Page 103 of The Long Road Back to Yesterday

Jim looked beyond him at the others. “You brought company.”

“Mr. Darcy, his sister Miss Darcy, and Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”

Jim inclined his head. “What brings you here?”

“Arbor Low,” Dr. Wynn said.

Jim's expression closed.

“I have nothing to say about Arbor Low.”

“You told me once that you wished someone would believe you before you died.”

“I was younger then and had not yet acquired wisdom.”

“You were seventy-three.”

Jim grunted.

“Mr. Fletcher, I have spent months studying the old stories and accounts of Arbor Low. I do not know what happened to you, but I promise I will not judge you.”

“You believe in fairies, do you, missy?”

“No, sir, but I have begun to believe that people sometimes call something a fairy story because they have no better explanation for what happened.”

Jim considered Darcy and Georgiana.

“And them?”

Mr. Darcy answered. “We have found enough evidence to know that unexplained events have occurred at Arbor Low.”

Jim studied the three of them before stepping aside.

“You had better come in, then.”

His cottage contained little beyond what was necessary for comfort. Jim took a chair beside the hearth and directed his visitors toward the others.

Dr. Wynn remained near the mantel. “You may as well tell it from the beginning.”

Jim rubbed one hand over his knee.

“It happened in 1748. I was seventeen. My closest friend was Samuel Grange.”

He looked toward the fire.

“Sam's father farmed land outside Monyash. It was not a grand farm, but it had belonged to the family for generations, and everyone expected Sam would farm it after his father. Mr. Grange liked drink too much, and when he drank, he liked cards. Sam spent years dragging him home from taverns before he lost more than the family could afford.”

Jim paused.

“Then on November fifteenth, his father went into Lambton and came home having lost the farm at cards. By morning everyone knew. Sam's mother wept, and his father sat at the kitchen table looking as though he wished the earth would open beneath him.”

Elizabeth thought of Longbourn and understood something of what Samuel Grange must have felt.

“They had a month before they would be forced out. Sam came to me the next day and told me he meant to change what had happened. I thought he meant to find money somehow. Work for it, borrow it, steal it if desperation drove him far enough. Instead, he started talking about Arbor Low.”

Elizabeth leaned forward.

“We learned the stories when we were boys. Everyone did. Never go near the stones at sunset on the twenty-first of December. Strange folk were said to walk there when the veil grew thin. A man might step away from this world and return somewhere he had no business being.”