Elizabeth looked down at the pale hands resting in her lap, at the pronounced veins and thin fingers. “Anne was dying, Jane. Is dying, in this body. Mrs. Jenkinson doses me with medicinesto keep the worst symptoms at bay, but I can feel it. Feel the weakness spreading, the way breathing becomes harder each day. Months, perhaps. Weeks if I am unlucky.”
The truth of that settled between them like a physical weight. Jane’s hand rose to cover her mouth, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
“There is more,” Elizabeth said, reaching beneath the shawl she wore. Her fingers closed around the leather binding of Anne’s grimoire. She withdrew it carefully, holding it out toward Jane with trembling hands. “I found this hidden in Anne’s chamber. She was taught by her father, Sir Lewis de Bourgh. He was a witch, or an alchemist. And he taught Anne everything he knew.”
Jane took the grimoire with visible reluctance, her fingers touching the worn leather as though it might burn her. She opened it slowly, carefully, her eyes widening as she took in the cramped handwriting that filled the pages.
“Love potions,” Jane whispered, her voice barely audible. She looked up at Elizabeth, her lovely face twisted with revulsion. “This is witchcraft. Dark magic.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth confirmed. “Anne learned from her father. He used one of those potions on Lady Catherine, I think. Made her devoted to Sir Lewis beyond reason or choice.” She paused. “And Anne plans to use another on Darcy, once they are married. To ensure he can never question his choice, never suspect that his wife is not who he thinks.”
Jane’s hands shook visibly as she turned pages. Then Jane found it, her fingers stopping on a page near the book’s end. Her face went utterly white as she read.
“A Draught for the Exchange of Forms,” Jane read aloud, and her voice emerged hollow with horror. “This is how she did it. How she stole your body.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said simply. “She needed my hair and hers, exotic ingredients, and the potion had to be drunk near-simultaneously. She must have prepared it carefully, and then she put it in my tea that day at the parsonage.”
Jane continued reading, her expression growing more stricken with each line. When she finally looked up, tears streamed freely down her face. “Can it be reversed? Is there a way to undo what she has done?”
“I believe so,” Elizabeth said, though uncertainty coloured the words. “The same potion that swapped us should swap us back, if I can obtain the ingredients and force Anne to drink it. But the components are impossibly rare and expensive. Ambergris from whales. Pearl powder. A shaving of bezoar. Things I have no means to acquire.”
The silence that followed felt endless, broken only by birdsong and the whisper of wind through new leaves. Jane stood with the grimoire clutched to her chest. Elizabeth watched emotions play across Jane’s features.
Then Jane moved. She crossed the remaining distance and sank onto the fallen log beside Elizabeth, setting the grimoire carefully aside before reaching out to pull Elizabeth into her arms. The embrace was gentle, mindful of Anne’s fragility, but absolute in its conviction.
“I knew,” Jane whispered against Elizabeth’s shoulder, her voice breaking. “I knew she was not you. She looked like you and sounded like you, but she was not you. Something was wrong from the moment I saw her yesterday afternoon, I followed your instructions and did not say that I had come in response to the letter, and she never mentioned it, was instead most surprised to see me. The way she held herself, the things she said, the eagerness with which she accepted Mr. Darcy’s company. None of it felt right.”
Elizabeth’s chest heaved with sobs, tears streaming down pale cheeks as relief crashed over her. Jane believed her. Her dearest Jane, who knew her better than anyone else in the world, had seen through Anne’s impersonation even without understanding that such a deed could be possible.
“I tried to convince myself I was imagining things,” Jane continued, her own voice thick with tears. “Tried to tell myself that travel or some temporary alteration in spirits had changed you. But my heart knew. Knew that my sister would never speak so dismissively of our mother, would never be so eager to marry without family present, would never look at me with such distance. As though we were strangers rather than sisters.”
They clung to each other among the oak trees, two sisters reunited despite impossible circumstances, and Elizabeth felt something in her chest ease for the first time since waking in this nightmare. She was not alone anymore. Jane knew the truth. Jane believed her. And together, somehow, they would find a way to reverse what Anne had done.
They remained like that for several minutes, holding each other while tears dried on borrowed and familiar faces alike. But eventually Jane drew back, her hands remaining on Elizabeth’s shoulders as she studied her sister’s face with searching intensity. The horror had not left her expression, but beneath it now lay something harder. Determination.
“We must form a plan,” Jane said, her soft voice full of conviction. “If this potion can reverse what has been done, then we must find a way to obtain the ingredients and force Anne to drink it.”
Elizabeth nodded, relief flooding through her. She reached for the grimoire, her fingers trembling as she opened it to the page they needed.
“Here,” Elizabeth said, pointing to the ingredients list. “These are what we need.”
Jane leaned close, her head nearly touching Elizabeth’s borrowed one as they studied the page together. Her finger traced the words slowly. “Ambergris braised in honey. Spirits of wine well-rectified. Pearl powder. Saffron. Grains of paradise. Lemon balm and lavender water.” She paused, looking up at Elizabeth. “And freshly cut hair of both parties. A draught for each, the same day.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth confirmed. “The potion must be prepared fresh and drunk near-simultaneously by both parties to reverse the exchange. We must both consume it, or the spell will not work.”
Jane’s finger continued down the page, stopping at the final line. “A shaving of bezoar steadies.” She looked at Elizabeth with confusion. “What is a bezoar?”
“A stone found in the stomachs of certain animals,” Elizabeth replied, having looked it up in Rosings’ library that morning. “Goats, usually, from Persia or the East. They are exceedingly rare in England and worth more than their weight in gold, highly valued by curio collectors.”
Jane’s expression grew more troubled as the full magnitude of the task settled over her. She read through the ingredients again, and Elizabeth saw her sister’s natural optimism struggling against practical assessment of the obstacles they faced.
“Where would one even begin to search for such things?” she asked.
“Anne found them somehow,” Elizabeth said, though the words emerged with less conviction than she had intended. “She was an invalid with limited means, yet she managed to collecteverything required. If she could do it, then surely we can as well.”
Jane nodded slowly, her mind clearly working through possibilities. Her fingers drummed against the grimoire’s leather binding in a rhythm Elizabeth recognised from childhood. Finally, her expression brightened.
“Uncle Gardiner,” Jane said, certainty entering her voice. “He deals with merchants who import goods from all over the world. Spices from the East Indies. Rare ingredients for apothecaries and physicians. If anyone in our acquaintance might have access to such exotic substances, it would be him.”
