The cottage chimney was cold. No smoke, no light behind the glass. She was in there with damp blankets and a grate and nothing to put in it.
He gathered the driftwood and began the ascent toward the tower. Halfway up, he stopped and looked back. The cottage sat low against the darkening hill, its windows black, its door shut fast against a wind that was only beginning.
Two things on this headland that should have been lit, and neither was.
He turned and climbed.
Theboltslidhomewith a firm, final sound.
Elizabeth stood with her hand still upon it, listening. Her fingers had not quite steadied. She pressed them flat against the wood and held them there until they did.
The rain had not yet committed itself; it moved lightly against the stones, as though testing them. Through the small window facing the slope she could see Mrs Hargreaves descending with surprising speed for one of her years, her figure diminishing until the rise swallowed her altogether.
The cottage was very quiet. The wind found its edges—sill, shutter, the gap beneath the door—but inside, the silence was the kind that waits to be filled and does not care if it is not.
She turned to the other window.
The tower stood against the dull sky, its stone darkened where earlier weather had passed over it. A little below, upon the short swell of ground between the lantern and the cliff edge, the keeper moved back and forth with methodical persistence, dragging long lengths of driftwood into a rough stack. He worked without haste, though there was no idleness in him. Once he paused, straightened, surveyed the sea, and bent again to his task.
She could not divine his purpose. The lantern would not be lit yet; it was still daylight, however diminished. But the wood was being stacked with intention—arranged, not stored. Whatever the custom, he was building something.
The wind moaned faintly at the windowpane. Elizabeth turned from it and moved to her trunk. She knelt beside it and lifted the lid.
The smell of cedar and starch rose at once, a small, stubborn defiance of the damp, wild air about her. At the top lay the folded linens she had been instructed to bring—two sets, neatly bound with twine. Whatever else had been misjudged about this place, that had not.
Beneath lay her gowns: dark wool, stout and serviceable; thicker petticoats; stockings fit for wind rather than promenade. There would be no need here for muslin or lace.
She drew them out one by one and shook them gently before laying them across what surfaces remained. There was no dining table or desk; only a narrow settle stood against one wall, a single chair near the hearth. She draped one gown across the back of the chair, another over the settle, spreading the sleeves so that the air might find them. A cloak she hung upon the peg by the door.
At the bottom of the trunk lay the books.
She lifted them with greater care than she had afforded the gowns. They were wrapped in brown paper and bound with string. The string she untied slowly.
The first, she recognised by touch alone before she saw the spine. Her father’s copy of Shakespeare, the margins crowded with his small, uneven hand. She had taken it from the third shelf in the library at Longbourn on the afternoon Mr Collins had been shown over the estate. It had not been theft, she told herself; it had been preservation.
She carried it to the mantel and set it there.
Next came Mary’s volume of sermons, annotated in her sister’s careful script. She placed it beside Shakespeare.
A small book of travels followed—one she had read often in girlhood, tracing imagined coastlines with her finger while her father described them in jest. She remembered the library windows thrown open in summer, the sound of bees in the garden beyond.
She set it with the others and stepped back.
There was no proper shelf to receive them, no ordered row. They leaned against one another upon the stone, the paper covers pale against the darker surface. She rested her hand upon the nearest spine.
The empty cottage echoed in a way her father’s library had not done. But Longbourn was no longer her home. The library windows would be closed up by Charlotte’s hands. The bees would find their way in just thesame.
She withdrew and turned back to the trunk for the rest. Eleven books in all, including the one her uncle had rescued for her. After she had done, she braced her hands on her hips and cast a look about the room. Small as it was, the cottage deserved inspection before she permitted herself comfort.
Elizabeth moved slowly along the inner wall, studying the seam where roof met stone. The light was already thinning; what little entered through the window lay flat and without warmth. She could see no stain upon the floor—no darkened patches, no warping of the boards near the hearth. The flags were clean, recently swept. If water had found its way through, it had not lingered.
She tilted her head and looked upward. The south side, Mrs Hargreaves had said.
There—a faint discoloration in the plaster just beneath the eaves, as though damp had once passed and been permitted to dry without remedy. She stepped closer, raised her hand, pressed her fingers lightly against the surface. It held firm.
If the leak were recent, it would show itself soon.
She crossed into the small kitchen space beyond. The shelves were bare. A hook where a kettle might once have hung stood empty. The hearth there was narrower than the one in the main room. She crouched and peered within.
