The change was immediate. The air inside the room felt different—cooler, still. The sick surge ebbed as swiftly as it had risen, leaving her shaken but upright. She stood where she was, one hand braced against the door, counting nothing at all until the worst of it passed.
Only then did she turn.
Papa stopped just short of the desk. He was watching her closely now, not smiling, not speaking.
Elizabeth crossed the room and planted her hands on the edge of his writing table. “You are going to tell me,” she said, without preface or softness, “what that letter meant.”
He regarded her for a moment longer, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, then tucked it back in without using it. “I had hoped,” he said mildly, “that my exit might be taken as a general dismissal rather than an invitation to interrogation.”
“You poured me tea,” Elizabeth said. “You stood between him and me. You watched me the entire time he was reading. You do not do those things without reason. So? What do you know?”
He crossed to the chair by the hearth and sat, one leg extended, hands folded loosely. “I know,” he said, “that my cousin is a fool who has an unshakable faith in other people’s opinions. I know that my daughter does not enjoy being made an audience for them.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Can a father not show a bit of concern without provoking inquiry?”
Elizabeth stepped to the desk and pulled one of the books from the neat stack there—thin, brittle, its spine repaired with careful thread. She laid it open, turning to a marked page with no hesitation. “Why this book?” she demanded, tapping the margin. “And why this one beside it, and the one beneath? You have had some of them for longer than I have been alive, and others you seemed to have purchased with a purpose of some sort. You gave them to me when I was ill, and you did not say why. You let me read them as though they were harmless.” She lifted her gaze. “They are not.”
Mr Bennet’s mouth curved, not in amusement. “They are paper and ink, Lizzy.”
“Do not,” she said sharply. “Do not make sport of this. Not now.”
He frowned and drew the handkerchief back out of his pocket, and this time, he slowly wiped his spectacles. “Very well.”
He eased himself into the chair opposite her, the desk between them. For a moment, he did not speak. Then he reached out and turned the book a fraction, so the light fell more cleanly on the page. “I do not know what it means.”
Elizabeth crossed her arms. “That is not possible. You cannot be entirely ignorant.”
“Itisentirely possible,” he replied. “It has been my chief talent, these many years.”
She shook her head. “You gathered them.”
“I inherited some. Acquired others. When something seemed to echo what I already had, I added it to my collection.” He shrugged. “A habit, perhaps. Or a failing.”
“A pattern, you mean.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “That, too.”
“You meant something,” she said. “When you put those books into my hands. You do not do anything by accident, Papa.”
Papa glanced up from the page he had been pretending to read. The pretence fell away at once; he folded the paper neatly and set it aside.
“I do a great many things by accident,” he said mildly. “I merely prefer not to advertise them.”
“That will not do.”
“No,” he agreed. “It rarely does.”
He leaned back in his chair and regarded her over steepled fingers, his expression thoughtful rather than amused. “You are unwell,” he said at last. “Not dangerously so, despite your mother’s enthusiasm. And you are observant enough to notice patterns where others might be content with convenience. That does not oblige me to invent explanations.”
“I am not asking you to invent,” Elizabeth said. “I am asking you to tell me what you know.”
He smiled faintly. “Ah. That is a different thing.”
She waited.
Papa rose and crossed to the shelves behind her. He did not take anything down at first. He only ran his fingers along the spines, as though reacquainting himself with old friends he had not meant to call upon.
