Chapter Fifteen
The door to Anne’s chamber closed behind Elizabeth with a soft click that seemed unnaturally loud in the silence.
She stood for a moment with her back pressed against the wood, listening intently for any sound of footsteps in the corridor beyond.
Mrs. Jenkinson might come up at any moment, might decide that she required supervision despite Lady Catherine’s insistence on being entertained.
But the passage remained quiet, only the distant murmur of voices from below stairs and the settling creaks of an old house preparing for night.
Elizabeth pushed herself away from the door and crossed the room with unsteady steps, her borrowed legs trembling with exhaustion. Tonight, for the first time since waking in this nightmare, she had something. Jane was here. Not at her side, not yet, but close enough that hope felt almost tangible.
And she had the journal.
Elizabeth knelt beside the bed with effort, her weak knees protesting the movement.
She reached beneath the mattress, her fingers searching through the space between feather tick and bed frame until they encountered the leather binding she had hidden there.
The journal felt heavier than she remembered as she pulled it free, its weight substantial in her frail hands.
Dark brown leather, worn smooth at the edges from years of handling, with no title or decoration to indicate its contents save the de Bourgh family crest embossed on the lower corner.
Someone glancing over it would think it an accounts book or personal diary, nothing worthy of particular notice.
Elizabeth climbed onto the bed and arranged herself against the pillows, propping the journal on her lap.
Her lungs laboured with even this small exertion, Anne’s damaged chest rising and falling with shallow breaths that never quite satisfied.
She positioned the candlestick on the bedside table, angling it to cast the most light possible across the pages, then opened the journal.
Anne’s handwriting sprawled across the first page in cramped, dense lines that made Elizabeth’s eyes ache trying to decipher them.
The script was small, precise, each letter formed with care despite the overall impression of words crowded together as though space were precious.
Elizabeth squinted in the candlelight, tracing the first entry with one finger.
A recipe. That much was clear from the format, ingredients listed in careful order followed by instructions for preparation.
But the components themselves made Elizabeth’s brow furrow in confusion.
Rose petals dried under a full moon. Spring water collected at dawn.
Honey from bees that had fed only on lavender.
Her first instinct was to dismiss it as fanciful nonsense, the sort of superstitious remedies country folk might trade among themselves without any real effect.
But Anne had not collected superstitious remedies. Anne had practiced witchcraft. Had successfully swapped their bodies using magic that Elizabeth had experienced first-hand. These recipes were not harmless folk wisdom. They were real.
Elizabeth turned the page, finding another recipe.
Then another. Each one detailed preparations and ingredients that grew progressively stranger.
Powdered moonstone. The rendered fat of a black cat.
Hair from a virgin bride. Some entries included notes in the margins, observations about potency or effectiveness that suggested Anne had tested these formulations, had used them for purposes Elizabeth could only guess at.
Her finger paused on an entry near the middle of the journal.
The ingredients were less exotic than some of the others but still unusual.
Rose petals again, but these preserved in brandy.
Crushed pearls mixed with honey. Extract of damask rose.
Vervain gathered at midnight. And at the bottom, in slightly larger script as though Anne had wanted to emphasise its importance: One drop of blood from each party, mixed under a new moon.
Elizabeth read the instructions that followed, her heart beginning to hammer against her ribs. A potion to inspire lasting devotion. To make the drinker unable to consider any other romantic attachment. To bind their affections completely to the one who had administered it.
A love potion.
Her eyes dropped to the margin note, written in Anne’s hand but with obvious excitement that made the letters slightly less controlled. “This one works,” it read, the third word highlighted by three emphatic underscores. “Mother’s never looked at anyone else. Use on Darcy once married!”
Elizabeth stared at the words, her mind refusing to process their meaning even as understanding crashed over her with horrible certainty.
Mother’s never looked at anyone else. Lady Catherine.
Proud, domineering Lady Catherine de Bourgh, daughter of an earl, who had married Sir Lewis de Bourgh despite his being beneath her in station and consequence.
