“I do believe details matter in all aspects of estate management.”
“Important details like drainage?” Her pen was still poised over the inkwell, undipped.
“Yes, and I have implemented a mitigation plan that is quite in order.” My eyes narrowed at her inquisition. “Surely, this detail is not required for Georgiana’s edification.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Darcy, a mistress of any great estate might find it useful to understand the social consequences of redirecting excess water onto a neighbor’s winter wheat. The drainage is exemplary engineering, I am sure—but the calls one must pay after flooding a tenant farmer’s livelihood tend to be rather more awkward than a poorly executed quadrille.” She dipped the pen at last. “Tell me, does your channel direct the water south-southeast, toward the boundary stream?”
“I believe it does.” I tried to picture the plan I had gone over with Bingley’s steward. “It follows the contour into a natural depression.”
“And where does that depression lead to?” She touched the feathered end of the quill to her lower lip, and I couldn’t help but follow the motion.
“The boundary stream, I believe.”
She caught my gaze where it shouldn’t have been and bit her lip, enunciating like a governess of a particularly slow child.
“You believe so, Mr. Darcy, but have you walked the contour? Observed the direction the water would actually flow?”
The question hung between us. I traced the gradient in my mind—the slope of the channel and the fall of the land past the boundary marker, the stream, and beyond it?—
My stomach dropped, a sinking feeling of realization washing over me.
“Longbourn’s lower fields.”
“Onto a neighbor’s property, as I was observing.” She dipped the pen into the inkwell and commenced her letter. “Specifically, the twelve-acre plot is my father’s tenant, Mr. Hughes. The same Mr. Hughes whose wife is expecting their fourth child in January, and who has not had a failed crop in nine years, and who was not, I believe, consulted when your steward decided to redirect half a hillside’s worth of rainwater toward his livelihood.”
The observation landed like a blade slipped between my ribs—painless until one attempted to breathe.
“Miss Bennet.” My gaze returned to her observant eyes. “You are correct, and I was negligent. The drainage should have been surveyed beyond the boundary before the first spade broke ground. I offer my apology without qualification.”
She blinked. It was the smallest disruption of composure I had ever witnessed—a pause in the pen’s trajectory, but I had been studying Elizabeth Bennet’s face with an attention I refused to examine, and the blink told me that a direct apology was not what she had been bracing for.
“I had expected an argument,” she admitted.
“I do not argue with a lady who knows her topography.”
“Protests the gentleman who neglected his.” She dipped the quill and began writing. “I shall inform Papa that the situation is being addressed. He worries, though he conceals it beneath quotations from Cicero and an unconvincing performance of indifference.”
“Your father and I share that method, if not the Cicero.”
“I should not have supposed you and Papa had anything in common, Mr. Darcy, and yet you both neglect what lies beyond your own borders and require a woman to point it out.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again, which was becoming an alarmingly frequent exercise in her company.
A soft scraping drew my attention to the bookshelves. Behind the collection of sermons and the mouldering Gothic romances, the rat hole I had inspected earlier produced not a rat, but somethingconsiderably more self-satisfied. Cinnamon emerged from the shelf. She surveyed the scene, observing her mistress at the writing desk, and walked directly to me.
Winding her sleek body around my legs, she rubbed her whiskers and purred.
“Traitor,” Elizabeth said, without looking up.
“It appears the cat has formed a preference, Miss Bennet,” I remarked, unable to keep a note of triumph from my voice.
“Her allegiances are fickle and motivated entirely by the warmth of your hearth. Do not flatter yourself.”
I glanced down at Cinnamon, who had now settled upon my boot with the air of a sovereign claiming a minor principality. The sight was both endearing and ridiculous.
“I see she has been thorough,” Elizabeth observed, finally looking up from her writing. Her gaze traveled to the orange hairs now decorating my dark-blue trousers. “You have been wearing evidence of her visits, Mr. Darcy. I have noticed, and I shall repay.”
A delightful pink tinge colored her cheeks as she returned to her letter. She had just dipped her quill when Bingley burst through the open door, his energy filling the room.
