She looked up at Darcy. He was already moving. He stripped his coat—the oiled coat, the keeper’s coat, the one he had tucked into his trunk with all his London clothing—and knelt beside Jane and wrapped it around her shoulders. Jane flinched at his touch, then stilled as the weight of the coat settled over her and the residual heat of his body reached her through the oilcloth.
“Can you stand?” he asked. His voice was everything composed. His handswere not.
“I… I do not know.”
“We will help you. Put your arms around our shoulders.”
They lifted her between them. She weighed almost nothing—Elizabeth could feel the bones of her sister’s arm through the wet fabric, the ridge of her shoulder blade, the terrible lightness of a body that had been sustained by something other than food for longer than medicine could explain. Jane’s legs buckled on the first step. Darcy caught her weight without breaking stride, then swept her up in his arms with the grim determination of a man whose own body had been failing him a week ago and who was not about to let that matter now.
They climbed the beach path slowly. Elizabeth held Jane’s clenched fist with one hand and kept the other on William's back, as if she could steady him if he should fall. He did not. Jane’s head lolled against his shoulder, and she would not suffer Elizabeth to fall behind by even a step, or she would stiffen and cry out. She was conscious but fading, the brief clarity of the beach giving way to exhaustion so profound that her eyes could not stay open and her words, when they came, were fragments without order—cold, andthe water, and once, very quietly,Lizzy, do not let go.
Elizabeth did not let go.
Thecottagewaswarm.Elizabeth built up a fire while Darcy settled Jane in the chair beside the hearth, still wrapped in his coat, still shivering. Elizabeth filled the kettle and set it over the flame. She found blankets—the quilt from the bed, the wool throw from the chest—and layered them over her sister until Jane was buried to the chin and only her face showed, white and drawn and bewildered in the dim room.
Tea first. Strong, with sugar—more sugar than Elizabeth would ordinarily have allowed, but Jane’s lips were blue and her hands, when they emerged from the blankets to take the cup, shook so badly that Elizabeth had to wrap her own fingers around Jane’s to steady them. Jane drank. The warmth of it moved through her visibly—a loosening of the jaw, a softening of the tight line between her brows. She drank again.
William dashed to the tower and brought back the fresh basket Nell Calder had brought that morning. Elizabeth took out bread, cut it thick and spread it with the honey from the basket and set it on a plate on Jane’s lap. Jane looked at it as though she had neverseen bread before. Then she picked it up and ate, slowly at first, then with a hunger that was almost frightening in its intensity, as though her body was only now remembering that it required sustenance and was furious at the delay.
William stood by the window with his arms folded, watching, saying nothing. He had given Elizabeth the room she needed—not by leaving but by going still, by making himself into something solid and quiet against which the scene could unfold without interruption. Elizabeth was grateful for it in a way she did not have time to express and did not need to, because he had always understood which silences were gifts and which were withdrawals. This one was a gift.
Jane finished the bread. She drank more tea. The shivering eased, degree by slow degree, until her body was merely trembling instead of convulsing. Her eyes, when she lifted them from the cup, had the clarity of a woman who had come far enough back into herself to begin asking the questions that mattered.
“Where am I, Lizzy?”
“Blackscar. A lighthouse on the Northumberland coast. North of Alnwick, near Craster.”
Jane’s lips moved around the name. “Blackscar.” She said it again, slower. “I know that name. I—there was something. A lighthouse. Some old trust.” Her eyes widened fractionally, the recognition surfacing like a thing rising through deep water. “I was told I had inherited something. A stewardship. I thought it was a mistake—I am already a governess, Lizzy. Lynwood, I… you know I cannot leave them. But the solicitor’s letter came, and I could not make sense of it.” She looked around the cottage, at the stone walls, the fire, the narrow window with its view of the headland. “Is this the lighthouse? Is this where the trust—”
“Yes. This is Blackscar.”
“But how are you here? You should be in London. I thought you were going to… Dover, was it?”
“I was going to, Jane,” she said gently. “But I came here instead.”
Jane glanced at William, let her eyes drift from him, along the walls of the cottage, and then back to Elizabeth. “You took the trust? But the letter said the stewardship was mine. The eldest daughter of the eldest—”
“Jane.” Elizabeth tightened her grip on her sister’s hands. “You disappeared. No one could find you. The post came to me because you were gone.”
Jane’s brow contracted. “Disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“But…. That is silly. I did not disappear. I… I am here! I was walking along the shore near Alnmouth. The tide came in and the rocks were covered and I went into the water. I fought until I could not fight any longer, and then—” She shook her head. “And then I was on that beach. Just now. An hour ago, no more. The sun was on my face, and I was wet, and I do not understand why I am so far from Alnmouth!”
Elizabeth sat down across from her. She took the cup from Jane and set it on the table, and took her sister’s hands in hers—both of them, the way she had held them when they were girls and Jane was ill, and Elizabeth sat beside the bed and refused to leave until the fever broke.
“Jane, listen to me carefully. That was not an hour ago. You went into the sea near Alnmouth in April of eighteen eleven. It is now March of eighteen thirteen. You have been gone for almost two years.”
The colour that the tea had returned to Jane’s face left it. Her hands went rigid in Elizabeth’s. She stared at her sister, searching her face for the fracture that would prove it false.
“That… that is not possible.”
“I know.”
“Lizzy, I am sure of it! I went into the water an hour ago! I was cold. I fought. I went under. And then I was on the sand, and I did not know where I was, but it was—it wasminutes. It was not—” Her breathing quickened. Her fingers dug into Elizabeth’s hands. “Twoyears?”
“Yes.”
