2. Chapter Two #2
“A week too late is better than not at all.” Richard shifted the gun on his shoulder and exhaled.
“In any case, I do not expect much to concern me just now. I have been warned—unofficially, of course—that I am to be kept in London after Christmas. Reports. Committees. Endless questions from men who have never heard a cannon fired in anger.”
Darcy turned his head slightly. “And how do you receive the news?”
Richard considered it. “With gratitude,” he said at last. “And a certain amount of dread. I have grown used to mud and marching. Ink may prove the greater trial. Still, it will be agreeable to sleep in the same bed two nights running. And to know, more or less, where I am meant to be.”
“That seems a reasonable ambition,” Darcy said.
“So I thought. One does one’s part, and then one is set aside for a time. The machine turns. Others take the strain.” Richard glanced at him. “It is how things are meant to work, is it not?”
Darcy did not answer at once. He shaded his eyes again, though the light had not changed. “In general,” he said finally, “yes.”
Richard nodded, satisfied, and swung the gun back into a more comfortable position. “Come on, then. Let us go startle something innocent.”
Elizabeth stepped lightly along the lane, her boots striking the dew-softened earth with a muffled clop. Jane walked beside her, her bonnet ribbons dancing in the mild breeze, one hand tucked in her sister’s arm.
The countryside held that peculiar stillness which often preceded autumn storms—not ominous, but alert. Overhead, a handful of swallows circled in a frantic spiral. Too soon for their migration, Elizabeth thought absently. And no direction at all, as if they had forgot the way.
“Mrs Long says they have had no tea from London in three weeks,” Jane remarked. “She fears the ships are delayed again.”
“Or swallowed whole by the Channel,” Elizabeth replied. “Perhaps it is not French cannon but sea serpents that have put the merchantmen off their course.”
“Even so, Mama will grieve for her breakfast pot.”
“She might discover the merits of barley water instead. Surely an adventure for her palate.”
They reached the edge of Meryton and stepped aside for a cart rattling past, the driver muttering to his companion about the “scarcity of good timber” and “foreign distractions.” Elizabeth caught none of the particulars but felt the weight in his tone—the same weariness she had heard in Mr Bellweather’s voice last week when he spoke of rising prices for muslin.
At the market square, neighbours called greetings—Mrs Gould remarking on the fine weather, Mr Pratt tipping his hat with a cheerful observation about harvest yields.
Elizabeth returned their courtesies easily enough, yet some part of her remained half turned inward, tracing the flight of those restless swallows now darting above the apothecary’s roof.
“…so, I thought we might send her one of Mary’s essays,” Jane was saying, her tone tickling with amusement. “Though I am not certain our aunt will understand it any more than the last. Lizzy, are you even listening?”
Elizabeth blinked. Jane’s gentle look reminded her that she was not alone in her reverie.
“I was,” she said, though she had lost the thread.
Jane squeezed her arm. “You have been elsewhere all morning.”
“Only halfway elsewhere,” Elizabeth admitted. “The other half is firmly tethered to my boots. Though whether they tread on earth or air, I cannot always say.”
Jane shook her head and glanced at the bookseller’s shop. “Well, come on. We might as well do a little daydreaming together.”
They ducked into the bookshop, its dim interior cool and faintly scented of ink and dust. The shelves leaned at comfortable angles, and the floor creaked in protest of their tread. A cat slumbered on the windowsill, indifferent to commerce or conversation.
Elizabeth let her fingers drift over the cracked spines, drawn toward the history section out of long habit.
A slim volume on Anglo-Saxon etymology tempted her, followed by a curious pamphlet on the migration of swans in the Scottish isles.
She flipped a few pages, lingered on a marginal note written in a cramped feminine hand, then returned it to the shelf.
Nothing she needed, but much she wanted.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” Jane asked from the next row, where the bindings were more brightly coloured.
“Only a glimpse of distraction,” Elizabeth murmured. “Or perhaps a forgotten treasure.”
