A love potion.
Her eyes dropped to the margin note, written in Anne’s hand but with obvious excitement that made the letters slightly less controlled.“This one works,”it read, the third word highlighted by three emphatic underscores.“Mother’s never looked at anyone else. Use on Darcy once married!”
Elizabeth stared at the words, her mind refusing to process their meaning even as understanding crashed over her withhorrible certainty.Mother’s never looked at anyone else.Lady Catherine. Proud, domineering Lady Catherine de Bourgh, daughter of an earl, who had married Sir Lewis de Bourgh despite his being beneath her in station and consequence.
The journal trembled in Elizabeth’s grasp as pieces clicked into place with sickening clarity. Lady Catherine had been a great beauty in her youth, by all accounts. Had possessed fortune and breeding that should have secured her a match among the highest circles of society. Yet she had married a gentleman whose family, while respectable, could not approach the distinction of her own, despite the wealth of Rosings Park.
Elizabeth had always assumed it had been a love match. That Lady Catherine’s pride and conviction in her own superiority had developed later, perhaps even after her husband’s passing. But what if it had not been choice at all? What if Sir Lewis de Bourgh had used this same potion to secure the hand of a woman who would never have looked at him otherwise?
The implications made Elizabeth’s stomach turn. Lady Catherine bound by magical compulsion to a man she might never have chosen freely. Devoted to him completely, unable even to consider that her affections had been artificially created rather than naturally developed. And now her daughter planned to do the same thing to Darcy. To trap him with the same spell that had ensnared Lady Catherine, to ensure his devotion through magical manipulation rather than genuine feeling.
Elizabeth’s hands clenched around the journal’s leather binding, her knuckles white with the force of her grip. The candle flame wavered in a draft she could not feel, making shadows dance across the pages and Anne’s cramped handwriting seem to writhe like living things. She wanted to throw the journal across the room, wanted to tear out these pages and burn them so that no one could ever use such wicked magic again.
But she needed this journal. Needed the recipes it contained, particularly the one Anne had used to swap their bodies. Without that knowledge, Elizabeth had no hope of reversing what had been done to her. She forced herself to breathe slowly despite the tightness in her chest, forced her hands to relax their grip before she damaged the pages she needed to study.
How long had Anne been planning this? The journal covered years, the earlier recipes having dates at the top almost a decade old. Anne had been studying magic, collecting recipes, preparing for this scheme since long before Elizabeth had even met Darcy. Perhaps since before Darcy himself had come of age.
The idea of such patient, calculated wickedness made Elizabeth’s skin crawl. Anne had spent years learning the craft her father had taught her, years gathering rare ingredients and testing formulations, years waiting for the right opportunity. For a woman whom Darcy might consider marrying, perhaps, so that Anne could steal her body and her life. And Elizabeth had arrived at Hunsford completely ignorant, vulnerable in ways she could never have anticipated.
She turned another page, then another, searching now with desperate urgency. The body-swap potion had to be here somewhere. Had to be recorded among these recipes for love potions and devotion draughts and all the other violations Anne had planned. Elizabeth’s eyes strained in the candlelight, Anne’s weak vision making the small script even harder to decipher. But she continued turning pages, scanning ingredients and instructions with growing desperation.
She found it near the end of the journal, on a page that showed signs of having been consulted frequently. The paper was slightly more worn there, the edges softened from repeated handling, and small spatters of what looked like old candle wax dotted the margins.
Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat as she read the title written in Anne’s careful hand: “A Draught for the Exchange of Forms.”
Elizabeth’s lips moved silently as she read words that might as well have been a death sentence.Ambergris braised in honey. She had heard of ambergris, knew it came from whales and was used to make expensive perfumes.Spirits of wine well-rectified. Pearl powder. Saffron.Each component more exotic and expensive than the last, the sort of ingredients that appeared in apothecaries’ most expensive preparations, if they appeared at all.
“Ambergris braised in honey,” Elizabeth whispered into the silence of Anne’s chamber, her voice emerging thin and shaking. “Spirits of wine well-rectified, pearl powder, saffron, grains of paradise, lemon balm and lavender water.”
The words felt strange in her mouth, foreign and impossible. Grains of paradise she had never even heard of.
Elizabeth’s eyes continued down the page, her heart sinking further with each line. “A lock of cut hair of both parties. A draught for each, taken in the same hour.”
