“I did find something else, sir,” he said. “From the old drawer in the steward’s desk. I meant to show you sooner.”
He held out a parchment—thick, discoloured with age. “It was tucked behind the old land-use maps.”
Darcy unfolded it. The script was cramped, but familiar—his grandfather’s hand.
At first glance, it appeared to be a soil analysis: regions of clay, limestone, loam. But the annotations… curious. Not scientific. Phrases likespotty lightandgrowth without seed.
“Is this part of the weather notes?” Darcy asked.
“I do not believe so,” Granger replied. “There’s no date. No title. I’m not even certain he meant it for record. I do not believe this is Pemberley’s land at all, but somewhere else. The river lines are not familiar to me, and there is no marking of the county, even.”
Darcy refolded it. “Leave it with me.”
Granger bowed and left the room.
After a moment, the opposite door opened again, and Richard reappeared, tossing a cushion from hand to hand.
“You look as though you’ve just read a summons from the Tower.”
“Just harvest figures,” Darcy said, setting the paper aside.
“I’m telling you, cousin, you give these estate meetings the same expression you wore at your father’s funeral.”
Darcy reached for his coat. “The two are not dissimilar. One leaves you with more responsibilities than you wished, and the other with guests who outstay their usefulness.”
“Which am I?”
“That remains to be seen.”
They exchanged faint smirks, and Richard gestured toward the terrace. “Shall we find something to shoot?”
Darcy nodded—but before he moved, his eyes fell again on the sketch Granger had left. The ring beneath the hawthorn. The ash circle in the woods. The thin yield from fields that ought to have recovered.
Coincidence, he told himself. Coincidence—and a season that had asked more patience than usual.
The dogs were rangingwide again—Brutus tracking the brush line with disciplined focus, while Leo thrashed through a patch of dead bracken with more enthusiasm than sense.
Darcy adjusted the strap on his powder flask and scanned the low ridge ahead. “They will not flush here. It’s too open.”
Richard lifted a hand to shade his eyes. “Then your pheasants are idiots. I nearly stepped on one.”
“Perhaps you should have aimed lower.”
They moved on, the dogs catching a fresh scent and tearing ahead. Below, a cluster of partridge scattered with a start, too far out of range.
Richard made no effort to follow. “We’ll go hungry yet.”
“I doubt it. Mrs. Reynolds rarely trusts us to provide.”
“Wise woman.”
They crested the hill together, boots grinding over frost-cracked stone. The breeze had shifted since dawn, carrying with it a scent of mouldering wood and the distant smoke of a brush fire. Nothing alarming—yet it made Darcy glance westward, toward the slope where Granger said the old ash circle stood.
He had not ridden that way in some time.
“You are brooding,” Richard observed, swinging his gun to rest over his shoulder. “Is it about Aunt Catherine’s marriage campaign, or are you simply composing your next estate report?”
“Neither.” Darcy slowed to a halt. “I am considering a ride south.”