Her gaze caught on a battered book with a green leather binding and no title printed on the edge. The spine was sun-bleached, the gold lettering on the cover mostly worn away. She tilted it free, feeling the dry whisper of its weight shift in her hands.
“Not another ballad book,” Jane teased. “Last time, Papa put Mary up to setting one of them to music, and we heard nothing else for a week.”
“I shall only peek.”
The pages crackled faintly as she turned them. A ballad about St. Melangell—protector of hares. A sailor’s lament for a lost bride. A curious charm for mending broken ploughs (“Best read aloud,” someone had scribbled in pencil). She smiled. None of it useful, all of it delightful.
Confess thy sins by river’s side,
And turn thee not again;
For what the running waters take
The wise recall not then.
Another page, another curious entry:
When orchard wights abroad do roam,
Then bar both gate and door;
Set milk without upon the step,
And call the fruit no more.
Elizabeth gave a soft laugh under her breath. “Nonsense,” she whispered fondly.
Then, nestled in a corner of a brittle page, almost as an afterthought, her eyes caught a final fragment—scrawled in a different hand, darker ink, the lines cramped and slightly slanted:
Love vaunteth not, nor envieth,
Nor seeketh for her own;
It suffereth long,
it thinketh no ill,
Nor counteth what is done.
It beareth cold,
it hopeth still
When earthly light is low;
For what two hearts in troth do keep
No storm shall overthrow.
But what one heart would guard alone
And make its charge apart,
Shall wither though it yet endure—
For love requireth heart.
Her fingers paused on the edge of the page.
The rhythm tripped her for a moment—not in meaning, but in cadence. She found herself rereading the lines without knowing why, her attention snagging as if she had missed something just out of reach.
It was not recognition. Only a brief hesitation, the way a phrase sometimes lingered after sense had passed.
Jane peered over her shoulder. “That sounds like a hymn.”
“Or a children’s rhyme,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps it was once.”
She read it again, slower this time, as if something might rearrange itself into clarity. But it did not. It only lingered—the words slipping past her understanding but clinging to her thoughts.
Papa would have laughed at this one. Or pretended to—and then read it twice when no one was watching. She closed the book and set it back on the shelf, brushing a faint layer of dust from her fingertips.
On their way out, Mrs Brampton, the shopkeeper’s wife, reached out to adjust a stack of ledgers, then paused to smile at them.
“Storm’s coming, Miss Bennet,” she said lightly, glancing toward the cloudless window. “You wouldn’t know it to look, but I’ve seen the signs. The starlings were flying low this morning, and Mr Brampton’s knees have been aching something dreadful.”
Elizabeth returned her smile. “Then we shall defer to the true authorities.”
Mrs Brampton chuckled. “Oh, I don’t mind the rain. It’s the hush before it that sets one’s teeth on edge. Like the land is holding its breath.”
Elizabeth smiled politely. “Then it is fortunate we do not all listen too closely,” she said, and turned toward the door before the notion could take hold.
“Well,” the woman said, with a fond shake of her head, “you always were one for pretty notions.”
Back in the sunlight, Elizabeth glanced once over her shoulder. The swallows had vanished, and she paused, listening. Perhaps the weather truly was changing; birds noticed such things long before people did.
“Odd. It feels like stormy weather, but it does not look like it,” she murmured.
“What was that?” Jane asked.
“Nothing.” Elizabeth shook off the thought and tucked her arm through her sister’s again. “Only that I have the strongest craving for tea—and perhaps a proper cloudburst to make the afternoon interesting.”
The table was set with its usual care—silver gleaming, linen crisp, the low candlelight catching at the rim of Georgiana’s glass as she reached for the salt.
Across from her, Darcy carved a slice of roast and passed it without comment.
They dined as they often did—companionable, unhurried, the conversation light and occasional.
“I saw the pigeons today,” Georgiana said, selecting a spear of asparagus with careful grace. “Three of the white ones came back.”
