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Chapter?IV

Bath surrendered to summer the way a languid cat surrenders to a sun-warmed sill—slowly, absolutely, with an air of inevitable entitlement.

By late June Number?Nine’s high stone walls trapped the heat so thoroughly that even the shade beneath the yew arch shimmered.

Roses that had opened shyly in May now blazed like torch flames; the greenhouse vents remained propped day and night, exhaling the breath of basil and ripening tomatoes into air already heavy with pollen.

Elizabeth wiped her brow with a damp kerchief, marveling that a city famed for restorative waters could feel so parched.

Everywhere cicadas—introduced decades ago by some botanically reckless curate—sang a relentless metallic chorus that rattled the ear and vibrated the bones.

Even Mrs?Winter, who normally bustled through the garden as though fueled by a secret spring, moved with measured economy, her cane tapping faintly on stone as she sought pockets of shade.

“You will both melt,” she announced one morning, finding Elizabeth and Darcy laboring at opposite ends of the herb parterre.

“Darcy, stop digging trenches for lilies that have not yet conceived the idea of existing. Miss?Bennet, put aside that shears. When the mercury sulks above seventy-five, intelligent creatures sip cordial and read catalogues of autumn bulbs.”

Elizabeth straightened, wiping sweat from her neck. “We had hoped to finish before noon.”

Mrs?Winter’s brusque gesture encompassed the blazing sky. “Noon arrived at breakfast. Come. The only thing that ought to sweat today is elderflower cordial.”

Darcy rested his spade, chest rising beneath a linen shirt that clung damply to his shoulders. “I concede, ma’am.”

They followed the widow into the solarium, where gauzy muslin curtains filtered sunlight into soft gold and a carafe of cordial sweated delicately on a marble table. Cicadas thrummed outside, but thick glass reduced their din to a tolerable metallic hum.

“As children we hid beneath copper beech leaves on days like this,” Darcy mused, settling into a cane chair and accepting a glass. “Georgiana insisted the tree cast a cooler shade than any parasol.”

Elizabeth poured for Mrs?Winter, then herself. “My sisters and I fled to the stream west of Longbourn and dangled our feet until Mama sent out a search party—or thunderclouds found us first.”

“Thunder,” Mrs?Winter pronounced, “cleanses more than rain ever could. Clears dust from lungs and grievances from hearts.” She sipped, then fixed Darcy with a hawk’s eye. “Speaking of grievances, have you retrieved your mislaid letters?”

Darcy’s posture tightened. “No, ma’am.”

Elizabeth had learned in recent weeks that Mrs?Winter alluded, without apology, to a bundle of correspondence Darcy once lost—letters he would neither describe nor admit their importance, save to confirm they had vanished between London and Derbyshire.

The widow suspected careless servants; Darcy blamed his own distraction.

Whenever the topic surfaced, he responded with quiet regret and an uncharacteristic flush.

A bead of moisture slid down Elizabeth’s glass. She had not asked what the letters contained, sensing both pride and pain twined in the loss. Now, glancing at Darcy’s remote expression, she wondered what words he mourned.

Mrs?Winter drained her cordial. “Things most worth saying,” she declared, “must be said aloud—or planted in diaries garden thieves cannot read.”

“Not everyone keeps a diary,” Darcy replied, managing a faint smile.

“Then speak,” the widow insisted, levering herself upright. “Silence, like drought, starves roots. Miss?Bennet, persuade him—my voice wilts in hot weather.” With that, she departed for her afternoon nap, leaving them in soft sunlight and cicada song.

The cordial cooled their throats but did little for restless limbs. By agreement they relocated to the orchard, seeking shade beneath the Scarlet Nonpareil. Here the air carried faint relief—an undercurrent of green-apple sharpness lifted from swelling fruit.

Darcy flexed his hands, glancing toward the compost heap steaming faintly despite the heat. “I had intended to turn your side today so the lower layer receives air, but—”

“Tomorrow,” Elizabeth said. “The heap will wait.”

