Page 42 of Strange Happenings at Longbourn (Darcy and Elizabeth Variations #11)
Chapter Twenty-Six
By morning, the weather had turned. A low, pewter sky pressed down over the countryside, and before noon the rain began—a steady, soaking downpour that blurred the hedgerows and sent rivulets running through the gravel of the drive.
The air was thick with the damp scent of wet earth and sodden leaves; every so often, a gust would fling a scatter of drops against the windowpanes with a sharp, rattling hiss.
The Bennet household was thus confined indoors. Mrs. Bennet declared herself unfit for company and remained upstairs with her salts, while the younger girls restlessly occupied the sitting room, alternately peering out at the rain and gossiping in low, conspiratorial voices.
Shortly after the clock struck two, the sound of hooves splashing through the yard reached Elizabeth’s ears.
She looked up from her work—ostensibly mending a cuff, though her thoughts had wandered often to the wreckage of the night before—and caught sight of a dark figure dismounting in the yard.
Even through the rain-lashed glass, she recognized the tall frame, the purposeful stride.
Darcy.
He wore a heavy oilskin greatcoat, its dark folds glistening with rain, and a broad-brimmed hat that shed water in thin streams. A groom darted out to take his horse, and Darcy, without pausing to shake himself dry, mounted the steps two at a time.
Moments later, Hill was ushering him into the hall, his boots leaving damp marks on the flagstones.
“Mr. Darcy,” Mr. Bennet greeted him from the study doorway. “I am glad you came, though I fear the weather has made the journey less than pleasant.”
“It was no trouble,” Darcy said, removing his hat. Droplets clung to his hair before vanishing into its dark waves. His gaze slid to Elizabeth—just briefly, but enough to send a quick, unbidden warmth through her .
Mr. Bennet stepped aside. “I have decided at last to take this business seriously. There are too many…peculiarities to ignore.”
Darcy inclined his head in sober agreement but offered no accusations, no theories. Instead, he stepped into the study, and Elizabeth followed.
The room still bore the ghost of last night’s disorder.
Though the curtains had been re-hung, the folds were creased and askew, their tassels dangling unevenly.
Books lay in short, defeated stacks on the floor beside the shelves.
The daybed remained stripped of its bedding; only the bare ticking, scuffed and dented from years of use, stretched across the frame.
The air smelled faintly of ash and old paper, tinged with something metallic that made Elizabeth’s mouth dry.
Darcy moved with quiet efficiency, his eyes missing nothing. “The snuffbox is gone, you said?”
“Yes,” Mr. Bennet replied, crossing to his desk. “And… this.” He opened the lower drawer and drew out a small, empty cash box. “I keep ready funds here for household expenses. It is lighter by several guineas.”
Elizabeth felt her brows knit. “Then the intent was not merely mischief—it was theft.”
Darcy glanced at her, his expression unreadable. “And perhaps something more,” he said quietly, before turning his attention to the next drawer.
For the next half hour they worked to set the room to rights—Elizabeth straightening books, Darcy righting an overturned chair, Mr. Bennet sorting through a muddle of correspondence.
Every so often, Darcy’s arm brushed hers as they both reached for the same volume or piece of paper; each time, her breath caught despite her best resolve.
Once, as she bent to retrieve a fallen quill, she sensed him watching her—not in idle curiosity, but with an intensity that made the air between them seem suddenly warm despite the rain battering the windows. She rose quickly, clutching the quill perhaps a little too tightly.
In the hall beyond, Lydia’s voice rose, bright and untroubled. “Kitty! I think I have found the ghost’s trail! Look—mud prints! We must tell him at once that I cannot marry him. It is a sad thing, for I am alive, and he is—well—”
“Dead,” Kitty finished with relish.
Elizabeth’s mouth twitched despite the gravity of their task. “I shall never understand how they can take this so lightly.”
Darcy’s lips curved faintly. “They are fortunate to be so untroubled. ”
“Perhaps,” she said, though her gaze lingered on the doorway. “I did urge them to be cautious.” And to herself she added, It is daylight. What harm could come of a little foolishness in daylight?
They worked in companionable silence for a while longer, the steady patter of the rain a constant against the glass.
Once the last of the books had been returned to the shelves and the curtains drawn evenly, the room looked almost itself again.
But Elizabeth knew—and judging by his expression, so did Darcy—that something darker had taken root beneath its restored order.
The study restored to its semblance of order, they retreated to the drawing room.
