Page 96 of A Debt Inherited

They searched the kitchen yard, the well, the still-room garden, the poultry walk, the copse beyond the paddock, and the track towards Oakham Mount. Hill went ahead where the ground dipped; Bennet followed more slowly, his cane finding stones, roots, hollows, and once the mark of a wheel that proved to be Perkins’s cart from the morning.

Nothing.

By the time they turned back, the light had thinned to amber along the westward fields. Bennet’s boots were grey with dust. Hill’s coat had caught burrs at the cuff. Neither man spoke until Longbourn came again into view, its windows pale and blank in the evening.

Mrs Hill stood at the door. She had not wept. That, Bennet thought, had cost her something.

She looked first at Hill, then at him.

Bennet shook his head once.

Mrs Hill held the door wider.

Bennet entered with the dust of his own estate upon his boots and no daughter beside him. The hall had darkened while he was abroad. From the kitchen passage came the low murmur of servants.

“Candles,” he said.

Mrs Hill moved at once.

He went back to the library. The ledger lay open where he had left it, Elizabeth’s figures still waiting beneath his hand. His pen had dried beside the page.

Hill closed the door.

“Sir.”

Bennet did not look round. “Speak.”

“If we send into Meryton—”

“Yes.”

Hill’s jaw worked once. “The town will have the tale before midnight.”

Bennet touched the back of Elizabeth’s chair.

“And by morning,” Hill said, “it will not be the same tale.”

Bennet shut his eyes for the space of one breath.

“No,” he said. “It will not.”

He opened his eyes. The room had grown dim enough that Elizabeth’s hand upon the page seemed darker than the rest.

“There are two harms before us,” Bennet said. “One may be repaired by prudence. The other may not be repaired at all.”

Hill said nothing.

“We begin with those we may trust.”

Hill’s shoulders settled by a fraction. “Perkins. Dawes. Tom Weller.”

“You must go to them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Perkins first. He is nearest. Then Weller. Dawes last, though you ride in full dark to reach him. Tell each man I require his help at once, and his silence as much as his speed. No sons. No labourers. No wives frightened into speech.”

“Yes, sir.”