Chapter Twelve #2
Turning away from the staircase, she resumed her walk along the corridor, allowing the measured pace to restore her composure.
Near the far end, beside a linen press she remembered only dimly, a narrow passage opened to the side.
It was plainly not intended for guests: the ceiling dipped, the air carried the clean, faint scent of soap and starch.
Elizabeth turned into it and went on.
The servants’ stair curved back upon itself, narrow and steep, turning away from the main body of the house before descending. Elizabeth set her hand to the wall as she went, steadying herself by habit rather than need. The plaster was cool beneath her palm.
Here, nothing barred her.
She went down a little way, then further, attentive not to the steps but to herself. There was no resistance. At the turn where the passage bent toward the lower floor, she slowed.
Light rose from below. Voices, too—low, indistinct, the familiar murmur of servants settling the house for the night. The sound ought to have reassured her. Instead, it brought back that faint inward pressure, not sharp enough to stop her, but sufficient to suggest that she had reached her limit.
Enough.
She turned, gathering her skirts to climb back.
“Miss Elizabeth?”
She started violently. Her shoulder struck the wall; her foot slipped on the stair. A breath tore from her before she could check it, sharp and humiliating, and her hand flew to her chest as though her heart required anchoring.
Mr Darcy stood a few steps below her.
One hand rested on the rail. The other held a book, forgotten. His expression was not alarmed, precisely, but intent, drawn in a way that made her suddenly, acutely aware of the narrowness of the stair and the closeness of his presence.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I did not mean to startle you.”
“I—” She drew another breath, forced it steady. “I could not sleep.”
“I see.”
His gaze lingered. Not searching her face so much as taking her in as she stood there—barefoot, shawl about her shoulders, her pulse still too near the surface.
“You have found the back stair? Not… er… avoiding anyone?” he asked.
“No.” Her fingers tightened briefly in the wool at her throat. “I was walking.”
“You seem to take a great deal of pleasure in walking.”
There was no rebuke in his voice. Nor ease. He looked as though he were listening for something she could not hear.
She swallowed. “I… Mr Darcy, please do not tell them.”
“Them… who?” His brows drew together. “That you are out of your room?”
“Not because I am well,” she said quickly. “I am not—not entirely. But I needed to know whether I could move about without…” She stopped, vexed by the failure of words. “Without it returning.”
He studied her then, openly. “‘It?’”
Elizabeth cleared her throat. There was a sudden, unreasonable heat rising beneath her skin, a discomfort that had nothing to do with modesty and everything to do with being seen too clearly. She did not care to explain herself further.
“I will return to my room, without putting anyone out,” she said. “I promise. I only wished to test myself.”
“And you have done so. With… positive results, I trust?”
“Yes.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked instead at the book in his hand, adjusting his grip as though it required attention. Elizabeth followed the motion without meaning to, then caught herself and looked away.
At last, he inclined his head. “Then it would be best to go back the way you came. Miss Bingley claims that steps as light as a cat would rouse her if too close to her room.”
Relief loosened her all at once, sharp enough to leave her faint. She did not trust herself to speak again. She turned and climbed, conscious of him behind her until the passage curved and his presence fell away.
At her door, she paused only long enough to ease it shut. The quiet of the room rushed back upon her, too sudden after the stair, and she stood there a moment with her hand still on the latch, drawing breath as though she had climbed farther than she had.
She pressed her forehead briefly to the wood, willing the sensation down, irritated by its persistence. This was foolish. She was not ill. She had not imagined what she felt. And yet—
Longbourn rose in her mind at once: the familiar rooms, her father’s voice, her mother’s anxious attentions.
The thought brought no comfort. Only a sharp, unreasoning certainty that if she went home now—if she placed herself again within those walls—whatever had begun to impose itself upon her would not lessen, but worsen.
She swallowed hard.
From the adjoining room came the faint rustle of movement—Jane turning in her bed, perhaps, or stirring toward wakefulness. The sound decided her. Elizabeth crossed the room at once and slipped beneath the covers, drawing them close as though they might hold her in place.
The door shut behind him with enough force to make him jump in his skin.
Darcy halted, hand still on the latch, listening for any sound that might follow—footsteps, a startled voice, the scrape of a servant roused by the disturbance. Nothing came. The corridor remained hushed, the house settling back into its accustomed quiet as though it had not noticed him at all.
He released a breath and crossed the room in three long strides.
The candle on the escritoire guttered as he passed, stirred by the wake of his movement. He caught it, steadied the flame, and only then became aware that his heart had not yet resumed a sensible pace.
Not fear, he told himself sharply. Irritation. Startlement. The natural consequence of being roused from uneasy thoughts and encountering a young lady wandering where she ought not to have been.
Brutus padded in behind him and stopped. Darcy glanced back.
