Miss Bennet,
Nan says you wrote while lying nearly flat, which seems an unnecessary distinction unless she thinks it a feat. I am therefore impressed. I send you Miss Edgeworth because I most wanted somebody else to read her today, and because my brother becomes unjust whenever a woman in a book has more sense than the man she speaks to, which I think may entertain you.
I do not know whether you like being in a strange house. I did not, the first fortnight here. It smelled age and neglect, and at first I thought I had been carried to the end of the earth. I no longer think so. The end of the earth would have less mud.
G. D.
Elizabeth read the note once, then more slowly for the pleasure of the second sentence. There was wit there, quiet, almost apologetic, but wit nonetheless. She had not yet known Georgiana long enough to say whether it belonged naturally to her or whether the note lent courage the body lacked. It scarcely mattered. The note held more spirit than her own poor sister could do.
Nan lingered in the doorway.
“You may tell Miss Darcy,” Elizabeth said, “that I agree with her about the mud, and reserve judgment on the end of the earth, never having seen enough to compare.”
Nan waited.
“And?”
“That if Mr Darcy becomes unjust whenever a woman in a book has more sense than the man she is speaking to, I shall observe the phenomenon before pronouncing.”
Nan’s mouth twitched. “That sounds like teasing, miss.”
“It is teasing. You may carry it upstairs if you think Miss Darcy equal to harbouring dangerous materials.”
“Miss Darcy is equal to everything except stairs,” Nan said with impartial conviction and came in to fetch paper.
Elizabeth wrote back with the cautious awkwardness still imposed by bed, bandage, and the fatigue settling into her wrist after too many lines. Yet the fatigue was welcome. It belonged to exertion chosen rather than pain borne. By the time the note had gone up she thought not of the paper but of the room above, the girl in it, the expression awaiting her reply.
The thought stayed through the next clothing and the tray Mrs Reeves brought at twilight, and lingered when Darcy entered with a lamp in one hand and an account book in the other.
Jane had just gone to fetch clean linen from the press in the passage. Elizabeth, propped against the pillows with Miss Edgeworth in her lap, looked first at the lamp, then the account book, then Darcy.
“Have I grown so dull in a single afternoon,” she said, “that you must bring both illumination and figures to preserve me from myself?”
He set the lamp on the table and turned the wick higher. The light threw his face from evening shadow into sharp definition—the strong brow, the mouth too grave by habit and too ready on occasion to betray its owner by almost smiling.
“You expressed this afternoon a dangerous attachment to the drawing room ceiling,” he said. “I brought an account book as warning against sentiment.” Darcy’s eye dropped to the book in her lap. “Miss Edgeworth. My sister has chosen strategically.”
“Has she?”
“She wishes to know whether you laugh.”
“And if I do?”
He drew his chair nearer the fire but did not sit at once. “Then she will conclude you may be trusted. Georgiana distrusts anyone who reads solemnly by choice.”
“How wise of her. Has she always been so severe a judge?”
“Only where books are concerned. In every other respect, she is inclined to think well of the world until it gives her reason not to.”
There was nothing elaborate in the sentence. Elizabeth heard the weight beneath it—a brother who had kept watch over a sister’s goodness for years and feared every fresh occasion the world might answer it badly. She looked at the ledger in his hand.
“And what do you intend to accomplish with your account books?”
“I doubt I shall accomplish very much, but it is proof that Hadley despises generalities and that my late cousin deserved more censure than I could bestow in life. The lower carrier needs clearing, the wall by the west field wants stone, the meadow gate needs rehanging, and every one of these facts grows more expensive when translated into London by a man who has never seen Derbyshire mud.”
“Then London will require an interpreter.”
“It already has one. Me.”
