“Which titles?”
“Almanacs. Particularly the old ones! Never thought they would be worth anything but fodder for the fire, but there is an interest just this week in histories of poor seasons,” the bookseller said. “Old winters. Hard years. People prefer to read themselves into perspective.”
Darcy accepted the parcel. “And do they find comfort there?”
The bookseller shrugged. “They find precedent, I suppose.”
Darcy did not godirectly home.
When the carriage stopped at the kerb, he gave his direction to his driver, then checked himself. “No,” he said, after a moment. “Take the long way. Along the river.”
The man glanced back in surprise, but nodded and turned the horses.
Darcy settled back against the seat, one gloved hand braced against the door as the carriage lurched into motion. The streets grew rougher as they moved eastward, the buildings giving way to warehouses and yards where carts stood idle in ranks that felt too neat, too patient. He watched men gathered in doorways, not working, not idle either—waiting. For what, he could not have said.
At the docks, the air thickened, damp and metallic. Ships lay moored without bustle, their lines slack, their decks quiet. A pair of stevedores argued near a stack of crates, one gesturing sharply toward the river, the other shaking his head. Darcy caught fragments through the carriage window—late,spoiled,should’ve been here by Michaelmas—before the horses carried him on.
“Slower,” he said, and the driver obliged.
They passed a chandlery with its shutters half-closed despite the hour. A cooper’s yard where barrels lay overturned, unused. A line of carts waiting at a gate that did not open. Darcy’s gaze moved from face to face, from doorway to doorway, measuring not hardship exactly, but something nearer to apprehension—people checking the sky, the river, one another, as though expecting a signal they could neither name nor ignore.
He told himself, again, that London was always uneasy in winter. War bred rumour. Storms disrupted trade. Nothing here was extraordinary in itself.
But nothing stood alone, did it? It was all multiplying, one thing upon another, until no denial was possible.
The carriage turned west, rolling back toward order and lamplight and stone façades that pretended permanence. Darcy did not look away from the window until the river was well behind them.
He had not seen proof. He had not seen cause.
But he had seen enough to know that the unease was not confined to his own thoughts—and that whatever was wrong had begun to press outward, testing the edges of things that had once held.
“Papa?”
She had roused at the sound of his step, pushing herself upright against the pillows with an effort she did not bother to disguise.
Her father stopped just inside the room. “My dear child, you ought not to sit up on my account.”
“You went out again,” she said, glancing at the dusting of snow on his shoulders. “Did the bins hold through the night? Is there more rot?”
He sighed, and that alone answered more than she liked. “Some did. Others less obliging. It appears that surplus harvest we experienced is withdrawing itself.”
Elizabeth blinked. “That is… not reassuring.”
“No,” he agreed. “It is not.”
She sat up a bit more, drawing the coverlet closer to her chest. “If it is damp, it will spread.”
“That is precisely the difficulty,” he said, moving nearer. “It has not. One bin spoiled along the southern edge. Another perfectly dry not ten paces away. If I did not know better, I should suppose the blight was intentionally caused by some nefarious hand. But enough of that for now. Elizabeth.”
His expression had changed—not alarmed, not yet—but grave, purposeful.
“You did not come up to talk of grain,” she guessed.
“No,” he admitted. “I did not. The roads are passable again. Not comfortably, but sufficiently. I sent for Mr Jones this morning.”
Her fingers tightened in the coverlet. “You need not have troubled him.”
“Nonsense. He is paid to be troubled.” He took the chair beside her bed and sat, folding his hands loosely. “And I should like to hear him explain why my daughter grows weaker by the day while insisting she is quite well.”