They sat on a low stone wall bordering the bee-loud lavender. Cicadas produced a near-physical vibration; Elizabeth fancied she could feel their rhythmic pulse in her wrists. No breeze stirred. Across the wall, the city’s crescents lay drowsing, their sundial shadows pinned like moths on velvet.

“You once said,” Darcy began, breaking the fugue, “that I withheld myself through pride. I dismissed it at the time.” He exhaled slowly. “Yet losing those letters—seeing words meant to right a wrong disappear—forced me to recognize how rarely I speak plainly.”

Elizabeth set her palms on the warm stone. “What wrong did the letters address?”

He studied his hands, as though seeking lines to read.

“After Hunsford I wrote a letter of explanation—one you received.” A shared memory flickered between them of that torrid April day when he relinquished his pride to ink and seals.

“But afterward I thought: What else have I left unsaid? I attempted to write to—others. To Bingley, first, admitting my interference. He should have heard it from my voice, not my pen, yet somehow the page felt safer.” Darcy’s lips curved in self-derision.

“So I wrote several letters—each trying to express remorse honestly. I entrusted them to my valet for posting, and either he misplaced them or I did.”

Elizabeth’s throat tightened. She pictured Bingley in London, never receiving the candour owed him; imagined Darcy pacing library floors, measuring silence like punishment. “Have you told Mr?Bingley?”

“At last,” Darcy admitted, “during his spring visit to Pemberley. He forgave me more swiftly than I forgave myself.” He lifted a twig, turning it.

“But I still wonder where those letters lie—perhaps crushed in a coach seat, perhaps lining a birdcage.” He chuckled without mirth.

“A fitting fate for pride dressed in apology.”

A cicada drone crescendoed, then subsided, as if in sympathy. Elizabeth considered her next words with care. “If apology exists in the heart, it matters less where ink ended up.” She paused. “Though I confess I hope no bird sully your eloquence.”

Darcy’s smile eased; gratitude flickered in his gaze. Silence, for once, felt companionable, not oppressive. She sensed him poised on the brink of further confession, but he seemed to weigh the heat, the noise, the sufficiency of the moment—and let it rest.

By three o’clock the solarium’s thermometer rose to an alarming degree. Mrs?Winter, revived from her nap, declared a household exodus to the canal. She produced a battered parasol, a hamper of sandwiches, and a hand-drawn map to a shaded towpath beyond Pulteney Bridge.

“It will be cooler near water,” she proclaimed, brooking no dissent.

Elizabeth and Darcy exchanged amused glances before collecting blankets and citronella candles. They escorted the widow through Bath’s quiet Sunday streets, cicada thrum replaced by city murmurs: carriage wheels ticking, distant strains of a string quartet slipping from an open drawing-room window.

The Kennet and Avon Canal shimmered pewter beneath willow shadows. Barges lolled against mooring bollards; ducklings trailed after a vigilant mother. They found a patch of lawn where shade pooled thick and cool, and Mrs?Winter settled with the air of a strategist securing high ground.

While she dozed against her parasol, Elizabeth and Darcy walked the towpath.

Waterlilies trembled under the plunk of dragonflies; the air smelled of damp stone and river-mint.

Conversation drifted: Georgiana’s progress on the pianoforte, Mr?Gardiner’s fondness for fishing, the absurdity of Mr?Collins’s last letter (Darcy laughed outright at Elizabeth’s impression of the clergyman’s obsequious bow).

Heat still clung, but the canal siphoned some of it away. At one point Darcy paused to splash water on his wrists; droplets shone like quicksilver before falling. He offered his handkerchief so Elizabeth might do likewise; the linen came away flecked with lavender-pollen gold.

“I will launder it,” she promised.

“Keep it,” he countered gently. “A souvenir of mutual survival.”

