“I expect I ought to. He grows restless without company.”
“You say that as if it is a failing.”
“It is a tendency.” Darcy’s mouth twitched, and he tapped the edge of the letter against his fingers. “I have not yet decided.”
“Then go,” she said, without hesitation. “Before the roads freeze and the excuses multiply.” She glanced at the dog lying at Darcy’s feet. “And take Brutus. He’s grown bored of my company and has taken to sulking under the piano.”
“I assumed that was commentary on your playing.”
She gave him a look. “You wound me.”
He did not smile, not exactly, but the corner of his mouth shifted in that rare, reluctant way it sometimes did.
“Good night, William.”
“Good night.”
She slipped from the room with a rustle of silk, and the house settled into stillness.
Darcy turned back to the letter, not to reread it, but to place a hand over it for a moment—grounding something that did not quite need grounding. Then he finished his brandy and rose to bank the fire.
Chapter Three
Elizabeth turned the cornerof the lane with Charlotte, the hem of her walking dress brushing through damp grass and wild thyme. The sun had not yet burned off the silver in the hedgerows, and the morning air clung to her skin in a way that felt oddly personal, as though it remembered something she had forgotten.
“I do think Mama is near to despair,” she said. “Lydia accused Kitty of stealing her bonnet, and then Kitty threatened to dip Lydia’s hair ribbons in beet juice. Jane tried to mediate and was accused of ‘always taking sides.’ You may imagine the outcome.”
“I can,” Charlotte said drily. “I have dined with you all more than once.”
Elizabeth smiled but did not laugh. A pair of crows passed overhead, their wings silent as they turned toward the east wood. She paused and craned her neck to watch them.
“I suppose,” Charlotte continued, “you will never escape your mother’s campaign. But if she begins speaking of eligible clerks and shopkeepers again, I may intervene on your behalf out of sheer mercy.”
Elizabeth made a noncommittal sound. Her attention had shifted to a cluster of hawthorn trees that pressed close to the path just ahead. The branches had grown in strange angles there—twisting inward over a fresh sprig of new rose buds. Imagine it! Rose buds in September!
She stepped forward, parting a thin veil of leaves, and a branch snapped back just enough to catch her wrist. A thorn—not large, but sharp—scratched the skin below her glove. She gasped, but did not cry out. It was not pain so much as surprise.
She looked down. The scratch was thin, like a seam drawn in red thread. But the blood did not rise. The skin beneath remained dry, even as the mark darkened faintly, like ink settling on paper.
Her fingers hovered over it, then dropped. Charlotte was already walking ahead, talking again, the words trailing back toward her without shape.
Elizabeth glanced once at the branch. The leaves looked duller here, the green slightly too grey, as if caught between seasons. And the rosebuds were fresh as any May blossoms.
She shook herself and stepped back onto the path. “I think,” she said, raising her voice slightly, “we ought to go by the mill road. I have no wish to be caught in Mrs Long’s inquiries.”
Charlotte said something agreeable—Elizabeth did not quite catch the words.
As they walked on, she touched the inside of her wrist once more. The mark was still there. Not bleeding. Just… there. Pulsing with offended dignity.
She kept her hand at her side and did not look back.
The long table inthe south study bore no trace of its former use as a card table in their grandfather’s day. Now it was neatly lined with ledgers, seasonal accounts, and a fresh pot of ink.
Darcy stood at the window, arms folded behind his back, gazing out at the rising mist over the south fields. A pair of jackdaws hopped across the lower lawn, their black eyes bright in the slanted light.
Behind him, the door opened. “Am I early for the shoot,” said Richard Fitzwilliam, “or late for the War Council?”
Darcy glanced over his shoulder. “You are early.”
