“No,” he said promptly. “No, I do not believe so—it is not in the blood, for the women were not all Bennets. Some belonged to families long vanished from Hertfordshire. Others lived at Netherfield, before the division. What they shared was not a name.”
She drew a breath. “But a place?”
“Precisely.” Papa swallowed. “And then, I was blessed withfivedaughters.”
Elizabeth’s mouth tightened in an approximation of sympathy.
“I told myself,” he went on more lightly, “that it had all burned itself out. Two generations passed without incident. Three, if one is generous, for my second cousin Lilith was never right from birth, so I do not think…” He sighed. “Well, I allowed myself to hope that whatever our forebears had been managing—poorly or otherwise—had resolved itself without our intervention.”
“And now?”
“And now,” he said, meeting her gaze with a frankness she had not seen before, “my daughter has been ill for weeks, and the land is behaving as though it has lost its anchor.” He lurched to his feet and paced to the darkened window. “I find myself awake at midnight, reading letters I once dismissed as the ravings of tired men who went to their graves long before I ever held you in my arms.”
She folded the deed carefully. “Why did you never tell me? Or Mama?”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Because I value my sanity.”
Despite herself, Elizabeth smiled, and then it faded. “You believe I am like these others. Running mad.”
He turned to face her. “Yes… And no.” He frowned. “You are not speaking to walls as if they were people, or telling us a storm or an earthquake is to arrive days before it does. You are not hearing voices in your head… at least, not that you have confessed. Indeed, whatever has afflicted you appears quite different to their sort of madness. But the other coincidences… how it was always the best and brightest young lady of her generation, how Sir Reginald complained of oddities in the land… Yes, Lizzy, I think somehow, whatever this is must have affected you in ways never seen in any other.”
She swallowed, and her hand wandered through the stack of letters until her fingers touched one they liked, and she pulled it out to read. This one was about a girl named Ruth, written by the lady’s mother to a sister, it seemed.
Ruth is much improved.Marriage has done what no persuasion could. She is settled now, occupied, and far less given to those fancies that once troubledus so. The arrival of our blessed Elinor has completed her joy, and I thank God daily that she is no longer so restless in her mind.
Elizabeth read the lines twice.
Much improved.Settled.The words carried relief rather than joy, gratitude rather than affection—as though what had been feared had at last been contained.
“You are searching for a remedy,” she said softly.
Her father was silent for a few seconds, then he sucked in a breath and swallowed. “Can you blame me? What would you do, Lizzy, if you saw your favourite child wasting away, day by day? Would you not turn the world upside down to find an answer?”
She held the letter up to his face. “This is your answer? That marrying me off would… what? Cure me?”
He grimaced. “I believe marriage has served, in the past, as a sort of… mitigation. A shelter. Perhaps not a complete healing in the usual sense, but the only thing that is ever said to have brought any relief.”
“And whom would you have me marry? The first man who walked up the steps?”
He looked at her then with something raw beneath the wit. “I would have you live,” he said. “And if I thought that could be secured by the attachment of your hand to the nearest agreeable fool, I might be tempted to press the matter. Wickham, after all, seems to like you well enough, and I think it would take very little to tempt him. Why, a mere hundred pounds should suffice.”
She met his gaze, understanding blooming painfully clear. “But you do not believe that will serve for me.”
“No,” he said quietly. “Because I have watched you. And because I have watchedhim.”
Her breath caught. “If you mean—”
“I am not blind, Lizzy,” he said gently. “Nor am I so foolish as to mistake coincidence for cause. But you were not unwell beforehecame. And you were not untouched by him, whatever either of you may pretend.”
She looked away, the room suddenly too narrow for breath. “You mistake me,” she said, and the words were careful—too careful. “Mr Darcy is—was—only a neighbour. Less than that—an acquaintance.”
“A mere ‘neighbour’ does not leave a permanent mark on a lady’s mind from the first moment,” her father replied, still mild. “Nor does an acquaintance alter the weather of a household. That ‘shock’ you spoke of at the Assembly when you tried to shake hands?The way you fled Collins at the ball, and the only place I ever saw you looking at ease the whole night was when you were seated beside Darcy? No, my child, I cannot pretend to understand, but my eyes tell me that he is a… a shelter of sorts for you.”
She shook her head. “Papa, you cannot mean—”
“I mean only what I saw,” he said. “And that is what I went to speak of.”
Her eyes came back to him at once. “Went?”
