Chapter Two #2
The room tilted again, and she pressed her cheek against the bedpost, closing her eyes and focusing on breathing. In and out, slow and steady, though each breath felt insufficient in the thick air. The fire roared, sending waves of heat that made her nightdress cling to her back with perspiration.
Gradually, her legs steadied beneath her. Not strong by any measure, but perhaps capable of supporting her if she moved carefully. Elizabeth loosened her death grip on the bedpost fractionally, testing her balance. Her knees shook but held.
The window seemed impossibly distant, though it couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet away. Between her and that goal lay a vast expanse of polished floor, dotted with items of furniture that might serve as waypoints if she could reach them.
Elizabeth took a step, then another. Her feet dragged across the wood, unable to lift properly, making a soft shuffling sound. She had to concentrate on each movement, had to will each leg to move in turn, as though learning to walk anew.
The dressing table stood perhaps six feet away. She focused on it, on the promise of support its solid structure offered, and shuffled forward. Three steps. Four. Her vision greyed at the edges, and she had to stop, swaying, one hand stretched out grasping at empty air.
The greyness receded slowly. Elizabeth moved forward again, and her outstretched fingers finally found the table’s edge. She grasped it with both hands, leaning heavily, sending several bottles and jars sliding across the polished wood with soft clicks.
She stood there, bent over the table, breathing hard and trembling. The window was closer now, perhaps eight feet distant, but those eight feet might as well have been eight miles for all the strength she had remaining.
But there was a chair near the window, a delicate thing with curved gilt legs and embroidered cushions. If she could reach that, she could rest before attempting the final push to the window itself.
Elizabeth released the dressing table with one hand, keeping the other braced for support, and reached toward the chair. Too far. She would have to cross the gap between them without support, trusting her legs to hold her for those few critical steps.
She counted to three, gathering what remained of her will, and pushed off. Her legs moved beneath her, shuffling, dragging, but moving. Her vision swam, and she staggered sideways, off balance, her arms pinwheeling.
Her hip struck the chair, sending pain shooting through her side but providing the support she desperately needed.
Elizabeth grabbed the chair back with both hands, her weight nearly overturning it before she managed to steady herself.
She stood there, bent over the chair, gasping and shaking, soaked through with sweat.
But she was close now. So close. The window stood directly before her, its heavy curtains pulled nearly closed but allowing thin slices of light through the gaps. Beyond that window lay answers, or at least understanding of where she’d been brought.
Elizabeth straightened slowly, using the chair back for support, and reached for the window frame. Her fingers found the curtain’s edge and pulled it aside, sending dust motes dancing in the sudden shaft of light. The brightness hurt her eyes, making them water, but she forced them to remain open.
The latch proved difficult to manage. Her fingers, weak and trembling, fumbled with the mechanism, unable to grip properly.
She tried again, pressing her thumb against the lever while her fingers worked at the catch.
Nothing. A third attempt, this time using both hands, putting her full concentration into the simple act of opening a window.
Finally, the latch gave way, and Elizabeth nearly sobbed with relief. She pushed at the casement, and it swung outward on well-oiled hinges, letting in a rush of cool spring air that felt like salvation.
Elizabeth breathed deeply, letting the fresh air fill her lungs, clearing away some of the oppressive heat. The breeze touched her sweat-dampened skin, cooling it, bringing with it the scents of growing things and damp earth. She could have wept at the simple pleasure of it.
When she could breathe without gasping, when the fresh air had cleared some of the fog from her thoughts, Elizabeth looked down at the grounds below.
Manicured lawns stretched in precise geometric patterns, edged by carefully trimmed hedges. Gravel paths wound between cultivated flower beds where early spring blooms nodded in the breeze. In the distance, she could see the grove of ancient oaks she’d walked through several times.
This was unmistakably Rosings Park. She was at Lady Catherine’s estate, in what looked to be a guest room of some consequence given the chamber’s grandeur.
Elizabeth’s confusion deepened into something approaching alarm.
Why had she been brought here? The parsonage was comfortable, adequate for caring for someone taken ill.
