The dog obeyed, but kept close.
Bellerophon snorted as he approached. His nostrils flared, and his ears remained pinned. Darcy mounted and turned the horse toward the open path. He did not look back.
By the time he reached the ridge, the sun had returned. The wind lifted. Brutus shook himself and barked once, as if to clear the moment from his memory.
Darcy did not speak the rest of the way home.
Elizabeth Bennet did nottake the path home directly.
It was not out of defiance—though her mother might claim as much when she arrived late to breakfast. It was simply that the hedgerow along the eastern rise had begun to bloom a second time, as if the coming autumn were merely a good joke, and Elizabeth could not resist it. The air was warm but not close, the sun shifting through early cloud in hazy gold bands, and the faintest breeze pressed the leaves into a kind of trembling applause.
She paused by a patch of dogrose, pale and insistent against the bramble. It was odd, their timing. The petals should have been gone by now, but here they were again, fragile and new.
She reached out and touched one with the back of her knuckle. It shivered under her touch.
Elizabeth blinked. She had not felt a breeze. No hare or fox was stirring under the bramble. But still, it seemed to quiver at the brush of her fingers.
She swallowed and drew her hand back. A bird trilled nearby, louder than it ought to have been. She turned, half expecting to see it perched within reach, but nothing stirred in the branches. Just a flutter of feathers, retreating through green.
How very charming. The afternoon seemed determined to please her. Elizabeth smiled faintly to herself and continued on.
The house came into view just as the bell rang—late enough to rouse Mama’s nerves but not her tears. Elizabeth dusted her boots at the threshold and stepped inside to the familiar sound of chattering voices, clinking porcelain, and Lydia arguing over jam.
“I told you I meant the raspberry,” Lydia groaned. “Why must Jane always take what I was thinking of?”
“You were thinking of sleeping through breakfast,” Jane replied. “Which is why I poured yours before you came down.”
“I would rather choose my own.” Lydia slumped into her chair. “Besides, it is dreadfully warm. I think raspberry spoils faster.”
Elizabeth kissed Jane’s cheek in passing, exchanged a raised brow with Mary, and accepted her tea from Hill without comment. Mama, however, noticed the bonnet she was still wearing.
“Good heavens, Lizzy, not again! Out before breakfast, your hems a fright before anyone can even come calling. If you have come back with burrs in your hair, I shall scream.”
Elizabeth removed the bonnet and placed it on the peg. “Only petals this time, I believe.”
“That is worse! Petals stain. You will have that ridiculous brown dress looking like a rag by Michaelmas.”
Elizabeth sat. “Perhaps I will embroider it to disguise the evidence.”
“You are too clever by half, Lizzy. No man likes a woman always turning words on end.”
Elizabeth laughed. “I shall keep that in mind.”
Jane’s smile tilted just slightly at the edge. “You might as well ask her not to breathe, Mama.”
Mama sniffed. “Well, when she breathes like that, it is no wonder she has not yet had a serious offer. Always off wandering. Always reading books about people who never existed. Why not take a turn about Meryton for once and speak to someone with proper prospects?”
Elizabeth lifted her cup and met Jane’s eyes over it. “Because the people in books, at least, do not snort or have greens in their teeth when they speak.”
Jane pressed her lips together to suppress a laugh. Lydia giggled openly and Kitty gurgled her tea faintly as she tried to swallow. Only Mary looked up with something like censure.
The conversation turned to the rumours of a new neighbour taking Netherfield, and Elizabeth let herself drift quiet again. The tea was strong, if slightly over-steeped, and the breeze had begun to rise. Through the open window, the curtains lifted just so, and a flicker of motion caught her eye—a leaf, still green, spinning in the air, circling once beforevanishing.
The odd thing was that she could not see where it fell. She blinked, sipped, and turned back to the table.
The drawing room wasunusually cold.
It was not a matter of the fire—it burned low but hot on the hearth, and the coals had been properly turned. Nor was it the windows; the draughts had long since been sealed, and Darcy himself had seen to the replacement of the mullioned panes the previous winter. And yet, when he passed beneath the central arch toward the west wall, a cool blast struck the back of his neck. A draft where there should be none.
