3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Elizabeth turned the corner of the lane with Charlotte, the hem of her walking dress brushing through damp grass and wild thyme.
The sun had not yet burned off the silver in the hedgerows, and the morning air clung to her skin in a way that felt oddly personal, as though it remembered something she had forgotten.
“I do think Mama is near to despair,” she said. “Lydia accused Kitty of stealing her bonnet, and then Kitty threatened to dip Lydia’s hair ribbons in beet juice. Jane tried to mediate and was accused of ‘always taking sides.’ You may imagine the outcome.”
“I can,” Charlotte said drily. “I have dined with you all more than once.”
Elizabeth smiled but did not laugh. A pair of crows passed overhead, their wings silent as they turned toward the east wood. She paused and craned her neck to watch them.
“I suppose,” Charlotte continued, “you will never escape your mother’s campaign. But if she begins speaking of eligible clerks and shopkeepers again, I may intervene on your behalf out of sheer mercy.”
Elizabeth made a noncommittal sound. Her attention had shifted to a cluster of hawthorn trees that pressed close to the path just ahead. The branches had grown in strange angles there—twisting inward over a fresh sprig of new rose buds. Imagine it! Rose buds in September!
She stepped forward, parting a thin veil of leaves, and a branch snapped back just enough to catch her wrist. A thorn—not large, but sharp—scratched the skin below her glove. She gasped, but did not cry out. It was not pain so much as surprise.
She looked down. The scratch was thin, like a seam drawn in red thread. But the blood did not rise. The skin beneath remained dry, even as the mark darkened faintly, like ink settling on paper.
Her fingers hovered over it, then dropped. Charlotte was already walking ahead, talking again, the words trailing back toward her without shape.
Elizabeth glanced once at the branch. The leaves looked duller here, the green slightly too grey, as if caught between seasons. And the rosebuds were fresh as any May blossoms.
She shook herself and stepped back onto the path. “I think,” she said, raising her voice slightly, “we ought to go by the mill road. I have no wish to be caught in Mrs Long’s inquiries.”
Charlotte said something agreeable—Elizabeth did not quite catch the words.
As they walked on, she touched the inside of her wrist once more. The mark was still there. Not bleeding. Just… there. Pulsing with offended dignity.
She kept her hand at her side and did not look back.
The long table in the south study bore no trace of its former use as a card table in their grandfather’s day. Now it was neatly lined with ledgers, seasonal accounts, and a fresh pot of ink.
Darcy stood at the window, arms folded behind his back, gazing out at the rising mist over the south fields. A pair of jackdaws hopped across the lower lawn, their black eyes bright in the slanted light.
Behind him, the door opened. “Am I early for the shoot,” said Richard Fitzwilliam, “or late for the War Council?”
Darcy glanced over his shoulder. “You are early.”
“And this is the council?” Richard stepped in and eyed the table. “Ledgers, supply rosters, and Granger with his battle maps. Very medieval, I should say. Shall I fetch a bugler?”
The steward, Mr Granger, gave a polite nod from where he stood, setting out a folio. “Shall I withdraw, Mr Darcy? I should not like to interrupt.”
“No, no, Granger. Richard, you are welcome to stay and take notes,” Darcy offered without turning.
“God forbid,” Richard muttered. “I’ll be in the morning room. Alert me if the estate revolts or you run out of ink.” He vanished through the opposite door, almost at the same moment the main door opened again to admit the others.
Darcy stepped to the table as Granger and Mr Tait, the head groundsman, took their places. Mr Orme, the tenant liaison, was already seated, his cap in his hands.
Granger began. “First: the hedgerows near the east pasture. They’ve rooted well enough, but the gap near Cressfield’s boundary will need reinforcing. Tait recommends staking it now, before the frost sets.”
Darcy nodded. “Use the ash from the orchard clearing. It is seasoned.”
“Yes, sir.” Tait made a mark in his notebook. “Also—the north spring has dropped again. Not more than a foot, but enough the cattle noticed. The overseer’s watching it.”
“It’s likely runoff,” Orme offered. “The rains in August were heavier than usual. Cut the banks more than we expected, especially near the mill stream.”
“We will keep an eye on it,” Darcy said.
Granger adjusted his spectacles. “On the matter of the harvest—yields are coming in lower than anticipated. Not disastrously so, but enough that I thought it best to mention.”
Darcy looked up. “Yes, I have been hearing something of that. Is it the same across the estate?”
