Chapter Thirty
Everything was wrong. Anne knew this before she opened her eyes properly, before full consciousness returned with its crushing weight. Her lungs felt like they were wrapped in wet cloth, each breath requiring conscious effort, each inhalation bringing less air than her body needed.
No.
The denial formed without words, a primal rejection of what her senses were reporting.
Anne tried to lift her hand and found it trembling, the fingers thin as twigs and just as fragile.
She knew these hands. Had lived with them for years of slowly increasing weakness, watching them grow more transparent with each passing season until the veins showed blue-green beneath skin like tissue paper.
These were her hands, her cursed, failing hands, and they should not exist anymore because she had escaped this body, had traded it for something better, something strong and whole.
But Elizabeth Bennet had stolen it back.
Rage flooded through her with force that made her lungs spasm, coughing wracking her chest until she tasted copper.
Anne pushed herself upright through sheer force of will, ignoring the way her muscles screamed protest at the movement.
The room swam around her, shadows lengthening across walls papered in pale green silk.
A fire burned in the grate, its warmth not quite reaching the bed where she lay surrounded by pillows arranged to support her in the half-sitting position that made breathing marginally easier.
How had Elizabeth done it? How had she possibly obtained the ingredients necessary for reversal?
Anne’s mind raced through possibilities.
The ambergris could be sourced through apothecaries if one knew what to ask for, though most would not stock it due to expense.
But the bezoar stone? Genuine bezoar stones were nearly impossible to acquire in England.
They appeared in collections occasionally, brought back by diplomats or merchants who understood their medicinal value, but such stones were not for sale.
Not to women like Elizabeth Bennet who had no connexions in such circles, and no freedom to move about them anyway, trapped beneath Lady Catherine’s benevolent eye as she should have been.
Unless Jane had helped her. Unless that insipid elder sister with her angelic face and hidden spine of steel had somehow convinced someone to provide the bezoar despite its rarity and value.
The thought made Anne’s hands clench in the bedsheets, her nails catching in fine linen.
She had underestimated Jane Bennet. Had dismissed her as merely pretty, merely kind, too gentle to pose any real threat, too stupid to even notice that her sister had been replaced by an impostor.
But Jane’s appearance at Hunsford had not been the coincidence she had pretended, Anne realised now.
Some how, some way, Elizabeth had summoned her sister and convinced her of the truth.
Jane must have moved heaven and earth to procure those ingredients, must have brewed the reversal potion herself following instructions in the grimoire that Anne had not had an opportunity to remove from Rosings.
Stupid. She had been stupid to leave the grimoire where it could be found, to assume no one would believe Elizabeth’s impossible story, to think her victory was complete simply because she had spoken vows and signed documents in Elizabeth’s stolen hand.
Anne threw the nearest object within reach, a crystal glass half-filled with water.
It flew across the room with less force than she intended, her weak arm unable to achieve the satisfying violence she craved.
The glass struck the wall and shattered, water spreading across silk paper in a dark stain that would probably ruin the expensive covering. Good. Let them see her rage.
A little shriek alerted Anne that she was not alone, and she turned her head to find a maid sitting on the other side of the bed, mending in her hands.
The girl’s eyes were wide, her gaze moving from the shattered crystal to Anne with fear.
The maid was afraid of her. Thought her dangerous or mad or both.
Perhaps they all thought that now. Perhaps Elizabeth had told them some story about Anne’s supposed instability, had painted her as a madwoman whose ravings should be dismissed.
She had vague recollections of waking earlier to see Jane’s triumphant face above her, of screaming herself hoarse with horror until a doctor was summoned to give her a sedative.
But screaming again would only confirm their suspicions. Anne forced her features into something approximating composure, her voice emerging with command that her body could not support.
“Send me Mrs. Jenkinson,” she ordered, each word requiring careful modulation to avoid the breathlessness that plagued her. “And get out.”
