She lifted one hand from the frame, holding it before her face, turning it slowly. The movement felt foreign, the hand responding to her commands but seeming disconnected from her body. The nails were longer than she kept hers, shaped and buffed to a shine she never bothered with.
Elizabeth told herself it was the illness. The lingering effects were distorting her perception, making familiar things appear strange. Or perhaps the weakness had affected her vision, causing some distortion that made her own hands look unfamiliar.
But even as she formed these rational explanations, some deeper part of her recognised them as lies. Her hands looked wrong because they were wrong. Because they were not hers.
The thought was absurd. Impossible. Hands could not simply change, could not transform into someone else’s while one lay unconscious. Yet there they were, undeniably different, undeniably strange, moving when she willed them to move but belonging to someone else.
The mirror. Elizabeth’s gaze jerked to the large ornate mirror across the room, the one she’d noticed earlier in her survey of the chamber. Its gilded frame gleamed in the light from the window, but the angle was wrong from where she stood; only the crimson bed hangings showed in the reflection.
She needed to see. Needed to know. Though every instinct screamed at her to look away, to return to bed and dismiss this strangeness as a fever-dream, Elizabeth released the window frame and turned toward the mirror.
Her legs nearly buckled immediately. She had to grab the window frame again, steadying herself, before attempting the journey. The mirror stood perhaps ten feet away, across that expanse of polished floor that had already proven so difficult to traverse. But she had to reach it. Had to see.
Elizabeth pushed off from the window, her legs shaking violently. She made it two steps before having to grab the chair back for support. Three more shuffling steps brought her to the dressing table, where she leaned heavily, gasping. The mirror was closer now, only a few feet distant, though the angle was still wrong for her to see her reflection.
She circled the dressing table, one hand trailing along its edge for support, and straightened as much as her weakened body would allow. The mirror stood directly before her now, its surface catching the light from the window behind her.
The face looking back at her was not her own.
Elizabeth stared at the reflection, her mind unable to reconcile what her eyes showed her. The face in the mirror was pale, almost bloodless, with hollow cheeks and prominent cheekbones. The hair, instead of Elizabeth’s long dark curls, was cropped short, barely brushing the collar, giving the face a severe, almost masculine cast.
But it was the eyes that made recognition impossible to deny. Pale eyes, washed out and colourless, set in dark hollows that spoke of chronic illness. Anne de Bourgh’s eyes. Anne de Bourgh’s face.
Elizabeth’s hand flew to her throat, and the reflection mimicked the movement perfectly, that strange thin hand rising to touch that pale, unfamiliar neck. She watched the reflection move when she moved, saw those colourless eyes widen as her own eyes widened, saw those bloodless lips part as her own lips parted in shock.
This could not be real. Could not be possible. She was dreaming still, trapped in some fever-nightmare brought on by illness. In a moment she would wake in her bed at the parsonage, in her own body, and this horror would dissolve like morning mist.
But the reflection remained steady, undeniable. When Elizabeth raised her other hand, the reflection raised its hand. When she tilted her head, the reflection tilted its head. Every movement perfectly synchronised, proving beyond doubt that the face in the mirror, Anne de Bourgh’s face, belonged to her.
Elizabeth touched her cheek, feeling the bone too close beneath the skin, feeling the unfamiliar contours of someone else’s face. Her fingers trembled as they traced the sharp line of the jaw, the short hair that felt strange and wrong against her fingertips. The reflection showed Anne de Bourgh touching her face with those same fragile-looking hands, but Elizabeth felt every sensation, knew with terrible certainty that the hand washers, that the face was hers, that somehow, impossibly, this was her.
She couldn’t breathe. The air wouldn’t come, wouldn’t fill her lungs no matter how hard she tried to draw it in. Her chest constricted, tight and painful, while her heart hammered against her ribs with enough force to hurt.
This was not real. Thiscould notbe real.
But the mirror showed her the truth. Elizabeth backed away from it, her legs unsteady, her hands stretched out before her as though to ward off what she’d seen. Those thin, pale hands. Anne’s hands. Her hands.
Her retreat brought her up against the bed, and her legs finally gave way entirely. She collapsed onto the mattress, sitting hard, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps that couldn’t provide enough air. She looked down at her body, truly looked at it for the first time.
The nightdress she wore was not hers. Thin fine muslin with lace at the collar and cuffs, the sort of garment Anne favoured, expensive and impractical. The body beneath it was wrong, all wrong. Too thin, the collarbones protruding sharply above the neckline. Arms like sticks emerging from the short sleeves.
This was Anne de Bourgh’s body. Anne de Bourgh’s face. Anne de Bourgh’s hands and arms and legs.
But Elizabeth’s mind inhabited it. Elizabeth’s consciousness looked out through those pale eyes, felt sensations through that unfamiliar skin, breathed with those weak lungs.
The impossibility of it crashed over her like a wave, drowning thought, drowning reason. She could not be Anne de Bourgh. She was Elizabeth Bennet. Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn, second daughter of Mr. Bennet, sister to Jane and Mary and Kitty and Lydia. She had her own face, her own hands, her own body.
But the mirror had shown her the truth, and her own hands – Anne’s hands, her hands – confirmed it. She was trapped in Anne de Bourgh’s body. Somehow, impossibly, horrifyingly, she was Anne de Bourgh.
The tea.The memory surfaced through her panic. Anne’s careful pouring, her strange intensity, her satisfied smile when Elizabeth drank. Anne had done this. Somehow, Anne had done this. Magic, witchcraft, some impossible art that shouldn’t exist, couldn’t exist. But it had happened. It was real.
Elizabeth tried to stand, to run, to escape this nightmare through sheer force of will. But her legs wouldn’t obey, wouldn’t bear her weight. She remained seated on the bed’s edge, staring at hands that were not hers, trapped in a body that was not hers, unable to process the magnitude of what had been done to her.
Where was her body?The thought arrived with fresh horror. If she was in Anne’s body, then where was Anne? Had the spell, or potion, or whatever impossible thing Anne had used, left Anne in Elizabeth’s body?
The implications unfurled in Elizabeth’s mind like poisonous flowers. Anne in her body. Anne with her face, her voice, her health and strength. Anne pretending to be Elizabeth Bennet, living Elizabeth’s life.
The scream built in her chest, a pressure that had to be released or she would shatter. It climbed her throat, gathered force, and finally burst free. The sound that emerged was raw and primal, conveying horror and disbelief and rage and terror all together. It echoed off the high ceiling, bounced from the walls, filled the vast chamber with the sound of a soul in torment.