The dog did not go to his cushion. He did not circle before settling. He stood just inside the threshold, broad head lifted, gaze fixed—not on Darcy, but on the closed door.
Darcy frowned. “Enough,” he commanded. “There is nothing there.”
Brutus did not move.
Darcy turned away first. He knew better than to start a battle of wills with an Irish Wolfhound he could not win.
He set the book down upon the desk with deliberate care. It had come from the lower library—a slim, unassuming volume of county surveys, its leather rubbed thin by age and long neglect. He might have reached for any number of more engaging works, but had passed them all by without pause.
This one had promised certainty. Predictability.
Field boundaries. Parish lines. Measurements fixed to paper by men who understood land could be rendered obedient through ink and scale. No speculation. Nothing that trafficked in imagination.
He had taken it up because the dream had troubled him, though he would not have phrased it so even to himself.
Because Brutus’s conduct had demanded explanation that did not involve superstition.
Because if something in the ground had felt wrong—if distance and direction had seemed briefly unreliable—then the sensible response was to consult what had been recorded when such things still behaved.
If there was nothing there, he would find nothing. And if there was something, then it would be named, dated, and properly accounted for.
He opened it now, standing rather than sitting, one hand braced against the edge of the desk. The pages yielded a faint, dry scent—dust, ink, something vegetal long pressed flat and forgotten.
Parishes. Acreage. Watercourses.
Orderly. Comfortingly dull.
Darcy read a paragraph without absorbing it, then another. His attention slipped, returning instead—unbidden—to the narrow stair, to Elizabeth Bennet standing there with her shawl drawn close, insisting she was only walking.
Please do not tell them.
The words pricked at him anew. Not fear. Resolve. She had known something was amiss, and she had chosen silence over spectacle.
He turned the page. A marginal note caught his eye—not in the same hand as the text, but cramped, angular, written with a pen sharpened to severity.
Boundary altered after the great frost. Marker re-set by custom, not measurement.
Darcy squinted and read it again.
Custom, not measurement.
He scanned the following lines more closely. A reference to a stand of hawthorn not aligned with any recorded hedgerow. A remark—dismissive, almost irritated—that local tenants avoided the ground “out of habit,” though no impediment was visible.
Superstition, the author concluded. Nothing more. Darcy shut the book with a snap and paced toward the rug.
Brutus moved. Not toward him, but closer to the desk, placing himself between Darcy and the window now, body angled, watchful.
Darcy stared at the dog. “This is becoming tiresome.”
Brutus’s tail waved once. No jubilant wag. No rigid agitation. Simply acknowledgement.
Darcy passed a hand over his face and forced himself to think. He returned to the edge of the desk and stood there, one hand braced against the wood.
Elizabeth Bennet had not been on the main stair.
That, at least, was certain. No guest—no lady—wandered the servants’ passages without reason, particularly not one already under scrutiny for her health. And yet she had been there, alert, composed, and determined enough to ask him not to betray her wandering.
Why?
He had no answer for that.
Nor could he account for Brutus’s conduct.
The dog had barred him from the main stair earlier. Not with threat or agitation, but with a calm insistence that defied training and habit alike. Brutus did not guard capriciously. He did not invent dangers. And he had never, in all his years, placed himself bodily in Darcy’s path without cause.
Had the dog done the same with her?
Darcy did not know. He had not asked. He had been too intent upon removing her from notice—and removing himself from her proximity—to examine the matter further.
And yet the fact remained: she had been using the servant’s stair… and so had he, and all because of a blasted dog.
He frowned, irritated at the way it refused to resolve into sense. Fatigue muddled the edges of thought; conjecture bred conjecture. Whatever Brutus had perceived—whatever had drawn both master and guest away from the ordinary paths of the house—it would bear examination.
Tomorrow.
He would think more clearly tomorrow.
Darcy returned to the desk and opened the book again, this time with intent.
He read more carefully, noting every reference to altered ground, every passing mention of boundaries observed by tradition rather than deed.
The entries were scattered, unconnected, never lingered over—but they were there.
Always there.
Brutus lowered himself at last, settling beside the desk, head resting on his paws—but his eyes did not close.
Darcy straightened slowly.
He did not think of curses. He did not think of magic. He did not think of half-remembered ballads fit only for antiquarians and children.
He thought of stewardship. Of land held in trust.
Of rules established so long ago that forgetting them felt like progress.
“No,” he said under his breath, not to the dog, nor to the book, but to the rising unease he refused to indulge. “I will not be made a fool of.”
Brutus’s ears flicked.
Darcy closed the book with care this time and carried it to the mantel to place it beside a few other volumes full of nonsense. He extinguished the candle, one deliberate pinch of fingers, and crossed back to the bed.