Even London was suffering.
Only the previous week, Mrs. Gardiner had written of overflowing streets and endless rain leaking through the windows along Gracechurch Street. Her aunt, heavily pregnant with her fourth child, complained good-naturedly that theweather had confined the children indoors so completely that they had begun climbing furniture “like tiny savages deprived of sunlight.”
Elizabeth smiled faintly at the recollection.
Her aunt’s letters were among the few things that reliably lifted her spirits.
With another stretch, Elizabeth abandoned the ledgers entirely and wrapped her shawl more firmly about her shoulders.
Fresh air.
If she remained buried among account books another hour, she thought she might scream.
The halls of Longbourn were unusually quiet as she descended the back stairs. Mrs. Bennet had retired upstairs with a headache after learning that haberdashery’s prices for lace had risen again in Meryton, while Lydia and Kitty were somewhere above stairs giggling over some piece of gossip or another. Mary, who had just come out only a few months before, practiced the pianoforte with determined mediocrity in the drawing room, and Jane sat writing letters beside the fire.
Mr. Bennet, naturally, remained shut away in his library.
Some things in life were dependable.
Elizabeth passed through the kitchen, nodding absently to Cook and a scullery maid, before stepping out the servants’ entrance into the yard.
The air smelled of wet earth and smoke.
Everywhere the snow had melted, the ground had become a sea of mud. Water dripped steadily from the eaves, and wagon ruts cut deep trenches through the lane beyond the stable yard.
Still, compared to the brutal cold earlier in the month, the air felt almost mild.
Elizabeth drew a deep breath and slowly released it.
For several precious moments, she simply walked.
Past the kitchens.
Past the smoking house.
Past the bare winter gardens where only dead stalks and stubborn cabbage remained.
The quiet soothed something raw inside her.
She had not realized until that moment how tightly wound she had become.
Then she looked southward.
Her steps slowed.
Dark clouds gathered low along the horizon, heavy and swollen with rain. Even as she watched, the distant line of gray seemed to thicken.
More weather coming.
More rain.
The roads would worsen again by morning.
Elizabeth folded her arms tightly against herself.
The tenants would struggle to move fodder.
Another cottage roof might collapse.
