Page 85

The morning held a rare stillness. The sort that hovered only in the last days of summer, when the air was heavy with ripened green and the shadows, though short, had begun to lean eastward with a kind of anticipatory gravity.

Darcy rode alone, as he preferred, save for Brutus who trailed a pace behind him with ears alert and tongue lolling in pleasure.

The path he took, curving southward through the lower wood, was not the most direct, nor even the most scenic, but it was the one he had followed since boyhood.

It pleased him to take it in the same direction, at the same pace, marking the same hedgerows and glens and half-fallen stone wall near the streambed as one might reread a volume long-memorised.

The satisfaction lay not in discovery, but in reaffirmation.

Bellerophon moved beneath him with the same comfortable swagger he always had, tossing his dark head whenever the bridle felt too much like instruction.

The horse was older now, and moody, but retained that proud edge which Darcy could not entirely dislike.

There was an understanding between them: neither suffered fools, and neither pretended patience to be a virtue when it was not sincerely felt.

The sunlight filtered warm through the canopy, dappling Darcy’s coat and hands, and catching at Brutus’s brindled back whenever he darted ahead to nose a scent or leap a stone.

The hound was a brute in name only—he had a soldier’s caution and a scholar’s solemnity, and his loyalty, once earned, was irrevocable.

At present, he chased shadows and rabbit smells, his tail a metronome of quiet joy.

Darcy’s own mind was pleasantly empty. There had been no troublesome correspondence at breakfast, no new accounts to concern him, and Georgiana had smiled, not nervously, but simply—with that fleeting expression he remembered from their childhood summers, before their father’s illness had pressed gravity upon her shoulders.

It had struck him, that smile. Not for its rarity, but for its ease.

Everything was in its place.

The land was in good order—the tenant farms reported a strong yield, the river was low but clean, the beekeepers had brought a second round of honey that was rich and dark with linden.

The new hedgerows were taking root near the eastern edge, and even the kitchen garden, prone to temperamental patches, had at last begun to yield its late crop of beans without protest.

Darcy let the rhythm of the ride lull him. Bellerophon’s gait was smooth, and the sound of hoofbeats mingled with the burr of insects and the distant, overlapping calls of wood pigeons.

There was, he thought, a certain moral clarity to land.

It was not a sentiment he shared aloud—too sentimental by half—but he felt it all the same.

One need only look well, tend what required it, and keep faith with the natural rhythms. The land would tell a man what it needed. And when it thrived, so did he.

He took the lower fork in the path without thinking. It led toward the elder grove—dense and slightly marshy, but not impassable—and if the light held, he might make a wide circuit and return behind the stables.

Brutus darted ahead, tail high, nose to the wind. Darcy let him go, content to follow at a stroll.

He did not notice the silence at first.

The birdsong faded gradually, the way candlelight dims with dusk. The wind quieted. Even Bellerophon’s hooves began to sound strangely muted against the earth.

Darcy frowned—not at any conscious alarm, but at the sensation that something had fallen out of joint. He tightened the reins slightly. The horse did not respond. His ears had gone back, and his breath came faster, more shallow.

Brutus stopped.

The dog stood still at the edge of the copse, one paw lifted, head lowered. He made no sound.

Darcy eased Bellerophon to a halt. “What is it, then?” he murmured, though he did not expect an answer.

The light had changed.

It was not cloud—there were no clouds. The sun still shone somewhere above, but it did not reach the forest floor. The shadows had thickened, and the air smelled strange. Not foul—just foreign. A sweet, overripe tang, like cut flowers left too long in their vase.

He dismounted, more to settle the horse than from any wish to investigate. Bellerophon shifted under him, reluctant, and Brutus gave a low, uncertain huff but did not move.

The trees here were older, twisted. That was not new. The grove had always been a place of denser growth, thornier hedges, roots that curled up from the ground as though trying to speak.

But now—there was something else.

Darcy stepped forward.

The earth beneath his boots was dry—not cracked, but not moist as it should have been in this low place. A few leaves scattered, and he noted their colour—not golden with the season, but dulled and spotted. Sick.

Ten paces more, and he saw it.

A tree—hawthorn, ancient—stood at the center of a shallow rise. Its bark was blackened. Not entirely, but in long, creeping streaks, as if fire had licked along its branches and changed its mind. The leaves, what remained, hung limp, curled inward, brown at the veins.

At its base, a ring of earth had turned to dust. Not churned soil, not erosion—simply... dust. Grey and fine. A breath might scatter it.

Darcy did not speak.

He did not move closer, though his boots were halfway there. His eyes narrowed, not from disbelief, but calculation.

There had been no lightning. No blight in the orchards. No sign of illness among the hedges or trees further down the slope. And yet here stood this—the ruin of a single tree in the middle of his woods, untouched by weather, marked by... what?

Brutus whined.

Darcy turned his head slightly. The dog had crept forward, just enough to press his flank to Darcy’s boot. Not cowardice—he knew the difference—but unease. Waiting for instruction. Waiting for sense.

There was none.

Darcy’s gaze fell again to the ring at the tree’s base. In its center—almost buried, but not quite—was something pale.

He crouched.

A shard of wood? No. Carved.

He brushed away the dust with two fingers. The shape revealed itself slowly. Circular. A groove running its edge. A design, just visible: thorns, looping in a tight braid. No lettering.

The piece was smooth. Old.

He did not recognise it.

Darcy rose slowly, brushing his hand on his coat without realising it. The air felt heavier. The silence pressed.

He looked around—not quickly, not in panic, but with a careful sweep of the trees. Nothing moved.

“Come,” he said to Brutus, more command than comfort.

The dog obeyed, but kept close.

Bellerophon snorted as he approached. His nostrils flared, and his ears remained pinned.

