Chapter Sixteen
The door had scarcely closed behind her before the house rushed to meet her.
“…and I said as much, Jane, for it is perfectly obvious to anyone with eyes that matters are advancing, and I cannot imagine why anyone should pretend otherwise—Lizzy! There you are at last.”
Elizabeth barely had time to set her reticule down before Mama swept her into her arms.
“You look very well,” her mother declared, inspecting her with swift approval. “Quite refreshed. I told everyone you would be, of course. Fresh air, good food, and proper attention—that is all that was ever required.”
Elizabeth smiled and stepped aside before she could be steered fully into the centre of the room. “I am glad to have satisfied expectations.”
“Oh, they are most satisfactorily exceeded,” Mama declared. “And now that you are home, we may speak freely. Jane, my love, tell your sisters what Mr Bingley said last evening.”
Jane protested at once. “Mama, there was nothing to tell.”
“There was quite enough,” her mother returned briskly. “Dining with the family, walking out every day, music in the evenings—why, they danced, Lizzy. A reel. In the drawing room!”
Elizabeth turned to Jane, one brow lifting. “You did not mention that.”
Jane laughed, flustered. “It was nothing formal. Only a little diversion. Mr Bingley insisted, and after some persuasion, Miss Bingley was prevailed upon to play for us.”
“He is so very good,” Mama declared. “And some things besides. Oh, so terribly clever of you, Lizzy, to fall ill at Netherfield, and how good you were, Jane, to make the best of it. Always thinking of your poor family, you are!”
Elizabeth caught her father’s eye across the room. He closed his book at last.
“So,” he said mildly, “Netherfield survives the Great Bennet incursion. I trust you did not exhaust them entirely.”
“I did my best,” Elizabeth said. “But I was outmatched.”
“That is always the danger,” he replied. His gaze lingered on her a moment longer than usual. “You are quite restored, then?”
“I am. At least, I appear to be.”
His mouth twitched. “Appearances are a great comfort to the anxious.”
“Oh, what about that enormous dog everyone talked about?” Kitty burst out suddenly, turning a chair for Elizabeth to take a seat. “Did you see him? Mrs Long said he was enormous. Was he as big as the table? Did he bark? Did he—”
“He did not bark,” Elizabeth said. “At least, not at me.”
Kitty looked faintly disappointed. “Well. That is dull.”
Elizabeth accepted the chair Kitty dragged out for her and let herself sink into it with more relief than she meant to show.
The room was loud—voices overlapping, her mother already in full speculation, Lydia laughing at something only she found amusing—and Elizabeth allowed it to wash over her while she adjusted her shawl.
“Not when the creature’s shoulder is as high as my elbow.
Truly, Kitty, he is the largest dog I have ever seen, but he was quite…
” Her brow creased. “Chivalrous, I suppose. I found it comforting.”
Lydia groaned. “How very boring, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth smiled, but as she reached to accept a pillow Mary passed her, her wrist stabbed her movement in a way it had never done before.
She froze—not enough for anyone else to remark upon—but long enough to twist her wrist about in shock. The sensation faded almost at once when she shifted her grip, leaving behind nothing more than a faint awareness, localised and precise, like a fingertip pressed lightly to the inside of her arm.
Elizabeth lowered her hand to her lap and frowned at it.
Jane was still speaking, earnest and glowing. “…and Mr Bingley was so attentive to everyone, Mama. He asked after you twice and sent his regards. Miss Bingley, too, though she said nothing about accepting your invitation to dine.”
“Oh, no fear of that,” Mama said at once. “Surely, now that you have caught Mr Bingley’s notice so thoroughly, everything may proceed sensibly. He can hardly do otherwise, you see?”
Elizabeth rose before she had quite decided to do so, the motion arriving a half-second ahead of the explanation. “I believe,” she said, while Mama was still in full possession of the conversation, “that I shall go up to my room.”
Mama waved a hand, already turning back to Jane. “Yes, yes—do not overtire yourself, my love. You have done quite enough for one day.”
Jane’s eyes followed her, but Elizabeth smiled once—quick, reassuring—and slipped away before concern could gather momentum.
The noise thinned as she reached the hall. She paused at the foot of the stairs.
It had become a habit now, this hesitation. A small accounting taken before motion. She placed her hand on the banister, half-expecting—she did not know what.
Nothing answered her. No barrier. No strange insistence. The stair stood exactly as it always had.
