Elizabeth pushed herself a little higher against the pillow. “I do not mean there can be no natural explanation. I only mean—”
“I know what you mean.” Jane looked at the bowl, not at her sister. “And I know I cannot bear, just now, to have everything in this place answered by one question.”
A chill unrelated to the room moved through Elizabeth.
“Because of Tom?”
Jane gave a short laugh too thin to be called one. “Because of Tom, yes. Because of my husband. Because I sat at his bed and gave him the same water with the same hope everyone now brings to your room. Because I know hope can be cruel without meaning to be. Because if I begin asking whether the valley chose mercy wrongly, I shall not like the woman who asks it.”
The confession’s force was low, making the blow strike harder.
Elizabeth set down the untouched spoon.
“Jane—”
“No. Do not comfort me. I am not noble enough for comfort today.” At last Jane looked up. Her face composed again, but the composure cost blood. “Drink the broth, please. If I ask no more of you this afternoon, at least do that.”
She left before Elizabeth could reply.
Outside, somewhere beyond the south wall, voices rose and fell over work. Inside, the broth steamed gently on the tray. The music page lay beside it, useless and kind. Elizabeth looked from one to the other and reflections turned with despairing clarity to her astonishing selfishness in believing her own secrecy the central tragedy of the house.
Every room at Northmere held another’s cost.
TowardduskDarcycameat last.
He did not knock loudly, as if the room’s occupant were a stranger, nor enter with the old ease of ledger afternoons. He paused at the threshold after a single tap, and Elizabeth understood before he spoke that whatever had been easy between them, even in tension, had changed its footing.
His coat was damp at the hem again. Mud marked one boot. Fatigue weighed the set of his shoulders and something more heavily controlled darkened his face.
“Mrs Hadley said I might ask how you were.”
NotI came to see how you are. NotHow is the leg?The sentence, borrowing Mrs Hadley’s authority, kept him just beyond intimacy.
Elizabeth hated the restraint because it was justified.
“I am improved enough to be thoroughly ashamed and not improved enough to escape hearing it.”
A shadow of their old expression crossed his face, almost a response, then was withdrawn.
“The wound will heal again.”
“And the meadow?”
He took a step further. “We have reset the gate for now. Ashby will take the whole lower frame apart if frost does not return tonight. The Pemberton boy is no worse now than at noon. Mrs Reeves’s lamb remains stubbornly alive.”
The last line might once have invited wit. Elizabeth found none. “I am glad of it.”
Silence followed. She perceived him wanting to say more and refusing himself the indulgence.
“Mr Darcy,” she said at last, “I did not mean—”
He raised a finger faintly. Not rude. Final. “I know you did not mean harm. That is not, unfortunately, the same as doing none.”
She bore the blow, knowing she had earned it. “No.”
His gaze moved to the window where the darkening afternoon rendered the pane almost reflective. In it was a dim double of him and herself, separated by bed and floor and several less visible things.
“Hadley says the mere is lower by the western reeds than it should be after rain,” he said. “Mrs Hadley says the water smells of iron tonight. Old Bess would likely say something more memorable and less useful. I do not know what to make of any of it. I only know I dislike very much seeing this house answer to strains it does not deserve.”