Darcy mounted and turned the horse toward the open path. He did not look back.

By the time he reached the ridge, the sun had returned. The wind lifted. Brutus shook himself and barked once, as if to clear the moment from his memory.

Darcy did not speak the rest of the way home.

E lizabeth Bennet did not take the path home directly.

It was not out of defiance—though her mother might claim as much when she arrived late to breakfast. It was simply that the hedgerow along the eastern rise had begun to bloom a second time, and Elizabeth could not resist it.

The air was warm but not close, the sun shifting through early cloud in hazy gold bands, and the faintest breeze pressed the leaves into a kind of trembling applause.

She paused by a patch of dogrose, pale and insistent against the bramble. It was odd, their timing. The petals should have been gone by now, but here they were again—fragile and new.

She reached out and touched one with the back of her knuckle.

It shivered under her touch.

A bird trilled nearby, louder than it ought to have been. She turned, half expecting to see it perched within reach, but nothing stirred in the branches. Just a flutter of feathers, retreating through green.

Elizabeth smiled faintly to herself and continued on.

The house came into view just as the bell rang—late enough to rouse Mrs. Bennet’s nerves but not her tears. Elizabeth dusted her boots at the threshold and stepped inside to the familiar sound of chattering voices, clinking porcelain, and Lydia arguing over jam.

“I told you I meant the raspberry,” Lydia groaned. “Why must Jane always take what I was thinking of?”

“You were thinking of sleeping through breakfast,” Jane replied with unbothered grace. “Which is why I poured yours before you came down.”

“I would rather choose my own.” Lydia slumped into her chair. “Besides, it is dreadfully warm. I think raspberry spoils faster.”

Elizabeth kissed Jane’s cheek in passing, exchanged a raised brow with Mary, and accepted her tea from Hill without comment. No one noticed she had not said a word yet.

Mrs. Bennet, however, noticed her hat. “Good heavens, Lizzy, not again! If you come back with burrs in your hair, I shall scream.”

Elizabeth removed the hat calmly and placed it on the peg. “Only petals this time, I believe.”

“That is worse,” her mother snapped. “Petals stain. You will have that ridiculous brown dress looking like a rag by Michaelmas.”

Elizabeth sat. “Perhaps I will embroider it to disguise the evidence.”

“You are too clever by half, Lizzy. No man likes a woman always turning words on end.”

“I shall keep that in mind.”

Jane’s smile tilted just slightly at the edge. “You might as well ask her not to breathe, Mama.”

Mrs. Bennet sniffed. “Well, when she breathes like that, it is no wonder she has not yet had a serious offer. Always off wandering. Always reading books about people who never existed. Why not take a turn about Meryton for once and speak to someone with proper prospects?”

Elizabeth lifted her cup and met Jane’s eyes over it. “Because the people in books, at least, do not snore when they speak.”

Jane pressed her lips together to suppress a laugh. Lydia giggled openly.

Only Mary looked up with something like agreement.

The conversation turned, and Elizabeth let herself drift quiet again.

The tea was strong, if slightly over-steeped, and the breeze had begun to rise.

Through the open window, the curtains lifted just so, and a flicker of motion caught her eye—a leaf spinning in the air, circling once before vanishing.

The odd thing was: she had not seen it fall.

She blinked, sipped, and turned back to the table.

Outside, the breeze died.

Inside, no one noticed.

T he library was unusually cold.

It was not a matter of the fire—it burned low but steady on the hearth, and the coals had been properly turned.

Nor was it the windows; the draughts had long since been sealed, and Darcy himself had seen to the replacement of the mullioned panes the previous winter.

And yet, when he passed beneath the central arch toward the west wall, the air shifted.

Just slightly. A draft where there should be none.

Darcy paused, brow furrowed, but said nothing.

Georgiana looked up from the pianoforte. “Is it too loud?”

He shook his head. “No. Only… the tuning is odd.”

She touched a key again, testing. “I had it looked at not a fortnight past.”

Darcy moved toward the instrument, then hesitated.

The note had sounded fine just now. But when she had been playing earlier—he could not explain it.

The resonance had seemed… wrong. Too thin.

Or too full. The sort of imbalance that pricked at the edges of one’s hearing but vanished upon inspection.

He gave a short shrug. “Never mind. Likely I imagined it.”

Georgiana smiled faintly and returned to the final passage of her étude, her fingers moving with cautious elegance. The notes cascaded, even and pure.

Still, Darcy found himself stepping back from the hearth. That part of the room—the left corner, nearest the French window—remained strangely chilled.

He crossed to the desk instead, flipping through a parcel of correspondence. A note from Bingley, predictably cheerful. A circular from Matlock, detailing the latest estate commission. Nothing of concern.

One envelope, however, bore an unfamiliar wax seal.

Darcy slid it open with the edge of his letter knife. It began in an antiquated hand:

Mr. Darcy, I write with reference to a volume in your family’s possession. A transcription of the Harrowe Ballads, which your grandfather once lent to my predecessor for translation. It has come to my attention that the original folio contained a fragment not included in later editions…

He read no further.

The Harrowe Ballads.

It was a name he had not thought of in years.

The sort of childish lore one was forced to endure from overly romantic tutors.

His grandfather had encouraged it—“a sense of duty to our mythic bloodline,” or some such rot.

But Darcy had never taken to fables. He had learned the lesson of disappointment early: no vow, sacred or secular, could bring back what was already lost.

He placed the letter in a drawer and closed it.

Behind him, the final note of Georgiana’s piece hung longer than it ought to have. Only a fraction too long—but just enough that both of them looked toward the sound.

She blinked, shook her head slightly, and reached to close the lid over the keys.

“Strange,” she murmured.

Darcy said nothing. The chill had disappeared. The light now pooled evenly across the carpet.

He returned to his correspondence.