“I am not certain the second follows the first. You may already be unfit for polite society and yet require occupation all the same.”
Elizabeth looked at him over the edge of Miss Edgeworth. “Sir.”
“Miss Bennet?”
“You grow bold.”
“Only because you are not well enough to throw the book at me, and I count on the safety the circumstance affords.”
Jane came back just then with the linen and paused in the doorway, taking in the lamp, the book, Darcy in the chair, and Elizabeth distinctly more awake than half an hour earlier. Something unreadable crossed her face and vanished.
“Mrs Hadley says the next cloths in ten minutes,” she said.
Darcy rose at once, as if caught in an impropriety no one named. “Then I will not interfere with medical governance.” He set the account book on the bedside table. “If Miss Bennet grows weary of fiction, the sums may remind her that life contains more serious discouragements.”
“I shall take refuge in Miss Edgeworth at once,” Elizabeth said.
He bowed, which in a sickroom might have looked absurd and did not, and went out carrying the lamp, leaving only firelight behind.
Jane set down the linen more sharply than necessary.
“You look improved,” she said.
“Do I?”
“Yes. I cannot determine whether the improvement owes to broth, Mrs Hadley’s severity, or Mr Darcy’s drainage estimates.”
Elizabeth heard the words—and the care with which they had been arranged not to sound like more than sisterly observation. Yet there was an edge she could no longer ignore.
“The broth was excellent,” she said, the safest answer.
Jane came to the bed and drew back the blankets. Her hands moved without tremor or waste. Widowhood had made her more exact, as grief sometimes sharpens what it cannot soften.
Jane laid the heat over the wound. Elizabeth drew breath and let it out slowly.
“Lizzy.”
“Yes?”
“You need not tell me anything tonight if tonight is too much, but we must talk. Very seriously. Why did you refuse to let me send my letter to Uncle Gardiner?”
Elizabeth looked at the fire rather than her sister. The bag was where she had put it. The papers remained wrapped. The thing she had done at Longbourn had not diminished because the water at Northmere had taken pity on her leg. It remained what it was—a fact capable of altering every relation in the house if spoken aloud.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
Jane’s hands paused only briefly. “Very well. Tomorrow.”
ThenextnotefromGeorgiana came just as Jane finished the bandage. Nan arrived with cheeks pink from the stairs and a triumph in her manner fitting a messenger whose correspondence had not yet failed on either side.
Miss Bennet,
Nan says you threaten to observe my brother as if he were an experiment in natural philosophy. I should like to hear the results when obtained.
I laugh more easily on paper than in company. I do not know whether that is cowardice or convenience. Perhaps both.
If you do not object, I should like to know whether Hertfordshire is flatter than Derbyshire. Fitzwilliam says all counties south of us are featureless, but he has a way of believing the landscape improves in direct proportion to his own distance from London.
G. D.