Outside, the rain showed no sign of letting up—its steady drumming against the roof and windows seemed to seal the house into a private world of its own.
The fire there had been built high, and the air shimmered faintly above the coals.
Mrs. Bennet had ventured down, her shawl clutched about her shoulders and her nerves only half-subdued.
She claimed the best chair near the hearth, sipping at a cup of tea so hot that it sent thin spirals of steam into the air.
Jane sat beside her, offering quiet reassurances; Mary kept her place at the escritoire, carefully copying out a hymn in her neat, deliberate hand .
Elizabeth and Darcy found themselves at the far end of the room, near the long window that looked out over the garden, where the sodden remnants of roses bowed under the weight of the rain. Darcy leaned one shoulder against the frame, his posture relaxed but his eyes alert.
Before either could speak, the door burst open.
“Lizzy!” Lydia came flying in, her bonnet askew, Kitty at her heels, both with flushed cheeks and eyes alight. “We found it—the ghost’s trail!”
Elizabeth’s brows rose. “Indeed?”
“Yes—mud prints in the side passage,” Kitty supplied breathlessly. “Fresh ones, too, and they lead towards the old east wing. You know what that means.”
“That you have tracked dirt into the house?” Elizabeth suggested, half amused.
Lydia ignored her. “It means I must tell him—oh, it is very tragic—that I cannot marry him. For he is dead, and I am alive, and such a union can never be.”
Kitty nodded solemnly, though her eyes danced.
Darcy’s mouth twitched—Elizabeth could see he was torn between humoring them and forbidding the whole absurd expedition. She sighed, but there was affection in it. “You will do no such thing. And you will not go near the east wing until I say so. Do you understand?”
They groaned but obeyed, retreating to the hearth to whisper to each other in exaggerated mystery.
When they were gone, Darcy’s voice lowered. “Do you truly think there is a passageway there? The servants’ quarters your aunt spoke of?”
“I do not know,” Elizabeth admitted. “But the notion refuses to leave my mind. It would explain much, would it not?”
“It would,” he said gravely. His gaze lingered on her, the gray light from the rain-dimmed window deepening the line of his cheek and jaw. “You have been in the midst of all this, yet you bear it better than most men I know would.”
Elizabeth felt her heart quicken. “I have had… help.”
The corner of his mouth lifted just slightly. “If I may remain in that role, you need only say so.”
The words, though simply spoken, felt like more than an offer of practical assistance—they felt like a promise, a tether drawn between them. She was glad of the fire’s warmth, for her cheeks were heating.
For a moment they stood together in that small shelter of silence, the steady patter of the rain like a curtain drawn against the rest of the world.
Elizabeth could not say what might have been spoken next, had Hill not come in to announce tea.
The moment broke, but not before she caught the faintest trace of something in Darcy’s eyes—an intensity that, whether born of the investigation or something else, she could not yet name.
Hill’s announcement brought them reluctantly towards the tea table, where Mrs. Bennet presided with all the gravity of a dowager queen, despite her nerves.
The china gleamed in the lamplight; the air smelled faintly of bergamot and warm bread.
Rain slid in wavering streams down the glass panes behind them, blurring the orchard into a wash of gray and green.
Darcy took the seat beside Elizabeth. The arrangement was happenstance—at least to outward appearance—but the quiet warmth it lent her was as tangible as the cup she cradled in her hands.
“I have been thinking about the message,” he said, low enough that Mrs. Bennet’s chatter about Sir William Lucas’s last musicale could not carry over.
Elizabeth inclined her head slightly. “‘You Supper.’ It is strange, is it not? One might almost think it meant—”
“That you were to be the supper.” His tone was grave, but his eyes glinted with something that might have been a shared, dark humor. “Or your father.”
Elizabeth’s lips curved despite the subject. “I had thought my father’s jest too morbid to repeat. ”
“Sometimes humor is the safest way to face danger,” Darcy replied. “But in seriousness—if it was meant as a threat, it is bolder than anything we have seen thus far.”
Elizabeth glanced across the room; Lydia and Kitty were still whispering on the hearthrug, clearly planning another 'encounter' with their imaginary ghost. “And yet our culprit has chosen to strike in places that are rarely guarded. Last night, the study. Before that, Papa’s portrait. They strike where they will not be interrupted.”
“That is why your father was right to send for me.” His words were plain, but the way his gaze rested on her felt heavier, more personal.