Charlotte would have been perfectly capable of nursing her, and Mr. Collins, for all his ridiculousness, would certainly have sent for a physician if needed.
She tried to recall more details from her illness. The headache, the dizziness, Charlotte helping her upstairs. And before that, the tea with Anne and Mrs. Jenkinson. Anne’s strange, intense attention. The way Anne had poured her tea and watched her drink it with that almost eager look.
The suspicion she’d had in those final conscious moments returned with renewed force. But if Anne had poisoned her, surely bringing Elizabeth to Rosings made no sense. Why bring her victim to her own home, where her actions might be discovered?
The fresh air continued to revive her somewhat, though her legs still trembled with the effort of standing. Elizabeth gripped the window frame with both hands, staring down at the familiar grounds, trying to piece together a sequence of events that made sense.
How long had she been unconscious? It must have been at least overnight, possibly longer. The sun’s angle suggested mid-morning, but which day? The day after she’d taken ill? Or longer?
She needed to find someone, needed to ask questions and receive answers. But she could barely stand, could hardly make it across a room without collapsing. The thought of attempting to reach the door, of navigating hallways in search of help, seemed impossible.
Elizabeth looked down at her hands gripping the window frame and froze. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
The hands on the window frame were not her own.
The thought arrived with peculiar detachment, observation without comprehension, as though her mind refused to process what her eyes showed her.
These hands were too thin, the fingers too delicate, the knuckles too prominent beneath translucent skin.
Elizabeth’s hands were not beautiful, but they were strong, capable, with short practical nails.
These hands looked as though they might snap like twigs.
She lifted one hand from the frame, holding it before her face, turning it slowly. The movement felt foreign, the hand responding to her commands but seeming disconnected from her body. The nails were longer than she kept hers, shaped and buffed to a shine she never bothered with.
Elizabeth told herself it was the illness. The lingering effects were distorting her perception, making familiar things appear strange. Or perhaps the weakness had affected her vision, causing some distortion that made her own hands look unfamiliar.
But even as she formed these rational explanations, some deeper part of her recognised them as lies. Her hands looked wrong because they were wrong. Because they were not hers.
The thought was absurd. Impossible. Hands could not simply change, could not transform into someone else’s while one lay unconscious. Yet there they were, undeniably different, undeniably strange, moving when she willed them to move but belonging to someone else.
The mirror. Elizabeth’s gaze jerked to the large ornate mirror across the room, the one she’d noticed earlier in her survey of the chamber. Its gilded frame gleamed in the light from the window, but the angle was wrong from where she stood; only the crimson bed hangings showed in the reflection.
She needed to see. Needed to know. Though every instinct screamed at her to look away, to return to bed and dismiss this strangeness as a fever-dream, Elizabeth released the window frame and turned toward the mirror.
Her legs nearly buckled immediately. She had to grab the window frame again, steadying herself, before attempting the journey. The mirror stood perhaps ten feet away, across that expanse of polished floor that had already proven so difficult to traverse. But she had to reach it. Had to see.
Elizabeth pushed off from the window, her legs shaking violently.
She made it two steps before having to grab the chair back for support.
Three more shuffling steps brought her to the dressing table, where she leaned heavily, gasping.
The mirror was closer now, only a few feet distant, though the angle was still wrong for her to see her reflection.
She circled the dressing table, one hand trailing along its edge for support, and straightened as much as her weakened body would allow. The mirror stood directly before her now, its surface catching the light from the window behind her.
The face looking back at her was not her own.
Elizabeth stared at the reflection, her mind unable to reconcile what her eyes showed her.
The face in the mirror was pale, almost bloodless, with hollow cheeks and prominent cheekbones.
The hair, instead of Elizabeth’s long dark curls, was cropped short, barely brushing the collar, giving the face a severe, almost masculine cast.
But it was the eyes that made recognition impossible to deny. Pale eyes, washed out and colourless, set in dark hollows that spoke of chronic illness. Anne de Bourgh’s eyes. Anne de Bourgh’s face.