The maid bobbed something that might have been a curtsy and fled.
Anne let herself slump back against the pillows, her brief show of strength leaving her exhausted.
This body. This useless, failing, treacherous body that had been her prison.
She had escaped it, had lived those perfect days in Elizabeth’s strong form, had felt what it meant to breathe easily and walk without assistance and exist in the world without constant awareness of her own fragility.
She had never been so happy in her life.
And now she was trapped again. But not permanently.
Not if she could reach Mrs. Jenkinson, could convince her devoted companion to help brew another potion.
The grimoire was lost, presumably in Elizabeth or Jane’s possession now.
But Anne remembered the ingredients, could reconstruct the potion with time and resources.
It would take weeks, perhaps months to gather everything.
And this time she would be more careful, would ensure the target was properly isolated before she struck.
Perhaps not Elizabeth again. Elizabeth would never allow Anne under the same roof as her again, much though she hungered to take revenge.
But there were many other healthy young women in England, other bodies that could be taken and would do well enough.
Forever, perhaps, it occurred to her. There was no reason why she should not simply discard each body as it began to fail and take another, younger, stronger.
She simply needed Mrs. Jenkinson’s help to begin.
Anne waited, her breathing gradually settling into the shallow pattern that represented her body’s best effort.
Mrs. Jenkinson had been with her since childhood, was devoted to her.
She understood better than anyone what Anne had suffered, what she deserved as compensation for a life half-lived in sickrooms and invalid chairs.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, measured and male. Too heavy for Mrs. Jenkinson’s slight frame. Anne’s chest tightened with something beyond her usual breathlessness as the door opened and Colonel Fitzwilliam entered instead of her companion.
He closed the door behind him with deliberate care, the soft click of the latch somehow more ominous than if he had slammed it.
His face showed none of its usual easy charm.
Instead he looked grave and knowing, his eyes meeting hers with an expression that made Anne’s stomach drop despite the rage still simmering beneath her ribs.
He knew.
Colonel Fitzwilliam moved further into the room but did not sit, did not approach the bed. He simply stood at a distance that suggested formality rather than familial warmth, his posture that of an officer delivering unpleasant orders.
Anne opened her mouth to speak, to ask for Mrs. Jenkinson again, to attempt whatever performance might salvage this situation.
But Fitzwilliam raised one hand in a gesture that cut off her words before they could form, and something in that simple movement told Anne that performance would be useless now.
The silence stretched between them, heavy with everything unspoken.
Anne’s hands twisted in the bedsheets, her heart hammering against her ribs.
This was wrong. This was all wrong. She was supposed to be triumphant now, supposed to be Mrs. Darcy settling into her new life, not trapped in this failing body facing her cousin’s judgement.
But Fitzwilliam’s expression showed no sympathy, no uncertainty. Only grim determination and something that looked uncomfortably like pity mixed with disgust.
“Mrs. Jenkinson will not be coming,” Fitzwilliam said, his voice carrying none of the warmth it had always held when he spoke to Anne. “She has been dismissed from my aunt’s service.”
Anne felt the words strike her like physical blows, each syllable landing with precision. She opened her mouth, some protest forming. But Fitzwilliam was not finished.
“She was found to have been administering dangerous concentrations of laudanum and other substances to you,” he continued, his tone remaining level.
“My mother examined the bottles herself and found doses that would have rendered a healthy adult insensible. Lady Catherine has agreed that such behaviour cannot be tolerated, regardless of Mrs. Jenkinson’s claimed devotion to your welfare. ”
That was clever, Anne had to admit even through her rising panic. They were using the tonics Mrs. Jenkinson would have administered to keep Elizabeth docile and controllable as justification for the companion’s removal.
“That is absurd,” Anne managed, forcing her voice to remain steady despite the way her lungs protested each word. “Mrs. Jenkinson was following instructions. My mother’s instructions, approved by physicians who understand my delicate constitution.”