Kitty nodded solemnly, though her eyes danced.
Darcy’s mouth twitched—Elizabeth could see he was torn between humoring them and forbidding the whole absurd expedition. She sighed, but there was affection in it. “You will do no such thing. And you will not go near the east winguntil I say so. Do you understand?”
They groaned but obeyed, retreating to the hearth to whisper to each other in exaggerated mystery.
When they were gone, Darcy’s voice lowered. “Do you truly think there is a passageway there? The servants’ quarters your aunt spoke of?”
“I do not know,” Elizabeth admitted. “But the notion refuses to leave my mind. It would explain much, would it not?”
“It would,” he said gravely. His gaze lingered on her, the gray light from the rain-dimmed window deepening the line of his cheek and jaw. “You have been in the midst of all this, yet you bear it better than most men I know would.”
Elizabeth felt her heart quicken. “I have had… help.”
The corner of his mouth lifted just slightly. “If I may remain in that role, you need only say so.”
The words, though simply spoken, felt like more than an offer of practical assistance—they felt like a promise, a tether drawn between them. She was glad of the fire’s warmth, for her cheeks were heating.
For a moment they stood together in that small shelter of silence, the steady patter of the rain like a curtain drawn against the rest of the world. Elizabeth could not say what might have been spoken next, had Hill not come in to announce tea. The moment broke, but not before she caught the faintest trace of something in Darcy’s eyes—an intensitythat, whether born of the investigation or something else, she could not yet name.
Hill’s announcement brought them reluctantly towards the tea table, where Mrs. Bennet presided with all the gravity of a dowager queen, despite her nerves. The china gleamed in the lamplight; the air smelled faintly of bergamot and warm bread. Rain slid in wavering streams down the glass panes behind them, blurring the orchard into a wash of gray and green.
Darcy took the seat beside Elizabeth. The arrangement was happenstance—at least to outward appearance—but the quiet warmth it lent her was as tangible as the cup she cradled in her hands.
“I have been thinking about the message,” he said, low enough that Mrs. Bennet’s chatter about Sir William Lucas’s last musicale could not carry over.
Elizabeth inclined her head slightly. “‘You Supper.’ It is strange, is it not? One might almost think it meant—”
“That you were to be the supper.” His tone was grave, but his eyes glinted with something that might have been a shared, dark humor. “Or your father.”
Elizabeth’s lips curved despite the subject. “I had thought my father’s jest too morbid to repeat.”
“Sometimes humor is the safest way to face danger,” Darcy replied. “But in seriousness—if it was meant as a threat, it is bolder than anything we have seen thus far.”
Elizabeth glanced across the room; Lydia and Kitty were still whispering on the hearthrug, clearly planning another 'encounter' with their imaginary ghost. “And yet our culprit has chosen to strike in places that are rarely guarded. Last night, the study. Before that, Papa’s portrait. They strike where they will not be interrupted.”
“That is why your father was right to send for me.” His words were plain, but the way his gaze rested on her felt heavier, more personal.
She sipped her tea, aware of her pulse in her throat. “I suppose I should be grateful you are willing to brave the rain for the sake of our peace.”
His mouth lifted just slightly. “I would brave more than rain for that.”
Her fingers tightened slightly on the porcelain handle. She could not help but think of him riding up to Longbourn this afternoon, his dark coat glistening with rain, his hair dampened and curling faintly at the edges, his expression calm but resolute. The image settled in her mind with dangerous ease.
“We will need to examine the east wing again,” she said, forcing herself back to the practical. “If there is a hiddenroom or passage, it could explain the ease with which the mischief is done. And if we can find the entrance…”
“We close it. Or we guard it.”
She nodded, heartened by the firmness in his voice. “But the house will be too full of eyes today, and we have no excuse to wander there without attracting attention.”
Darcy’s gaze slid briefly towards the hearth, where Lydia was now attempting to scare Kitty by dropping her voice to a ghostly moan. “Perhaps not today. But soon. And when that time comes…” He left the thought unfinished, but his meaning was plain—he would be there.
Their eyes held for a moment longer than was polite. Then Mary struck a decisive chord at the pianoforte, startling Mrs. Bennet into a flurry of conversation with Jane, and the moment was lost.
Still, as Elizabeth turned back to her tea, she felt a curious steadiness settle in her. The storm outside might rage, the mischief-maker might creep in unseen corners, but she was not standing alone against it. And though she told herself her calm was born of reason, she could not deny that a portion of it came simply from knowing Mr. Darcy sat within reach, his voice and his presence a quiet bulwark against the strange troubles that haunted Longbourn.
It was Mary who, unwittingly, gave them their excuse. She had been searching for a volume of sermons—Fordyce, no less—which she had left somewhere “quite inconvenient,” as she admitted with an apologetic look. “I believe I carried it upstairs on Tuesday,” she told Elizabeth, “and perhaps left it on the window seat in the east wing when I was called away to help Mama.”
Elizabeth could have kissed her. “Then I shall fetch it for you,” she said, rising at once. “It will be a relief to stretch my legs.”
