If so, there is something I have carried with me, and I think you ought to know it.
On the morning we departed Cheapside, I stepped outside while you were packing. I wished to retrieve something he had taken, and I was perhaps more direct than I ought to havebeen. He was not unkind—he rarely is, which makes him all the more difficult to censure—but he made clear that he considered himself owed something for his troubles, and I had not enough coin.
Then he spoke of how siblings protect one another, and how protection has its price. He said—and I have remembered this—that he had done his brother a considerable service. “I signed a registry for him,” he told me, “and he owes me still.” He laughed as though this were a jest, but I do not believe it was.
It may be a coincidence or nothing at all—only that I have heard that this man was rumored to have gone aboard after Lady Amelia’s unfortunate accident, and I find myself uneasy. I do not wish to alarm you unduly, and I am truly overjoyed that your marriage has brought you happiness.
Write to me when you can. Tell me I am worrying over nothing.
Your ever-loving sister,
Jane
P.S. - I have told no one about this. Not Mamma, not Papa, not even our aunt. Some conversations are better held in person. When you are able, please come to Longbourn, or send for me to come to you. There is more I would say that I dare not commit to paper.
“Mrs. Darcy?” Clarice’s voice was carefully neutral as always. “Miss Duntze has arrived for luncheon, and Miss Darcy asks if you will join them in the small parlor.”
Elizabeth looked up from Jane’s letter. She had entirely forgotten that Prue was coming today—they had arranged it last week, before the dinner with Darcy, before everything hadbecome so complicated. Her mind was still caught on Jane’s words:I signed a registry for him, and he owes me still.
It could only be George Wickham. Who else would Jane have confronted over Elizabeth’s missing locket?
Elizabeth folded Jane’s letter and tucked it into her pocket, as Clarice waited for an answer.
“Tell them I shall be down presently.”
She did not know the registry Jane meant, but she did know that Little Tom had been christened at St. Michael’s in Kympton—possibly by Prue’s father, the rector of Kympton. Prue was downstairs, and Kympton was close, a little over a mile away.
The small parlor was warm with spring sunlight and considerably more crowded than Elizabeth had expected.
Prue Duntze occupied the settee nearest the window, her round face animated with the particular enthusiasm she brought to any gathering. Georgiana sat opposite, attempting to pour tea while suppressing what appeared to be a smile. And wedged into the corner chair, clutching a well-worn volume to her chest like a prayer book, was Miss Entwhistle.
Elizabeth, in her distraction, had quite neglected to remember Miss Entwhistle’s inclusion.
“Mrs. Darcy!” Prue bounded up with more energy than the hour warranted. “We were just discussing Lady Renwick’s use of landscape. Miss Entwhistle has the most fascinating theory about the symbolic geography ofThe Midnight Tower.”
“The moors represent isolation,” Miss Entwhistle intoned, her thin face solemn. “The village represents community. And the great house represents?—”
“Everything else, presumably,” Elizabeth murmured, crossing to take her seat.
“Imprisonment,” Miss Entwhistle corrected, undeterred. “The heroine is trapped within its walls, surrounded by secrets she cannot penetrate. The locked cabinet in the library hauntsher dreams. The portrait of the hero’s mother watches her every movement. Even the long gallery seems to breathe with hidden purpose.”
Elizabeth’s hand paused over the teapot.
“A locked cabinet?” Georgiana asked, with the innocent curiosity of someone who had not spent the previous afternoon watching her brother guard one.
“In the library,” Miss Entwhistle confirmed, warming to her subject. “Lady Renwick describes it with such specificity—the carved oak, the brass fittings, and the way the heroine’s fingers tremble when she touches the lock. One cannot help but believe she knew such a cabinet intimately.”
“Fiction improved by geography,” Elizabeth replied, her tone light though her thoughts ran ahead. A locked cabinet. A long gallery. A portrait of the hero’s mother. Lady Renwick wrote with the precision of one who had wandered these very halls, observed these details, perhaps?—
“And necessary,” Miss Entwhistle corrected. “Lady Renwick writes from experience. I am convinced of it. The manor house inThe Ruined Chapelis clearly modeled on a great estate. The hero’s brooding silences, his midnight wanderings, his tortured devotion to a woman who cannot love him as he deserves?—”
“That sounds rather specific,” Elizabeth observed.
“Itisspecific. That is the genius of it.” Miss Entwhistle clutched her book more tightly. “Lady Renwick understood the male heart in ways most authoresses cannot. She wrote heroes who suffered beautifully, who loved without hope, who?—”
“Who bore a suspicious resemblance to someone she knew?” Prue interrupted, grinning.
Miss Entwhistle’s pale cheeks flushed. “I would not presume to speculate on Lady Renwick’s personal acquaintance.”