“Unevenly,” Granger said. “The barley in the west fields recovered after the late planting, but the oats nearer the ridge did not fill as they ought to have, even after the weather turned fair.”
Tait shifted in his chair. “It was a wet spring,” he said. “Cold, too. Everything started late.”
“Late, yes,” Darcy agreed. “But once it started, it should have made up ground.”
Granger inclined his head. “That was our expectation, sir.”
“And the tenants?”
“Concerned, but not alarmed,” Orme replied. “They remember lean years. This does not yet feel like one of them.”
Darcy nodded once. “Very well. We proceed as planned. Adjust where we must, but no retrenchment yet.”
Granger turned a page. “The only oddity—and I hesitate to call it that—is the chalk by Thorn Holt.”
Darcy’s gaze sharpened, though his tone did not. “Explain.”
“It’s likely some local child, or a courting couple feeling poetic.” Granger produced a small folded sketch. “Marks in a circular pattern around the base of the old hawthorn. No damage to the tree, but the grass is dry within the circle. Not trampled. Just… faded.”
Tait scratched his beard. “Like something leeched the colour out.”
“Could it be lime from a mason’s barrel?” Orme asked. “Or old ash?”
“No residue,” Granger said. “And nothing nearby to explain it. Besides that, the tree itself appears to be dying.”
Darcy took the sketch. The markings were faint—rough, but deliberate. No symbols he recognised. The tree was noted on Pemberley’s older maps as part of a glade long left to its own devices.
“Leave it be for now,” he said. “We are entering a season of dormancy. If any disease appears to spread, I will ride out myself.”
Granger inclined his head. “Very good, sir.”
They moved on. Tait reported favourable numbers from the gamekeeper, who had noted strong nesting near the southern copse—more, in fact, than usual for the season.
The mill repairs were finished. The tenant at Bell Hill had recovered from his fever.
There was some minor complaint from a new ploughman who did not like the thatching of his stable loft, but Granger dismissed it as nonsense.
When the ledgers had been reviewed and the last of the notations made, Darcy dismissed the men with a quiet word of thanks. Tait and Orme rose and tipped their heads. Granger lingered a moment longer.
“I did find something else, sir,” he said. “From the old drawer in the steward’s desk. I meant to show you sooner.”
He held out a parchment—thick, discoloured with age. “It was tucked behind the old land-use maps.”
Darcy unfolded it. The script was cramped, but familiar—his grandfather’s hand.
At first glance, it appeared to be a soil analysis: regions of clay, limestone, loam. But the annotations… curious. Not scientific. Phrases like spotty light and growth without seed.
“Is this part of the weather notes?” Darcy asked.
“I do not believe so,” Granger replied. “There’s no date. No title. I’m not even certain he meant it for record. I do not believe this is Pemberley’s land at all, but somewhere else. The river lines are not familiar to me, and there is no marking of the county, even.”
Darcy refolded it. “Leave it with me.”
Granger bowed and left the room.
After a moment, the opposite door opened again, and Richard reappeared, tossing a cushion from hand to hand.
“You look as though you’ve just read a summons from the Tower.”
“Just harvest figures,” Darcy said, setting the paper aside.
“I’m telling you, cousin, you give these estate meetings the same expression you wore at your father’s funeral.”
Darcy reached for his coat. “The two are not dissimilar. One leaves you with more responsibilities than you wished, and the other with guests who outstay their usefulness.”
“Which am I?”
“That remains to be seen.”
They exchanged faint smirks, and Richard gestured toward the terrace. “Shall we find something to shoot?”
Darcy nodded—but before he moved, his eyes fell again on the sketch Granger had left. The ring beneath the hawthorn. The ash circle in the woods. The thin yield from fields that ought to have recovered.
Coincidence, he told himself. Coincidence—and a season that had asked more patience than usual.
The dogs were ranging wide again—Brutus tracking the brush line with disciplined focus, while Leo thrashed through a patch of dead bracken with more enthusiasm than sense.
Darcy adjusted the strap on his powder flask and scanned the low ridge ahead. “They will not flush here. It’s too open.”
Richard lifted a hand to shade his eyes. “Then your pheasants are idiots. I nearly stepped on one.”
“Perhaps you should have aimed lower.”
They moved on, the dogs catching a fresh scent and tearing ahead. Below, a cluster of partridge scattered with a start, too far out of range.
Richard made no effort to follow. “We’ll go hungry yet.”
“I doubt it. Mrs. Reynolds rarely trusts us to provide.”
“Wise woman.”