Jane blinked. “I am surprised you cared enough about the rest of the valley to ask.”
Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open. “Jane! That is terribly uncharitable. Do you truly think me such a monster?”
Jane sighed. “Still alive. Mrs Reeves says that if it lives she shall resent it for the trouble.”
“Then it will certainly live. No creature would dare die under such terms.”
Jane’s mouth moved despite herself—not a smile, but its shadow.
“Tom Pemberton is worse,” she said. “Mrs Hadley is going there at noon.”
Elizabeth closed her fingers around the cup. “Because of the water?”
“Because he is ill.”
“Jane.”
Jane looked at her then, and for an instant composure slipped enough to reveal the strain beneath—grief as ancient as the grave, jealousy fresh as the week, exhaustion from nursing everyone except herself.
“I do not know,” she said quietly. “And just now I think I cannot bear to know by arguing the point before breakfast.”
She turned away to set down the bottle. Stung by the justice of the rebuke and the pain within it, Elizabeth said nothing more.
Thehousedidnotsettle after breakfast as usual. It throbbed with disrupted purpose. Hadley came in and out from the meadow, boots muddy, hair damp from mist, bringing fragments of report to Darcy in the study. Ashby arrived before ten and left with two boys and a length of timber, muttering that if the lower hatch had warped overnight he would see the devil in the grain before letting water answer to nonsense. Mrs Reeves sent Nan twice to the cottage with broth and once to the Pembertons with extra linen. Georgiana, pale from a restless night, came only as far as the landing and then withdrew when she saw the house ill suited for quiet company.
Darcy did not come to the parlour all morning.
Elizabeth told herself this was proper. She had given him every reason to stay away. He had a valley to mend, a house to order, and now the added burden of deciding what to do with a woman who had admitted, without explanation, that danger travelled in her pocket. It would have been absurd to expect him at her bedside with ledgers and dry remarks after the scene in the lane.
Absurdity did not prevent the want.
By eleven the room became unbearable. Not from pain alone—though it had reasserted itself in nerve and muscle—but from knowing that every sound in the passage might bring news of some injury beyond her reach. She lay still as directed, listening to the house around her, and reflections turned to the Pemberton boy’s lungs, the lamb by the ashes, the lower meadow under wrong water, Hadley’s vexed face, Ashby’s disgust, Darcy’s silence.
At length Martha came with fresh cloths and said, unprompted and therefore perilously, “Mrs Hadley’s gone to Tom. Mr Darcy’s out with Hadley and Ashby by t’ carrier. Missus says you are not to fret, which I know by long practice means there’s cause for fret.”
Elizabeth almost laughed.
“Your mistress is a philosopher.”
“She’s a housekeeper,” Martha said. “Comes to much the same when folk are ill.” She set down the basin and hesitated. “Nan says t’ mere looks queer from the south chamber. Dark at the middle like more weather’s in it than the sky.”
“Nan is romantic.”
“Aye. But she sees right as oft as she speaks wild.”
After Martha left, Elizabeth lay staring at the ceiling, certain in a sickness more bitter than pain that she could no longer regard her presence at Northmere as a private moral question. Even if Old Bess had embroidered matters, even if half the valley’s conclusions sprang from winter nerves and the natural human appetite for pattern, the effects were real enough on flesh and water alike. Her leaving had cost. Her staying exacted cost too. The valley had attached itself to the knot of her existence—wisely or not—and others were paying for the binding.
To remain and do nothing was impossible.
To go cleanly was impossible.
That left only uglier options.
BynoonMrsHadleyreturned from the Pembertons, the smell of cold air and poor cottages clinging to her clothes. She came straight to the parlour, set down her basket, and regarded Elizabeth with no softness.
“Well,” she said, “you’ve managed it.”
“If that is meant to comfort, I fear the method is novel.”
