He paused, brow furrowed, but said nothing.
Georgiana looked up from the pianoforte. “Is it too loud?”
He shook his head. “No. Only… now that you mention it, the tuning is odd.”
She touched a key again, testing. “I had it looked at not a fortnight past.”
Darcy moved toward the instrument. The note had sounded well enough just now. But when she had been playing earlier—he could not explain it. The resonance had seemed… wrong. Too thin. Or too high, but not enough to ruin the melody. The sort of imbalance that pricked at the edges of one’s hearing but vanished upon inspection.
He gave a short shrug. “Never mind. Likely, I imagined it.”
Georgiana smiled and returned to the final passage of her étude, her fingers moving with cautious elegance. The notes cascaded, even and pure. Still, Darcy found himself stepping back from the hearth. He turned instead to the escritoire and sorted through the correspondence his footman had brought earlier. A note from Bingley, predictably cheerful. A circular concerning some minor estate commission, dense with figures and already familiar. Nothing that required immediate thought.
One envelope remained.
The seal was plain, impressed with his uncle’s crest. Darcy slit it open at once.
My dear Darcy,
I wonder if you might indulge a moment’s curiosity on my behalf. Do you still have the old transcription of some odd ballads—the one your grandfatherkept among his papers and later passed to you? A green binding, if I recall. A strange fancy, of course, but something I read last week called it to mind, and I find I cannot recall when last I saw the volume myself.
There is no urgency in the matter. I merely wish to know whether it remains in your possession.
Yours,
M.
Darcy read it again, slower this time.
The Harrowe Ballads.
The name rose at once, unbidden and unwelcome. Why would his uncle be asking after that? It had been years since Darcy last thought of it. But he did not need to search his memory, nor the library shelves. The order of the household had always been too deliberate for that—certain books were placed where they would not be mistaken for accident. Where they could not even be misplaced or lost on high library shelves.
Darcy crossed the room and reached for the closed cabinet beside the drawing room window. The volume came away easily, and Darcy opened the book where his thumb fell, more from habit than intent. The pages were thin, the margins crowded with the neat, angular hands of at least two or three Darcys before him. He skimmed without interest—place names, half-Christianised invocations, the sort of antique verse that mistook obscurity for depth.
Then his eye caught on a line set apart by a faint mark in the margin.
He stood where water meets with land,
And sware no troth unbound;
Yet held his hand where first it lay,
And so the bound unwound.
He read it again, slower, against his will.
The book shut with a decisive snap.
Darcy stood there for a moment, hand still resting on the cover. Whatever irritation stirred was sharp-edged and immediate, leaving no room for reflection.
He returned to the escritoire and took up his pen. The reply to his uncle was brief.
My dear Uncle,
I do have the book you mention. If it is required, I shall bring it with me when next I am in London. Or I may send it with Richard, if he should arrive soon, as he claims he will.
Yours,
