Darcy had no wish to have his habits displayed for the amusement of the room. “The day was pleasant enough,” he said. “Netherfield offers all that is needful.”
Miss Elizabeth did not look at him, yet he had the distinct impression that her attention sharpened then. Her hand moved, almost unconsciously, toward the cuff of her sleeve, fingers pressing lightly at a raw-looking scratch that she took care to turn under her sleeve. The motion was small, easily overlooked, but the fire gave a low crack at that instant, sending up a brief shower of sparks that died as swiftly as they leapt.
The visit could not last forever. At length, after another exchange or two upon the neighbourhood and the hope of future assemblies, Bingley glanced towards Darcy with the look he wore when he knew at last that propriety demanded retreat.
“We must not trespass on your hospitality, Mrs Bennet,” he said. “I have already prolonged our call beyond a quarter hour.”
“Nonsense, Mr Bingley, you are no trouble at all,” Mrs Bennet protested, though her eyes shone with satisfaction. “We are always glad to see you. Jane, my love, ring for Hill. They must not go without their cloaks.”
Darcy rose with the rest. The room appeared to widen at once, as if the walls had drawn back with the movement of so many bodies. He bowed to the ladies in turn. When he reached Miss Elizabeth, she curtsied, her gaze level and entirely composed.
“Miss Elizabeth.”
“Mr Darcy.”
Nothing in her manner betrayed offence, interest, or any alteration from the first moment of his entrance. It ought to have relieved him. Instead, some contrary part of his mind resented that his presence could leave so little trace.
Chapter Eight
Elizabeth escaped the houseunder the pretext of fetching a book she had “forgot” in a tree crotch in the orchard, though she carried another book in her hands. Mama had been especially triumphant all morning—hovering over Jane, praising every word Mr Bingley had spoken, and recounting the visit at such length that even Jane had blushed and begged her to stop. Kitty and Lydia darted through the sitting room with their usual commotion, interrupting each other constantly, and Mary practiced a hymn with such earnest force that Elizabeth feared the piano might rebel.
She did not resent any of them for it. She merely felt unequal to the noise.
The air outside was cool enough to sharpen her thoughts. Frost clung to a few blades of grass where the sun had not reached; her boots left faint marks behind her. She followed the familiar path beyond the garden wall and let her shoulders loosen as the quiet settled.
She did not wish to think of Mr Darcy, yet her mind kept circling back to him by some involuntary logic. Not the awkwardness of their first meeting—she could laugh at that, if she tried—but the strange pulse that had run through her arm when their hands had neared the same plate. The almost-imperceptible jump of the china. The way he had drawn back so quickly that she felt more confused than offended.
It must have been an illusion. A trick of the hand. Nerves on her part, perhaps; or an odd tremor of heat from the fire. If she repeated the argument often enough, she might come to believe it.
Her wrist throbbed again beneath her sleeve—an insistent, needling pulse that refused to be ignored. She stopped with an irritated breath and pushed back the cuff. She had looked at it so many times already that she half expected it to vanish out of sheer embarrassment, but the scratch remained: reddened, uneven, and far more inflamed than any simple scrape deserved.
“I told Charlotte it was nothing,” she grumbled, scowling at the mark. “And itoughtto be nothing.”
She touched the edge lightly. The sting leapt at her finger at once. There had been no splinter left behind—she had checked the first night, and dozen times since. She had even tried a little oil of lavender, which usually calmed any small injury. Instead, the skin had grown angrier by the hour, almost as if the remedy had offended it.
This was absurd. She had spent days pretending she felt no discomfort, telling Charlotte, telling Jane, telling anyone who wondered that it barely troubled her. But here, alone, she could not escape the question forming in the back of her mind:
What was this?
It was a foolish question, and she shoved the thought aside, tugging the sleeve back into place as if that would finally hide it from her mind. She was not fanciful. She was merely… tired. Overset. Irritated by too much company and too many odd impressions.
She resumed walking more slowly, her fingers hovering near the sleeve as though unwilling to leave the matter entirely alone.
The field opened before her in a long sweep of pale stubble and winter-brown grass. A few crows picked along the far hedge. The sky, thin and bright, gave everything a washed colour—cold, but honest. She paused to watch a small flock of sparrows rise from a tussock of dried weeds. Their bodies caught the light in arcs of soft brown, and she felt a familiar lift of spirit. Nothing could be very wrong in a world that still offered sparrows in winter.
She walked on, letting the rhythm of her steps quiet the remnants of last night’s unease. She counted the fence posts ahead without thinking, observed the angle of the sunlight along the hedges, wondered briefly whether Jane would enjoy a walk later if Mama could be convinced to release her from the house.
Only when the old boundary ditch came into view did her pace ease. Not out of fear—nonsense—but something in the look of the ground tugged at her attention. The ditch was as shallow as ever, no more than a soft fold in the earth, and the rise beyond it had never qualified as a hill. Yet today the line cut sharply across the field, as though someone had drawn it with a deliberate hand.
Fanciful notion. She refused to indulge it. Still…she did not step forward. The air on this side lay perfectly ordinary, touched by a faint stirring of grass and the last thin breath of morning chill. But just beyond the ditch, the quiet thickened, a stillness that did not match the rest of the field.
“Walk on,” she muttered. “Or you will think yourself into a fever.”
She dropped into the dip, boots sinking into softer soil. Damp earth lifted around her, cool and familiar. Better. She climbed the rise.
And stepped into something that was not the morning she had left behind.
The change did not strike; it unfolded. The light thinned, as if a high cloud had drifted between her and the sun—only no cloud moved across the sky. The colour of the grass dulled, not uniformly, but in patches, as though sections of the field belonged to different hours of the day. The hedgerow directly before her seemed to draw back a fraction, narrowing into a shape she could not immediately parse: not hedge, not shadow, something between.
