Page 2 of The Servants’ Matchmaking

The maid worked without fuss, moving with the quiet economy of someone who had done this before and knew exactly where every minute went. She shifted the screen, drew back one curtain, and found clean linen for a cool cloth. When Jane coughed, Sarah raised her with care while Elizabeth held the cup to her lips.

"You have nursed before."

"My mother, miss. Some years ago."

There was no invitation to ask more in the way she said it. Elizabeth did not press.

An hour passed. Jane slept. Rain ticked against the glass, steadier now, and somewhere below a door shut against the wind. Sarah persuaded Elizabeth to leave the bedside long enough to change out of her ruined things. The adjoining chamber had been prepared in haste, a small fire just catching, the air still cold in the corners. Elizabeth's portmanteau had not arrived, but one of Jane's day gowns lay across the bed, pale muslin against the dark counterpane.

Sarah smoothed the borrowed gown flat. "Mrs. Nicholls sent a man to Longbourn. He should be back before dinner. This will serve until then, if you do not object to wearing Miss Bennet's gown."

Elizabeth examined the pale muslin doubtfully. "Jane is taller. I shall look as if I have borrowed virtue as well as clothing."

Sarah's mouth twitched — just barely, just at one corner. "I can take the hem up without cutting it."

"Then you may rescue me from two disasters today."

The maid helped her undress. The wet shawl had been carried up and spread near the hearth to steam, and Sarah lifted the damaged fringe between two fingers, turning it to the light.

"This can be mended. I have blue silk close enough to the colour."

"You need not trouble. It is an old shawl."

"Old things deserve honest mending, miss. New things have not proved themselves yet."

Elizabeth looked at her, surprised into a smile. "That is a severe philosophy for a piece of wool."

"My father farms, miss. He says it of harness."

"Then I accept it on agricultural authority."

Sarah set the shawl aside with evident satisfaction, as though a small injustice had been corrected. As she pinned the borrowed skirt, voices passed beyond the door. Mr. Darcy was speaking to another man in tones pitched low, the words carrying anyway in the way household sounds do.

"McKeever, have the south fire laid in the library. Miss Bennet may want a quieter room when her sister sleeps."

"Yes, sir."

"And ask Mrs. Nicholls whether the apothecary expects the fever to turn tonight. Do not trouble Miss Elizabeth with the question."

Their steps receded down the passage. Sarah's hands paused at Elizabeth's waist. Only for a moment, a breath, no more, and then they resumed their work.

"Mr. Darcy attends closely to his friend's concerns."

"Mr. Bingley's concerns, miss?"

The question was respectful. It was also, Elizabeth suspected, not remotely innocent.

Elizabeth met Sarah's eyes in the glass. "You have known me an hour. That is too short an acquaintance for impertinence."

"Yes, miss."

"Tomorrow, perhaps."

Sarah bent over the last pin, and her shoulders moved once, as if she had swallowed a laugh whole and it had gone down the wrong way.

Elizabeth returned to Jane. Near dusk, Bingley came to the threshold, accepted the news that the fever remained with visible dismay, and departed with obvious reluctance, glancing back twice before the door closed. Caroline followed him to make a graceful inquiry that somehow required very little of her actual presence in the sickroom. Mrs. Hurst sent compliments from below. Mr. Hurst sent none, which was, Elizabeth thought, the more honest contribution of the two.

Mr. Darcy did not come up. A fresh scuttle of coal arrived regardless, and a volume of Cowper had been left on the sitting-room table just outside, as if it had materialised there on its own, the way objects sometimes did in a well-run house, without anyone admitting to having placed them. Elizabeth found it when Jane woke and asked to be read to. There was no card with the book. There did not need to be. She had heard the order for the library fire. Not for poetry.