Her lips parted, but nothing coherent followed. The room sat strangely crooked for a moment, tilted and skewed as if reality itself had bent. She caught one breath, thin and unsteady.
Darcy stepped forward—and halted at once, as though suddenly aware of proximity, propriety, every rule that governed sickrooms and young ladies.
“Forgive the intrusion,” he said. “Brutus slipped away from me. I—I had not meant…” His voice trailed when she blinked too slowly.
“Lizzy?”
Elizabeth startled. Jane was there, crossing the room toward her. “Lizzy, you are awake!”
Her whole body flinched. Jane’s voice wasn’t a memory this time—it was real, and she was rushing past Darcy, dropping to her knees beside the bed. Her hands fluttered—one brushing Elizabeth’s hair back, another cupping her cheek with the gentlest caution. “Oh, my dear girl. I stepped out only for a moment—they told me you would be sleeping for hours yet—I never meant to leave you alone.”
Elizabeth tried to smile. It felt crooked. “I am… awake now.”
“Yes.” Jane laughed a small, trembling breath. “Yes, you are. And quite yourselfagain, I see.”
Elizabeth held the expression, though her limbs still felt as though they belonged to someone else.Quite yourselfsuggested a comparison, and the idea of what she must have been moments before stirred unease. “What happened?”
Jane’s fingers tightened around hers. “You were tired. Very tired. You frightened us, Lizzy, but that is past now. There is no need to trouble yourself with it.”
“But I caused a deal of fuss,” Elizabeth said. It was not a question. She glanced past Jane, toward the doorway she had not quite dared to look at again. “Did I not?”
Mr Darcy had not moved from his place. He stood just inside the threshold, one hand resting on the doorframe, the other loosely at his side. Brutus waited behind him, alert and silent.
“You were unwell,” Darcy said. He did not soften it. “Disoriented.”
Jane shot him a look—quick, warning.
Elizabeth’s gaze returned to him at once. “In what way?”
Darcy hesitated. Not long. Only long enough to seem as though he had considered evasion and rejected it. “You spoke. Not always to those in the room.”
Jane leaned closer. “Lizzy, truly—”
Elizabeth did not look at her sister. “What did I say?”
Darcy’s mouth opened. Closed again. For a moment, she thought he would tell her regardless of Jane’s disapproval.
Then Jane’s look hardened—Elizabeth had almost thought her sister incapable of such an expression.
Darcy exhaled with a grimace. “Nothing of consequence,” he said, though the words did not entirely convince. He straightened. “You should rest. Mr Jones will wish to see you again shortly.” He turned toward the dog. “Brutus. Come.”
The dog rose at once and came to heel, though his head turned back once, gaze lingering on Elizabeth before he followed.
Darcy paused only long enough to incline his head. “Miss Elizabeth.”
“Mr Darcy.”
He withdrew, the door closing softly behind him.
Elizabeth lay back against the pillows, the space he had left feeling oddly bare. Jane brushed her hair away from her temple with gentle insistence.
“You need not worry,” Jane said. “You are safe now.”
Everyone kept telling her that. Elizabeth sighed and stared at the ceiling.Spoke. Not always to those in the room.
She shut her eyes, dizzy with memory.
Darcy descended the stairsslowly, as though his footsteps on the carpet might carry upward and disturb the fragile order that had finally settled in the bedchamber above. The house felt altered—no longer merely Netherfield, but something temporarily rearranged around the presence of a guest who had not arrived by invitation.
