Chapter Thirteen #2
“Mrs Hadley has gone up,” Hadley said, following his glance. “My wife will tell you what is needed.”
Darcy nodded, and they came on toward the house through the thinning cold.
At the door Hadley re-set the spade upon his shoulder. “I will look first at the lower carrier before dinner. If Ashby is there, I shall set him to measuring stone.”
“Do so.”
Hadley gave him one of his brief, unceremonious nods and went toward the yard, leaving Darcy to the steps.
Inside, the hall retained the morning’s cold in the flags.
Mrs Reeves came to the dining-room door with a list in hand and began, without preamble, to report broth, mutton, linen, and that Miss Darcy had eaten half an egg and asked the time twice, which Mrs Reeves regarded as improvement because it meant the day had grown long enough to measure.
“And Miss Bennet?” Darcy asked.
“Better today,” said Mrs Reeves. “Not fit to be moved, and Mrs Hadley says she is not to try it. But she has been more alert. Asked for a book, objected to the broth, and informed Mrs Hadley that the ceiling has become intolerably familiar. Mrs Marsden is with her. Nan has been up and down with notes for Miss Darcy all morning. No peace now they have discovered one another on paper.”
Darcy took the list, or rather she extended it as though he were another item requiring management. “I need tea and some supper sent to the study. I have several letters to write for London.”
“I expected so. Hadley’s been at you, I see.” She glanced at his boots. “You have mud all over your breeches and the floor, sir.”
“So I do.”
“There is no remedy for the first but soap. The second may be aided by changing your boots before going upstairs.”
He might, in another house, have objected to being ordered out of his own hall by his cook. At Merebank, the absurdity had been overtaken some days ago by utility. He obeyed.
Georgiana was asleep when he entered, not deeply but in the transparent afternoon doze of the convalescent.
Nan sat by the hearth mending a cuff. The second book missing from the side table showed the note traffic had borne fruit.
Georgiana’s hand rested outside the coverlet, fingers slightly curled, no longer swollen as a week ago though still stiff at the knuckles.
Nan rose.
“Do not wake her,” Darcy said quietly.
“I had not meant to. She asked three times whether Miss Bennet liked the book. Then fell asleep before I wrote down the answer.”
“Did Miss Bennet like it?”
Nan’s solemn face altered by a degree toward pleasure.
“She sent word that Miss Darcy ought to choose the book she most wished another to read, which is not the same as asking for the best book in the room. I remembered that because it sounded clever. Miss Darcy laughed, sir. Not much, but she did.”
Darcy looked at his sister. Georgiana laughing had become in recent months a small domestic miracle no one spoke of too quickly.
“Very good,” he said.
He laid one hand briefly against the bedpost rather than risk waking her by touching the coverlet. Then he went out and closed the door softly.
At the drawing-room threshold, he paused.
The room was warmer than the hall and brighter than the study, with pale winter sun fell through the south window in a long strip across the carpet.
Mrs Marsden sat at a small table near the fire with a workbasket in her lap, though he doubted she had done more than sort the silks.
Miss Bennet had a shawl over the blankets and a book open upon the coverlet.
She looked up at the sound of his step. Her eyes still looked dull from pain and the lingering effects of laudanum.
There was strain at her mouth after too long awake, and one leg lay raised under its careful burden of blankets and pillows, still too injured to be forgotten for so much as an instant.
Yet the intelligence in her face was wholly itself.
That was what struck him each time. Not merely that she lived, though only days ago that had not been secure. When she looked at him, he had the sense of being met rather than merely observed.
“Mr Darcy,” she said. Her eye dropped to the sealed letters in his hand. “You have been writing orders. I know the expression. My father wore it when he had done something to disoblige another and gratify himself. I hope your steward deserves disobliging.”
Mrs Marsden made a small sound over her sewing, half warning and half apology. Darcy, who had spent the last quarter hour among mud, unpaid wages, and the spectral company of Edmund’s lies and Wickham's worthlessness, found in himself an absurd inclination toward laughter.
“He is dead.”
Miss Bennet turned a page with care. “Then he may bear it better than most.”
The answer was so exactly of her kind that it relieved him more than it ought. Opposition with spirit had been missing from the house before she came. He had not known the want of it until now.
Mrs Marsden looked up then, her attention settling first on the mud on his trousers. “You have been out with the drowner, I think.”
“I have.” Darcy glanced down. The evidence was plain enough.
“Then he has shown you the meadows in earnest.”
“He has shown me chiefly that my cousin was careless, and that neglect is always dearer than repair.”
Miss Bennet moved her book a little upon the coverlet. “What is a drowner, exactly? I have heard the word several times and can make nothing respectable of it.”
Mrs Marsden answered before he could. “Water meadows, Lizzy. Channels, sluices, drains. Men like Mr Hadley keep the fields from going wrong in winter and feed right in spring. We had nothing of the sort in Hertfordshire.”
Miss Bennet’s hand went still upon the page, and her eyes flashed suddenly to his face. It was no more than that—a flicker of… alarm? And it passed quickly. Mrs Marsden did not even appear to notice it.
Yet Darcy saw, in the sharpened look Miss Bennet turned upon her sister, something very like… like terror. Hertfordshire. The word had been innocently spoken and not innocently heard. He stored that away without examining it.
“Then I owe Mr Hadley an apology,” Miss Bennet said, too lightly. “I had imagined a figure out of murder ballads.”
“No,” said Darcy. “Only a man with a spade and a profound contempt for gentlemen.”
Mrs Marsden smiled at her work. “Then he is well suited to the district.”
Darcy crossed to the mantel and set the letters there while he bent to stoke the fire. Up close, he saw that the book in Miss Bennet’s hand was one of Georgiana’s. The sight made the room feel at once stranger and more at peace.
Miss Bennet had tilted her head to glance upward. “Will the roof hold?”
He took an instant to place the question, until her eyes moved to the pale water-mark above the far wall where the earlier leak had dried.
“Ashby says yes. With work.”
“Then I am glad. I have lately become attached to this ceiling, though acquaintance has not improved its appearance.” Her voice was light, but the words were not.
Darcy met her eyes and, to his discomfort, believed she meant them. “As am I,” he said.
Something altered in her face then and was smoothed away at once.
He ought to have spoken of some proper matter to Mrs Marsden about Miss Bennet’s comfort, to Norton about the mail, to Mrs Reeves about stocking the larder.
Instead, he stood too long in the middle of the room with sealed letters cooling on the mantel, Mrs Marsden at her sewing, and Miss Bennet watching him with one brow lifting faintly.
He collected the letters once more and said the first practical thing. “Norton must ride within the hour. If either of you has a note for the village or the post, send it now.”
“Oh, that is very kind,” said Mrs Marsden. “I started a letter this morning for—”
“Nothing for the post,” Miss Bennet interrupted. “Thank you.”
Mrs Marsden’s hand stilled on her sewing and she regarded her sister with a quizzical look. Darcy did not mean to stay for whatever explanation would be required.
“Well. I only came to look in. I beg you will excuse me.” He bowed shortly to each one, then went out. In the passage, with the door shut behind him and the voices within reduced again to domestic quiet, he stood with the letters in his hand.
Norton found him and took the letters without remark. Darcy returned to the study, sat, and looked for several minutes at the blank blotter where the instructions had been.
The commitment was made. The money would be spent. The men paid. The channels cleared if labour and weather allowed. There was satisfaction in that.
There was also unease of another sort, and he had not yet determined which disturbed him more—the valley depending upon him in earnest, or the possibility he had already begun to think far too often upon Miss Bennet.