“Of course,” said Darcy. “You must tend to the ill, and we shall continue as your couriers and informants.” He found himself curious about this market-town apothecary, a man who appeared to be several years his junior, who spoke in educated accents and strode into the presence of disfiguring and deadly disease without flinching. But this was not the time to satiate his curiosity, so it must be swallowed, and the business of the day attended to. He bowed sharply.
Mr Jones returned the gesture. “I thank you, Mr Darcy. Without the aid of yourself and Mr Bingley and Captain Carter, my burdens would be much greater.”
He watched the apothecary gather his scarf and bag before pulling up the collar of his old greatcoat, which Darcy saw had once been quite fine, against the chill November wind. The door shut behind him and Darcy turned his mind to other matters, his feet to the stairs.
CHAPTERSIX
The soft knockbrought Elizabeth quickly to the door of her sister’s chamber. Holding a finger over her lips, Elizabeth slipped out into the hall and quietly closed the door behind her. “Jane is sleeping at last,” she whispered, then regarded their visitor with some surprise. “Whatever brings you here, Mr Darcy?”
He indicated that they should move down the passage a space, and once they were farther from the chamber he spoke in low tones. “I come with news from Longbourn.”
Elizabeth was not alarmed by this, for Mr Darcy was always grave, in her opinion, and she waited for him to continue with nothing more than mild interest.
“I stopped at your father’s estate this morning to enquire after the household. Rather than being admitted to the house, Miss Mary came out to greet me.” He paused, looked briefly disconcerted, and then fixed her with a gaze of such earnestness as to raise the alarm his solemnity had not. “I will be direct. Your sister informed me that your mother and Miss Lydia both developed a fever last night, and your servant Mr Hill began to feel unwell this morning.”
Elizabeth sucked in a sharp breath, and he reached out a hand as if to steady her, but she did not waver and it dropped back to his side after hanging in the air between them for a moment. He continued, “Mr Jones has been informed, and one of us shall now call there daily as well, so you shall not lack for news. It is to be hoped that they have merely contracted an ill-timed ague.”
She was silent for a long moment, her hands clenching and releasing the fabric of her skirts. “As you say, sir, we must hope for the best, and of course I have every confidence in Mr Jones. Has anyone else fallen ill with the smallpox?”
He looked briefly uncomfortable then, and nodded slowly. “Several servants at Haye-Park, where we all dined together a few nights before your sister fell ill, are now well into their illness. Mr Jones fears that everyone who was at that dinner is in some danger unless they are fortunate enough to have been inoculated or survived it previously, and he expects that we will begin to see more cases in the coming week.”
Elizabeth thought back to that otherwise unremarkable dinner party, and concluded that most of the gentry in this corner of Hertfordshire had been at Mrs Goulding’s table that evening. “My uncle Philips had it in childhood, and my father lost two sisters in that epidemic, but never fell ill himself. It has been many years since smallpox came to this area, and inoculation has not.”
They were both silent for a moment as they contemplated the scope of the problem. If the Haye-Park servants had been contagious during that dinner, it seemed quite possible that many people were even now on the verge of succumbing.
“Have you any word of the Lucases since you saw them in Meryton?” she asked suddenly. “Charlotte—Miss Lucas—is my particular friend, and our families have been close these many years.”
“When last I saw them, they were all well,” he answered. “Bingley was to look in on them today, I believe. I will ask him to inform you when he returns.”
“Might I—” she hesitated. “Will you allow me to belatedly accept your earlier offer to send notes to my family, and perhaps also to Miss Lucas, by way of your visits?”
“Certainly.” He bowed slightly. “I, and I daresay Bingley and Carter, should be happy to oblige.”
Her mind was too full to be more than faintly surprised by his easy agreement, though later she would remember it with wonder. “I thank you, sir. I will have a note for each of them ready before you depart in the morning. If you will excuse me, I should return to Jane.”
He bowed again, more deeply. “Please give Miss Bennet my regards and wishes for an easy recovery,” he said, and was gone.
Elizabeth took advantage of Jane’s continuing rest to write a short, quick note to Charlotte and a rather lengthier one to Mary, who could be relied upon to respond more promptly than her father and more rationally than Kitty. When Jane awoke, Elizabeth fed her as much sweet orange ice as she would take, and then gently delivered the news from home. After a brief bout of quiet tears, Jane’s natural optimism reasserted itself. “It may, as Mr Darcy says, merely be an ague, and the timing sheer coincidence,” she remarked hopefully.
“Indeed, it may,” Elizabeth agreed with more cheer than she felt. “After all, I am perfectly well, so you are obviously not very adept at spreading the smallpox.” She chose not to mention the confirmation of illness at Haye-Park, where they had all dined so recently.
Jane laughed softly, then winced at the pain in her throat. Elizabeth spooned some broth into her sister’s mouth, and after a moment Jane felt able to speak again. “Oh, Lizzy, I am a selfish creature, but I am so very glad you have stayed with me. I should be terribly frightened without you.”
“And I should be terribly frightened to be parted from you in this, my dear Jane. Whatever is to come, we shall face it together, you and I.” Her fears for their family at Longbourn, and her regret that they must all be separated at such a time, she kept firmly concealed.
* * *
Early the following morning, Mary Bennet, with all the strained patience she could muster, said, “I’m sorry you are bored, Lydia, but I must see to Mama as well, and you know how much she requires. Here is your novel, why do you not read a bit?”
“I cannot read, my head pains me so,” Lydia whined. “And I am so hot. Open a window, Mary, do.”
The middle Bennet sister closed her eyes for a moment as Lydia’s request was punctuated by the sound of the bell her mother kept at her bedside. She opened her eyes and looked again at her youngest sister, who lay restlessly upon the muddled bed, squinting against the faint light of the candle on the bedside table. The fever had leached a great deal of her spirit in only a day, and she grew more tractable as it went on, leaving Mary torn between relief and concern. She marched across the hall and entered Kitty’s room without even the pretence of a knock, finding her next-youngest sister awake but yet abed. Kitty looked up rather dully, and Mary’s overtaxed patience turned to alarm. She approached the bed and felt Kitty’s forehead.
“You are too warm,” she fretted.
“I do not feel very well,” Kitty admitted.
“Do you think you might be able to share with Lydia, and perhaps read to her? She is very dull but her head is too painful for reading, and it would be easier for me to care for you both if you were in the same room.”
