Elizabeth’s fingers struck several wrong notes in succession, the scale dissolving into near cacophony before she caught herself. She stared at the keys uncomprehendingly. What had she been blind to?
“You had Fitzwilliam Darcy dangling after you like a lovesick puppy,” Anne continued, and her voice carried genuine scorn now. “The master of Pemberley, one of the finest estates in England, ten thousand a year and connections to half the nobility. He could not take his eyes off you. Could not stop talking about you. Could not rest until he had contrived to be wherever you were.”
The words struck Elizabeth with enough force that her hands fell away from the keys entirely, landing in her lap with a soft thump. She sat frozen, her mind refusing to accept what Anne had said even as pieces began clicking into horrible place. Darcy’s frequent presence at the parsonage. His walks in the grove where he always seemed to encounter her. His attention during dinner. His cousin’s attempts to speak well of him.
Charlotte had speculated on his possible interest, months ago in Hertfordshire, but the idea had seemed so absurd that Elizabeth had dismissed it.
“You are lying,” Elizabeth whispered, but the words emerged without conviction.
“Am I?” Anne turned to look at her fully now, Elizabeth’s own face displaying mocking pity. “Then why does he seek out your company constantly? Why does he watch you with that hungry, desperate look when he thinks no one is observing?” She paused, letting the questions hang between them. “He is in love with you, Lizzy. Utterly, completely, hopelessly in love. And you were too proud and blind to see it.”
Elizabeth’s lungs struggled to draw breath, Anne’s weak chest heaving with the effort. Her mind spun, rejecting Anne’s claims even as evidence accumulated in support of them. Darcyhadbeen oddly attentive, had sought her out repeatedly, had shown signs of interest that Elizabeth had misinterpreted as disdain. Butlove? The proud, disagreeable Mr. Darcy in love withher?
It was impossible. It had to be impossible. Yet Anne’s words carried the weight of informed observation, of someone who had been watching closely while Elizabeth had been oblivious.
“Even if it were true,” Elizabeth forced out, her voice emerging rough, “that still gives you no right to what you have done. To steal my body, my life, to trap me here while you take my place.”
“Rights again.” Anne shook her head with that same mocking expression. “You keep speaking of rights as though they meansomething. I saw what I wanted, what I deserved, what should have been mine if fate had not cursed me with this failing body. And I took it. That is all there is.”
She reached out with Elizabeth’s strong, healthy hand and pressed down on middle C, the note ringing out clear. “I will be Mrs. Darcy. I will be Mistress of Pemberley. I will have the life I was always meant to have, the life you were wasting through your stubborn pride and wilful blindness.” Anne’s smile widened into something terrible. “And you, dear Lizzy, will fade away in the body I no longer need.”
Elizabeth’s vision swam, spots dancing at the edges as the full horror crashed over her. This was not temporary. Anne had no intention of ever reversing what she had done. She meant to keep Elizabeth’s body permanently, to marry Darcy in Elizabeth’s form.
“I will tell someone,” Elizabeth whispered desperately. “I will expose you. Will make them see the truth.”
“Will you?” Anne’s expression showed only amused contempt. “And who will believe you? Mrs. Jenkinson already knows, but she will never speak of it. My mother will have you committed to an asylum if you start raving about body swapping and witchcraft. And Darcy...” She paused, her smile turning cruel. “Darcy will be relieved to have an excuse to avoid marrying the mad Anne de Bourgh. He will sign the papers gladly and never think of you again.”
The truth of it settled over Elizabeth like a shroud. She tried to respond, tried to form some argument or threat, but her throat had closed with unshed tears, Anne’s body betraying her once again. She turned back to the pianoforte and placed trembling fingers on the keys, striking notes at random.
Behind them, someone laughed at something Lady Catherine had said. The pleasant sounds of after-dinner conversationcontinued, entirely oblivious to the nightmare unfolding at the pianoforte.
Anne’s smile widened further, Elizabeth’s mouth stretching into an expression of triumph. She leaned closer, her voice dropping to barely above a breath.
“I am going to enjoy this,” Anne whispered, and the words carried genuine pleasure beneath their cruelty. “Being who I was always meant to be. Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Mistress of Pemberley. The woman who has everything: wealth, position, beauty, health, and a husband who will adore her until the day he dies.”
Elizabeth’s hands had begun to shake harder, the trembling spreading through Anne’s arms until her entire upper body quivered. She forced herself to stop striking random keys, to place her palms flat against the ivory to steady them.
“What about me?” The question emerged broken, barely audible. “What do you expect will happen to me?”
Anne tilted her head, studying Elizabeth with detached curiosity. “You will die, of course. That body has perhaps six months remaining, a year at the outside. The damage is too extensive to repair.”
The words landed with brutal simplicity, no softening, no false sympathy. Elizabeth stared at Anne, at her own stolen face displaying calm certainty about Elizabeth’s death sentence, and felt something crack inside her chest. Six months. Perhaps a year. Anne spoke of it as though discussing the weather.
“How can you say such things?” Elizabeth’s voice emerged rough with barely suppressed tears. “How can you speak of my death with such indifference?”
“Indifference?” Anne’s eyebrows rose. “I am not indifferent, Lizzy. I am simply realistic. That body was dying already, long before you inhabited it. The chemicals I breathed during my studies, the powders and vapours from my father’s experiments,they accumulated in my lungs, in my blood, weakening everything from the inside.” She paused, and something like bitterness crossed her stolen features. “My father died the same way, you know. Coughing up blood in his final months, unable to draw breath without pain. He sacrificed his health for knowledge, and I have done the same. But I have succeeded where he failed – I have escaped my fate.”
Elizabeth’s stomach turned at the casual revelation, at the matter-of-fact acknowledgement that Anne had poisoned herself through her alchemical studies. And now Elizabeth was trapped in that poisoned body, condemned to suffer the consequences of Anne’s choices, to die slowly from damage she had not caused.
“You are a monster,” Elizabeth whispered, and this time she could not prevent the tears from gathering in Anne’s pale eyes, could not stop them from spilling down her borrowed cheeks. “You have condemned me to die so that you can steal my life, and you speak of it as though you have done nothing wrong.”
Anne reached out and wiped Elizabeth’s tears away with Elizabeth’s own hand, the gesture almost tender if one ignored the cruelty in her expression. “I have done what I needed to do to survive. To have some taste of life before this body failed entirely. You may think me a monster for it, but I think you are a fool for having wasted the gifts you were born with.”
She pulled her hand back and placed it on the pianoforte beside Elizabeth’s, both sets of fingers resting on the polished ivory keys. Elizabeth’s strong healthy hand and Anne’s frail dying one, side by side, a visual reminder of the theft that had occurred. “And you should know, Lizzy, that I am very good with poisons. With potions and draughts and tinctures that can make death appear natural, like the simple failure of an already failing body. So if you attempt to interfere with my plans, if you tryto expose me or cause trouble, I will ensure your suffering ends more quickly than it otherwise might.”
The threat hung between them, absolute and chilling in its calm delivery. Anne was promising to murder her if she proved inconvenient, to poison her and make it look like the natural progression of her illness. And no one would question it.
Elizabeth forced air into her borrowed lungs, forced herself to think despite the tears still streaming down her face, despite the horror threatening to overwhelm her. She needed some leverage, some way to shake Anne’s confidence.