Darcy looked up. “Only three?”
She nodded. “Tomkins thinks a hawk took the fourth.”
“A reasonable guess.”
“Perhaps.” She tilted her head. “But I do not know. They circled twice before landing—as if they were not quite certain this was the right place.”
He raised a brow, amused. “You think they have forgot where they live?”
“I think…” She smiled faintly. “They seemed a little agitated. Broken feathers, and they fought over their boxes. But that may only be my fancy.”
He glanced toward the window, where the last threads of twilight clung to the horizon. “Changing of the seasons. Everything is restless this time of year. Were you in the gardens long today?”
She nodded. “And I played after. A new piece. Something Miss Bingley sent me in the last parcel.”
Darcy dabbed at the corner of his mouth. “The Allegretto?”
“No. The other one.”
“The adagio?”
“The one in G minor.”
He gave a wry smile. “That explains the long faces among the roses.”
Georgiana laughed, quiet and genuine. “It’s meant to be cheerful, I think. But it feels like snow.”
Darcy only nodded. When supper ended, Georgiana moved to the pianoforte, lifting the lid as if she were peering in on an old friend. The notes fell clear and light, but somewhere in the middle registers they caught, briefly—a breath of hesitation in an otherwise faultless performance.
Darcy poured a modest glass of brandy and opened a letter from Bingley that had arrived that afternoon, letting the paper rest flat on the table beside his plate.
Georgiana was still at the pianoforte, her fingers drifting through a light Italian air—something crisp and cheerful, more habit than performance.
I have now nearly settled at Netherfield.
It is just as I left it before the contract was completed—though the west field was wetter than expected, and the kitchen garden overrun with herbs I do not remember seeing before.
Mrs Nicholls has taken it upon herself to introduce ‘seasonal flair’ into everything, so I’ve had three courses with mint this week, and I fear it’s turning me virtuous.
I trust you are well. Come visit if your affairs allow. I could use your opinion on the stables, and the company would not go amiss.
Darcy smiled faintly and refolded the letter. Bingley’s notions of “seasonal flair” had always bordered on botanical anarchy. He set the paper aside.
Georgiana, having finished the piece, trailed a hand along the keys and stood. “Do you ever feel,” she asked idly as she crossed to the sideboard, “that September has too many endings in it?”
He glanced over, brow raised.
She shrugged, pouring herself a small glass of watered wine. “It is nothing. Just a thought. The light changes. The trees shed. Everything pulls back.”
“Nature’s economy,” Darcy said. “It spends freely in spring, then counts its pennies in autumn.”
“Spoken like a true landowner.”
He inclined his head. “I am told the habit suits me.”
“Mrs Reynolds says the bees have grown sluggish. She blames the cooling weather. But I think they’re just tired of being bees.”
Darcy gave a short breath of amusement and reached for the letter still folded beside him.
“Bingley writes,” he said, as though it had only just occurred to him. “He asks if I will visit.”
She looked up from her cup. “Will you?”
“I expect I ought to. He grows restless without company.”
“You say that as if it is a failing.”
“It is a tendency.” Darcy’s mouth twitched, and he tapped the edge of the letter against his fingers. “I have not yet decided.”
“Then go,” she said, without hesitation. “Before the roads freeze and the excuses multiply.” She glanced at the dog lying at Darcy’s feet. “And take Brutus. He’s grown bored of my company and has taken to sulking under the piano.”
“I assumed that was commentary on your playing.”
She gave him a look. “You wound me.”
He did not smile, not exactly, but the corner of his mouth shifted in that rare, reluctant way it sometimes did.
“Good night, William.”
“Good night.”
She slipped from the room with a rustle of silk, and the house settled into stillness.
Darcy turned back to the letter, not to reread it, but to place a hand over it for a moment—grounding something that did not quite need grounding. Then he finished his brandy and rose to bank the fire.