Possibility was harder to govern. One could barricade against disaster. One could not so easily barricade against a house beginning, under one’s own eyes, to resemble something one had never permitted oneself to want.
He looked at Georgiana. At the music. At the fire. At the shut door beyond which the rest of the house lay in its winter hush.
He had come north for her life and had nearly lost his own footing instead.
Chapter Nineteen
