The pelisse fell open, and Mr. Darcy stepped back as if burned, turning away with an abruptness that would have been insulting if she had not seen the way his hands were shaking. “I will check the storeroom for additional supplies,” he said, his voice strangled. “Please... take whatever time you need.”
He disappeared through the storeroom door, pulling it nearly closed behind him, and Elizabeth stood alone by the fire with her heart pounding against her ribs like a caged bird.
The storeroom door was thin. She could hear everything—the shift of his weight on the old boards, the scrape of a crate being moved, the measured rhythm of his breathing as he gave her privacy he clearly needed as much as she did. Ten feet of warped timber and a latch that did not quite catch. That was all that separated them.
She began the laborious process of stripping off her wet clothes.
The dress was the worst of it, clinging to her skin with a cold, intimate grip that made her feel as though the storm itself had followed her inside. She had to peel it away inch by inch, and with every tug she was aware of the sounds she was making—the wet fabric pulling free, the sharp intake of her own breath, the soft thud of the garment hitting the floor. She was aware, too, of the sudden stillness on the other side of that door. He had stopped moving. He was listening, or trying very hard not to, and the knowledge of it sent heat crawling up her neck that had nothing to do with the fire.
She stood in nothing but her shift and stays. The shift was as wet as the gown, transparent where it pressed against her body, and Elizabeth hesitated with her fingers on the hem. She could not afford modesty. Not when the cold was working its way back intoher bones with quiet malice, not when staying wet meant staying cold meant?—
She stripped the shift over her head in one swift motion, then fumbled with the laces of her stays until they fell away. For a long, terrible moment she stood bare, her skin prickling in the fire's warmth, conscious that she was naked and he wasright there. The door could open. He would not open it. She knew that with a certainty that surprised her, but her body did not seem to understand what her mind knew, and every nerve sang with the awareness of his proximity.
She snatched up the blankets and wrapped them around herself with clumsy, frantic haste, cocooning her body in rough wool that scratched against her bare skin but held the fire's warmth close. Only when she was covered from shoulders to ankles did her pulse slow. Her hair hung in wet ropes down her back, pins scattered and lost somewhere in the storm, and she finger-combed it as best she could before draping it over one shoulder to dry.
When she was as decent as circumstances allowed, she called out, “You may return, Mr. Darcy.”
She heard him exhale. She had not realized he had been holding his breath.
He emerged from the storeroom carrying several tins and a dusty bottle of what appeared to be wine. His gaze swept over her once before fixing on a point somewhere above her left shoulder. “I found provisions,” he said, his voice almost normal. “Biscuits, some preserved fruit, and this.” He held up the bottle. “It appears the previous occupants believed in being prepared for emergencies.”
“How fortunate for us.” Elizabeth settled into one of the chairs, tucking the blankets more securely around her body. The fire had finally warmed her, and she found she could almost think again.
Almost.
She glanced toward the conservatory, at the strange glass roof now nearly buried in snow, and felt a flicker of recognition settle into place. “I know this cottage. Or rather, I knowofit. The children in Meryton used to call it the Glass House. We would dare each other to peer through the windows on walks, though none of us were ever brave enough to go inside.” She smiled at the memory. “We were all quite convinced it was haunted.”
Something shifted in Mr. Darcy's expression. A flicker of amusement, quickly suppressed. “Haunted,” he repeated.
“By a mad old woman who had once lived here alone and died waiting for a husband who never returned from war.” Elizabeth tilted her head, studying his face. “Though I suspect the real story is rather different.”
“Most stories are different from the inside.” He turned the bottle in his hands as if examining the label required his full attention.
Elizabeth watched him and felt the careful equilibrium of the room shift, like a compass needle swinging toward true north. He knew this cottage. Not as a feature of the Netherfield estate, not as a dot on a map. He knew it the way one knows a secret.
“You know something,” she said. “Tell me.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he set the bottle on the table between them and spoke to it rather than to her.
“A man named Edward Harlow built the cottage. He owned Netherfield a century ago. His wife was a painter, quite a talented one, by all accounts. She needed north light for her work, and the rooms in the main house were all wrong for it.” He paused, his thumb tracing the edge of the bottle's label. “So he built her this. A studio with a glass roof, angled to catch the northern sky. She spent most of her days here, painting the landscape, the light through the trees. They added the main room later, when she began spending more time here than at the house itself.
“How do you know all this?”
“The estate papers. Bingley was given a full history of the property with the lease. He did not read it. I did.”
Elizabeth looked at the conservatory with new eyes. The angled glass, the careful orientation, the way the pale light fell even now through the accumulated snow, it made sense in a way it had not before. Not a folly at all. A gift.
“What happened to her?” she asked.
“She died.” The words were flat. “Harlow left not long after. Could not bear to remain without her, apparently. The estate has been leased ever since. And the cottage has been left to itself.”
“And the glass house with it,” Elizabeth said. She looked at the dust on the windowsills, the cobwebs in the corners of the conservatory, the faint ghosts of paint stains on the wooden floor beneath the glass. Half a century of neglect, and still the bones of what it had been were visible. A woman had worked here. Had created something beautiful in this small, strange space, because a man who loved her had built it to hold her art. The village children had called it haunted, and perhaps they were notwrong. It was haunted not by a ghost, but by the shape of a love that had outlasted the people who had made it.
She glanced at Mr. Darcy and found him looking not at her but at the conservatory, at the snow-covered glass and the pale light filtering through it. There was an expression on his face, something private and unfinished, as though the story he had told her was not the whole of what the cottage meant to him.
“Most men would not have troubled themselves to read century-old estate papers about a forgotten cottage,” she said quietly.
He looked at her then, and something unguarded moved behind his eyes. “No,” he said. “I suppose they would not. But once I had read… I needed to see it.” A pause. “My mother painted.”