Elizabeth mounted it without effort, then another step, and another, her stride settling into its familiar rhythm. Whatever had troubled her at Netherfield did not follow.
In her room, she crossed first to the trunk Mr Hill had brought up, still half-latched where it sat at the foot of the bed. She knelt and lifted the lid.
The books lay where she had packed them at Netherfield, wrapped carefully against one another.
It was thoughtful of Papa to send these, and she had meant to read them all.
Unfettered access to some of his books, including some new ones bought just for her?
What a treasure! But she had not opened more than one all the while she lay at Netherfield.
Intention, it seemed, could substitute for action longer than one might expect.
Now she drew them out, one by one, setting them on the coverlet and noting their titles properly at last. History. Essays. A slim volume of sermons she dismissed at a glance.
Then her hand paused, and she smiled.
A narrow book, plainly bound, its pages uneven with age. Not one she remembered from his library, and not one she had bothered to examine while at Netherfield. She knew it—not by title, not by reason, but with the quiet certainty of recognition, the sort that arrives before explanation.
“Well,” she murmured, lifting the book, “so you did listen, after all.”
She turned it over in her hands, amused.
This was the one—the small, oddly charming collection she had noticed in the shop at Meryton and mentioned only in passing.
Essays, certainly, but of a lighter sort: observations, fragments, reflections collected and translated from older hands, perhaps with more affection than ambition.
The kind of book one dipped into, not studied.
She opened it at random and read a few lines. Her mouth curved. Not profound. Not improving. But clever in its way—and oddly familiar in rhythm, as though it brushed against a half-remembered rhyme from childhood. She read another paragraph, then another, entirely untroubled.
Charming.
Elizabeth closed the book and set it atop the others. For now, they would all go back to the safety of Papa’s shelves.
Darcy did not begin with walking the land again.
He began, instead, with tea.
Bingley had only just settled himself at the small table near the window, cheerfully resigned to a second cup, when Darcy took the opposite chair without comment and unfolded a sheet of paper he had brought with him.
“You look ominous again,” Bingley observed, brightening rather than recoiling. “Should I send for reinforcements, or is this merely one of your thoughtful silences made visible?”
Darcy glanced up. “Did you have the boundaries of Netherfield surveyed when you took the lease?”
Bingley laughed. “Ah. That sort of ominous. Yes, they have been—well—no. Not by me, at any rate. The place has been standing comfortably for years. I saw no reason to unsettle it.”
Darcy accepted this without visible reaction. “What about before you took possession?”
“I believe my predecessor had it done once. Or perhaps his father. Someone sensible, certainly.” Bingley sipped his tea. “Why? Has the house been quietly annexing Hertfordshire while I slept?”
“No,” Darcy said. “But I am curious.”
That earned him a look. Bingley leaned back in his chair. “You are never just curious.”
Darcy did not dispute this. He glanced toward the door. “Is your steward engaged?”
Bingley followed his gaze, then shrugged with easy good nature. “Mr Bixby is somewhere about the place, no doubt heroically preventing chaos. If you wish to consult him, I shall summon him at once. But I warn you, he will be earnest.”
“I should expect nothing less.”
Mr Bixby arrived promptly: a man of middle years, composed manner, and an expression shaped by decades of orderly service. He bowed to both gentlemen and waited.
“Mr Bixby,” Bingley began, with the air of a host relinquishing responsibility, “my friend has developed a rather… morbid fixation on Netherfield’s land history.”
“An interest,” Darcy corrected, politely.
The steward inclined his head. “Very good, sir. In what respect?”
Darcy laid his paper on the table between them. It held no drawings, no flourishes—only a neat list of questions. “I should like to know whether any portion of the eastern rise has ever been remeasured, adjusted, or remarked upon in the course of the estate’s keeping.”
The steward blinked once. “The eastern rise, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Well.” Mr Bixby considered. “Not to my knowledge. It is not especially notable ground.”
“Has it ever been enclosed?”
“No, sir.”
“Cleared?”
“Not in my tenure.”
“Divided? Possibly purchased or sold off to a neighbour?”
“No land sales have taken place in more than a century.”
“Marked? In any way at all—a stile, perhaps, a fence…”
The steward hesitated. “There are old boundary stones, sir. Or were. Many were set deep. Some are no longer visible.”
Darcy’s pen moved. “And not uncovered?”
Mr Bixby glanced at the paper. “Forgive me, sir, but this is an unusually precise inquiry.”
“It is,” Darcy agreed. “That is intentional.”