She was still holding the journal when she noticed the folded paper on her writing desk.
It had not been there when she left for breakfast.
Elizabeth set aside the journal and crossed to the desk. Her hands remained steady—she would permit nothing less—though her heart thudded with a most undignified haste.
She unfolded the paper and read.
Elizabeth—
I go to London on matters concerning Thomas. I expect to return within the week, though I will send word if circumstances require longer.
Mrs. Reynolds has my instructions. Pemberley is yours—not merely in my absence, but always. I meant what I said.
I will not write what I wish to write. But I would have you know that nothing has changed for me. Nothing will.
Your servant,
Darcy
She read it several times, her eyes swelling with that affliction she did not wish to name, leaking perhaps from the spring weather. What he meant… he still meant it, and he had said it many times. Whatever else—whatever secrets, whatever complications—he loved her.
Nothing has changed for me. Nothing will.
She folded the note and pressed it to her heart, sighing. Why must he be so confounding? Yet she dared not hope, for sheknew his heart better than he did himself. Lady Amelia was lost to him, and he sought only to mend the vacancy.
She was convenient and acceptable, and so he had talked himself into this bind.
“Oh, Darcy.” She opened the drawer of her writing desk—the one with the lock Darcy had given her, the lock she had thought so odd at the time—and placed the note inside, beside the journal with its foolish observations and the hidden pouch with the ring she ought to discard—a double-edged sword, leverage or ruin, she did not know.
And then she returned to Lady Anne’s journal, searching for the boy who had become the man she feared, while the morning light strengthened and the great house stirred around her, and her husband rode toward London to find the brother who might destroy them both.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
BUILDING THE HOUSE
Elizabeth allowedThomas’s sticky hand to commandeer her own as he tugged her toward the kitchen garden, where she paused, blinking at the spectacle that awaited.
The snails, it appeared, had multiplied with the enthusiasm of a vicar’s family.
The damp patch beneath the rhubarb had transformed itself from a modest hamlet into a thriving snail metropolis. The larger citizens clambered over their juniors, eye stalks extended in hopeful pursuit of sunlight, while Thomas, undeterred, upended a vase in search of further inhabitants.
“Sidney!” Thomas plucked the largest one, turning it upside down. “Sidney has babies.”
The snail retreated into its shell. Apparently, Sidney, who was now a mother, had produced what appeared to be several dozen offspring, each no larger than a peppercorn.
“Sidney, Mamma now!” Thomas crouched beside the rhubarb, his face alight with the wonder of a naturalist beholding a new species. “Lots and lots of babies!”
“So I see.” Elizabeth knelt beside him, heedless of the damp seeping through her morning dress. “Sidney has been busy.”
“Good Mamma.” Thomas poked gently at the largest snail, who had still not emerged from her shell. “Like Lizba.”
Elizabeth’s throat caught at a sentiment she had not anticipated—that a two-year-old’s observation should touch her with such force.
“Yes,” she managed. “Like Lizba.”
Thomas pointed at the tinier snails. “One, three, four, six, seven!” And then he began again at “one.”
Harley, meanwhile, devoted his considerable energies to the less fragrant attractions of kitchen scraps and discarded bedding, his ears trailing in dignified resignation.