So Anne had needed Elizabeth’s hair, had somehow obtained it without Elizabeth’s knowledge or consent. Had collected it carefully and stored it until the moment was right. The violation of that made Elizabeth’s stomach turn, the idea of Anne watching her, waiting for an opportunity to steal something so personal.
The final line caught Elizabeth’s attention, written in slightly darker ink as though Anne had pressed harder on the pen:“A shaving of bezoar steadies.”
Bezoar. Elizabeth stared at the word, trying to recall where she had seen it before. In one of her father’s books, perhaps. She would have to research, somehow. Perhaps a favour she might ask of Colonel Fitzwilliam, she thought with a flash ofdark humour, since he had volunteered to help her. But even with the bezoar, the other components remained impossibly out of reach. Saffron cost more by weight than gold; ambergris and pearl powder required wealth Elizabeth did not possess in this borrowed body or her own. She had found no money in Anne’s room during her search and asking Lady Catherine for large sums of money would lead to questions she could not answer. Spirits of wine well-rectified would need to be purchased from an apothecary who would certainly question why Miss Anne de Bourgh required such a substance.
The journal trembled in Elizabeth’s grasp as the full magnitude of her predicament crashed over her. She had found the recipe, yes, had discovered the formula Anne had used to trap her in this dying body. But knowing what was needed did not mean she could obtain it. The ingredients were too rare, too expensive, too far beyond her reach in her current state. She could barely walk across a room without assistance. How could she possibly acquire exotic substances from distant lands?
Elizabeth’s throat closed around a sob she would not let escape. She had been so certain that finding the recipe would provide hope, would give her a path forward. But this list of impossible ingredients felt more like proof of her helplessness than a solution to her nightmare.
Her mind turned to the love potion entry, seeking distraction from her despair. Why had Anne not simply used that on Darcy from the beginning? Why go through the elaborate scheme of swapping bodies when a simpler spell could have secured his devotion? But even as Elizabeth formed the question, understanding followed. Anne’s body was dying. What use was securing Darcy’s magical devotion if she would die before enjoying more than a brief taste of the life she craved?
The body swap solved that problem. Gave Anne not just Darcy’s love but decades to enjoy it, to live as mistress ofPemberley, to bear children and establish herself completely. Using the love potion afterward would simply ensure Darcy never questioned his choice, never wondered at the changes in his wife’s character, never suspected that the woman he had married was not who he thought.
Elizabeth reached up with one trembling hand and touched Anne’s hair, feeling the brittle texture of locks that had been cut short months ago. Had Anne cut a lock of her hair while Elizabeth slept at the parsonage? Had she crept into the room Elizabeth shared with Maria Lucas and stolen what she needed under cover of darkness? Or had she found some other opportunity, some moment when Elizabeth’s attention was elsewhere and her hair accessible?
The violation of it made nausea rise in Elizabeth’s throat. Anne hadstalkedher, had watched and waited and chosen her moment with calculated precision. Had studied Elizabeth’s habits and routines, had learned when she would be vulnerable, had planned every detail of the theft down to obtaining hair without her victim’s knowledge. The level of premeditation required for such wickedness made Elizabeth’s skin crawl with revulsion.
She looked down at her hands, at the thin fingers and pronounced veins that belonged to Anne de Bourgh’s failing body. This flesh had prepared the potion that doomed them both. These hands had measured out exotic ingredients, had cut hair from two heads, had mixed the draught that would facilitate the exchange. And now, Elizabeth’s own healthy hands were being used by the woman who had stolen them, were touching things and people and going about daily activities as though they had every right to the body they inhabited.
Elizabeth closed the journal with shaking hands, the leather binding settling together with a soft sound that seemed too final. She had the recipe now. Had the knowledge she needed.But knowledge without means was just another form of torture, showing her exactly what she needed while keeping it perpetually out of reach.
The candle on the bedside table guttered slightly, throwing strange shadows across the ornate ceiling plasterwork. Elizabeth watched the patterns shift and flow, her eyes burning with tears she would not shed. She needed to think. Needed to plan. The ingredients might be rare but they were not impossible. Anne had obtained them somehow, had gathered everything required for the potion despite her own physical limitations. If Anne could do it, then Elizabeth could as well.
But Anne had possessed time, years to plan and prepare and collect what she needed. Elizabeth had months at best before this failing body gave out entirely. Weeks, perhaps, if the coughing fits grew worse or if Mrs. Jenkinson decided more drastic measures were required to keep her quiet. Every day that passed was one less day to find a solution, one more day for Anne to secure her position as Mrs. Darcy, and to permanently bind Darcy to her with the love potion.
