“Let me help you with your boots,” Charlotte said, already kneeling to unlace them.
Elizabeth tried to protest, to insist she could manage, but her tongue would not cooperate. She lay back against the pillows, closing her eyes against the spinning room. But darkness brought no relief; behind her closed lids, patterns swirled and shifted, making her feel as though she were falling through endless space.
She opened her eyes again, fixing her gaze on the ceiling beam as an anchor. The wood grain seemed to writhe and flow like water, the knots transforming into eyes that stared back at her. She blinked hard, and the illusion dissolved, but the sense of wrongness remained.
Charlotte’s hands were cool against Elizabeth’s ankles as she removed the boots, then drew a blanket over Elizabeth’s legs. Her face hovered in Elizabeth’s narrowing field of vision, creased with worry.
“I shall tell Lady Catherine that you are unwell, and give your apologies for missing dinner,” Charlotte said. “She willunderstand, I am sure. And I shall have cook prepare some broth for you, something light that might sit well.”
Elizabeth tried to nod, but the movement sent fresh agony lancing through her skull.
“Try to rest,” Charlotte urged, already moving toward the door. “I shall check on you in a little while.”
The door clicked shut, and Elizabeth was alone. The room settled into oppressive silence, broken only by her own laboured breathing and the relentless ticking of the small clock on the mantelpiece. Each tick seemed unnaturally loud, each tock reverberating through her aching head like a hammer blow.
She should rest. Charlotte was right, rest would help. Rest would clear whatever affliction had seized her so suddenly. She tried to relax, to let her muscles soften into the mattress, but tension gripped her entire body. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides, her jaw remained tight, her shoulders drawn up toward her ears.
The afternoon light through the window cast long shadows across the floor, shapes that seemed to creep and lengthen as she watched. The sprigged wallpaper appeared to shimmer, the small flowers detaching from their printed stems to float through the air like dying moths.
Elizabeth squeezed her eyes shut again, trying to block out the disturbing visions. This was wrong. This was all wrong. Headaches did not do this, did not steal one’s coordination, did not make solid walls ripple like fabric, did not transform familiar objects into nightmare versions of themselves.
Fear crept through her confusion, cold and insidious. What was happening to her?
The tea.The thought surfaced through her fragmenting consciousness with sudden clarity. Something in the tea. Anne’s careful pouring, her deliberate movements, the way she had watched Elizabeth drink…
But that was madness. Why would Anne de Bourgh poison her? They were barely acquainted. The notion was ridiculous, a product of her illness-addled mind seeking patterns where none existed.
Yet the conviction remained, settling into her bones with terrible certainty. Something had been in the tea.
Elizabeth tried to rise, some desperate instinct urging her to seek help, to tell someone of her suspicions. Her arms would not obey. She managed to lift her head from the pillow, but the effort cost her dearly. The room spun violently, and bile rose in her throat.
She collapsed back, gasping. Her limbs felt disconnected from her body, as though they belonged to someone else entirely. When she tried to move her right hand, her left twitched instead – or did neither move at all? She could no longer tell where her body ended and the bed began.
The throbbing in her head had become a roar, drowning out thought, drowning out everything. Pain and pressure, building and building until she thought her skull might split open to release it.
Darkness crept in at the edges of her vision, not the soft darkness of closing one’s eyes but something absolute and hungry. It spread inward like spilled ink on parchment, consuming the room piece by piece. The window vanished. The wardrobe dissolved. The ceiling above her ceased to exist.
Elizabeth tried to fight it, clinging to consciousness with desperate determination. She had to stay awake. Had to tell someone. Had to…
But the darkness would not be denied. It wrapped around her like thick velvet, stifling and complete. Her last conscious thought was a fragmented confusion; why was this happening? Why did it hurt so terribly? Why had Anne de Bourgh’s pale eyes glittered with such satisfaction?
Then even confusion faded, and there was only blackness, deep and absolute, pulling her down into depths from which she might never surface. Her body went slack against the mattress, her breathing slowing to shallow whispers.
In the stillness of the room, the clock continued its relentless ticking, marking the passage of time that Elizabeth Bennet could no longer perceive. Somewhere in the house below, Charlotte moved through her domestic duties, unaware that her guest lay unconscious upstairs, trapped in a darkness that was not natural sleep but something far more sinister.
The shadows lengthened across the floor, reaching toward the bed with grasping fingers. And Elizabeth, lost in the void, could not see them coming.
Chapter Two
Painarrivedfirst,dulland insistent, dragging her up from bottomless depths. Elizabeth became aware of her body in pieces – an ache in her skull, burning in her throat, heaviness in her limbs suggesting she’d been crushed beneath something immense. Consciousness flickered like a guttering candle, present one moment and gone the next.
Time passed, unmeasured. She floated between waking and sleeping, dimly aware of discomfort but unable to address it. Heat pressed against her skin, thick and suffocating, making each breath an effort. The air tasted stale, recycled through lungs that couldn’t draw enough.
Eventually, Elizabeth forced her eyes open. The lids felt weighted, reluctant. Light filtered through in fragments, indistinct and blurred. She blinked, and the world remainedstubbornly unfocused. Blinked again, and details began to emerge.
Heavy fabric surrounded her on three sides. Bed hangings, she realised slowly, her thoughts moving like chilled honey, slow and thick. Deep crimson velvet, pulled partially closed, creating a stifling cocoon.
This was not her room at the parsonage, the room she had been sharing with Maria these past weeks. The certainty settled over her with the weight of the bed coverings themselves, which pressed against her chest and legs with oppressive heaviness. Where was she?
