“I recall something of that.”
“And my injudicious words after, no doubt.” She winced. “But it was stronger than that. It struck through my arm—here—and ran down my back and nearly knocked the air from my lungs before I had time to decide how to stand.”
His brows raised. “So fearsome as that?”
“There were other moments,” she continued. “Small ones. Handing off a teacup, or when you would pass by me and accidentally brush my sleeve. Each time the same shock—less violent than the first, but still, like nothing I had ever experienced. As though something in me had been… rung.”
She stopped, then toyed with the stem of her glass in thought. “And yet,” she said, “it faded. Not at once, but over time. By the time you left Hertfordshire, it had become almost familiar. Rather pleasant, in fact.”
“Pleasant?”
“More like a…” She frowned. “Like a humming. Rather like the purring of a cat. Except you probably think that nonsense, for I doubt you have ever kept a cat as a personal pet.”
Then, her stomach dropped. Oh, dear, had she just told a man that her body hummed indecently at his touch? She half-lurched from her chair. “I am afraid, sir, that might notsound—”
“You need not explain further. I perfectly comprehend the intent. So, therewassome… discomfort.”
“Yes, but only at first. It has been some while since I found your presence… troublesome.”
Darcy turned his head slightly and brought his hand to his mouth, as though to forestall another cough. When he spoke, his voice was level—but only just. “For me,” he said, “I should say the opposite was the case.”
She blinked, and her mouth dropped open slightly. “You…?”
“I felt nothing that first night. But since then, it has intensified. With time. With proximity.”
Elizabeth did not answer at once. She set her empty glass aside and rose, then checked herself, pacing two short steps before stopping. One hand lifted, then fell again. Perhaps she ought not to touch him just now.
“I believed it was only my own… peculiarity,” she said at last. “That whatever occurred between us was something I must simply endure, or outgrow. I did not imagine it could move in the other direction. Do you understand any of it?”
He turned fully toward her then. “Some.”
“And that is?”
“I know that it was not accident.” He paused, then continued, choosing each word with care. “Nor imagination. Nor illness, in the ordinary sense.”
He turned around to face her fully at last. “I know,” he went on, “that it is bound to my family. That somehow, I was committed to this… all of it… before I was ever born.”
“You speak as though it were some deliberate act of your father.”
“Not deliberate,” Darcy replied. “But not random.”
He turned away again, one hand flattening against the mantel as though the stone alone kept him upright. When he spoke, the words came slower, each one drawn up as if from somewhere deep and reluctant.
“There are old accounts,” he said. “Fragmentary. Incomplete. Preserved badly, if at all. They do not explain what is asked. They record only that there was…” he shook his head. “Some choice. Some moment of decision, and that something was refused. Or broken.”
Elizabeth took a step toward him without thinking, then stopped. The fire bent slightly in her periphery, the flame drawing closer to her skirts before settling back into itself.
“And you believe,” she said, “that we have arrived at such a moment.”
“I believe we are approaching it. But I do not know… why you? What sort of foul luck chose you, Elizabeth Bennet, for illness and blight and this terrible curse upon you?”
Elizabeth moved instead to the chair she had abandoned and rested her hand upon its back. “It has happened before. I am not unique.”
Darcy’s brow furrowed, and he stepped closer. “But…”
“Aunts. Cousins. Women long before the Bennets came, who remained near the land around Longbourn too long.” Her mouth curved, faint and unsmiling. “I never knew this until recently, but my father says it has gone on for as far back as he can tell, and for no cause anyone understands. They were said to have delicate nerves. Overactive fancies. A tendency to exhaustion.”
“So…” He shook his head. “What happened to them?”