The journal trembled in Elizabeth’s grasp as pieces clicked into place with sickening clarity.
Lady Catherine had been a great beauty in her youth, by all accounts.
Had possessed fortune and breeding that should have secured her a match among the highest circles of society.
Yet she had married a gentleman whose family, while respectable, could not approach the distinction of her own, despite the wealth of Rosings Park.
Elizabeth had always assumed it had been a love match.
That Lady Catherine’s pride and conviction in her own superiority had developed later, perhaps even after her husband’s passing.
But what if it had not been choice at all?
What if Sir Lewis de Bourgh had used this same potion to secure the hand of a woman who would never have looked at him otherwise?
The implications made Elizabeth’s stomach turn.
Lady Catherine bound by magical compulsion to a man she might never have chosen freely.
Devoted to him completely, unable even to consider that her affections had been artificially created rather than naturally developed.
And now her daughter planned to do the same thing to Darcy.
To trap him with the same spell that had ensnared Lady Catherine, to ensure his devotion through magical manipulation rather than genuine feeling.
Elizabeth’s hands clenched around the journal’s leather binding, her knuckles white with the force of her grip.
The candle flame wavered in a draft she could not feel, making shadows dance across the pages and Anne’s cramped handwriting seem to writhe like living things.
She wanted to throw the journal across the room, wanted to tear out these pages and burn them so that no one could ever use such wicked magic again.
But she needed this journal. Needed the recipes it contained, particularly the one Anne had used to swap their bodies.
Without that knowledge, Elizabeth had no hope of reversing what had been done to her.
She forced herself to breathe slowly despite the tightness in her chest, forced her hands to relax their grip before she damaged the pages she needed to study.
How long had Anne been planning this? The journal covered years, the earlier recipes having dates at the top almost a decade old.
Anne had been studying magic, collecting recipes, preparing for this scheme since long before Elizabeth had even met Darcy.
Perhaps since before Darcy himself had come of age.
The idea of such patient, calculated wickedness made Elizabeth’s skin crawl.
Anne had spent years learning the craft her father had taught her, years gathering rare ingredients and testing formulations, years waiting for the right opportunity.
For a woman whom Darcy might consider marrying, perhaps, so that Anne could steal her body and her life.
And Elizabeth had arrived at Hunsford completely ignorant, vulnerable in ways she could never have anticipated.
She turned another page, then another, searching now with desperate urgency.
The body-swap potion had to be here somewhere.
Had to be recorded among these recipes for love potions and devotion draughts and all the other violations Anne had planned.
Elizabeth’s eyes strained in the candlelight, Anne’s weak vision making the small script even harder to decipher.
But she continued turning pages, scanning ingredients and instructions with growing desperation.
She found it near the end of the journal, on a page that showed signs of having been consulted frequently. The paper was slightly more worn there, the edges softened from repeated handling, and small spatters of what looked like old candle wax dotted the margins.
Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat as she read the title written in Anne’s careful hand: “A Draught for the Exchange of Forms.”
Elizabeth’s lips moved silently as she read words that might as well have been a death sentence.
Ambergris braised in honey. She had heard of ambergris, knew it came from whales and was used to make expensive perfumes.
Spirits of wine well-rectified. Pearl powder.
Saffron. Each component more exotic and expensive than the last, the sort of ingredients that appeared in apothecaries’ most expensive preparations, if they appeared at all.
“Ambergris braised in honey,” Elizabeth whispered into the silence of Anne’s chamber, her voice emerging thin and shaking. “Spirits of wine well-rectified, pearl powder, saffron, grains of paradise, lemon balm and lavender water.”
The words felt strange in her mouth, foreign and impossible. Grains of paradise she had never even heard of.
Elizabeth’s eyes continued down the page, her heart sinking further with each line. “A lock of cut hair of both parties. A draught for each, taken in the same hour.”