Their fingers brushed as she accepted the cloth, and something unspoken sparked—brief, bright, undeniable. She tucked the handkerchief into her reticule, pulse surprising her with its haste.

They rejoined Mrs?Winter for tea from an insulated flask.

Cicadas were absent here, replaced by the soft squeak of barge ropes and the rhythmic chug of a distant lock filling.

Heat still weighed, but water and conversation diluted its tyranny.

When they finally returned to Number?Nine in twilight, the garden smelled of sun-baked stone—a fragrance strangely comforting, like memories stored in cedar chests.

The night refused to cool. Windows stood open; candles guttered in the slightest stir of air.

Elizabeth lay atop sheets, listening to her own heartbeat and the far-off call of an owl.

Cicadas, dormant now, ceded the stage to the hiss of distant carriage wheels and a lone violin practicing scales behind some unseen shutter.

Unable to sleep, she wrapped herself in a light shawl and slipped downstairs, barefoot on polished boards.

Moonlight revealed the hallway in blue-grey relief; she felt like a ghost haunting her own story.

Out through the kitchen door, across grass still warm, she reached the greenhouse.

Inside, shutters were pinned wide; night-perfume lilies released slow breaths of spice into the humidity.

A soft scrape announced another presence. Darcy emerged from the potting corner, lantern unlit, holding a jug of water for the ferns christened Filix?Bennetii .

“I feared the heat might wilt them,” he whispered.

“So I feared for the tomatoes,” she replied. “We are both undone by botanical anxieties.”

They smiled, conspirators in a nocturnal rite. The moon hung low, kissing glass panes with silver. Elizabeth watered tomato pots; Darcy misted fern fronds. Conversation drifted softer than silk.

“Do you miss Longbourn?” he asked after a time.

“Daily.” She measured water into a saucer. “But I find new solace here. The garden—your friendship.” The last words slipped out before she measured them; heat had melted caution. She glanced at him, unsure.

Darcy set down the mister. Lantern-less, his face lay half in shadow, but his voice held quiet conviction. “Your friendship has become… essential.”

The greenhouse felt suddenly still, as though even leaves held breath. Crickets chirped outside. Elizabeth’s heart thudded, loud enough she feared it might shake pollen from the lilies.

He stepped closer, light-struck eyes earnest. “Elizabeth—may I call you so tonight?—I will not burden you with declarations prompted by heat and moonlight. But know that the silence I once wielded as armour—I no longer wish to wear it with you.”

She swallowed, words tangling. “Then let us speak when cooler breezes blow.”

He inclined his head, accepting terms of truce. Relief and something keener flickered across his features. “Until then.”

They tended plants a little longer, working in companionable hush.

When they parted at the yew arch, Darcy reached for her hand—not to press a kiss, merely to clasp it briefly, as one gardener might assure another the cuttings would root.

Even so, her skin tingled long after he vanished into shadows and she tiptoed back to bed.

Dawn came like the striking of a great black drum. Clouds amassed over Bath’s hills, stacking into bruised cliffs. Lightning flickered; thunder rolled so close the windowpanes rattled. Elizabeth sprang from bed, exhilarated. Cicadas fell silent, overridden by nature’s heavier percussion.

She ran to the garden just as the first rain pounded the rose leaves.

Darcy was already there, securing greenhouse vents.

They worked shoulder to shoulder, laughter torn from them by gusts as water sluiced dust from the paths.

The storm roared, drenching them within moments, but the air cooled—a sweet, ozone perfume that tasted like new beginnings.

When the worst had passed and rain softened to silver threads, Darcy turned to her beneath the dripping quince. His hair clung to his brow; water traced his jaw. “The lilies will rejoice,” he said.

“As will we,” she answered, breathless and soaking. They looked at each other, thunder rumbling its diminuendo overhead, and the silence between them felt rich, watered, ready.

By afternoon the storm had rolled eastward, leaving washed skies and a garden drinking deeply. Cicadas returned, but their drone felt less oppressive, softened by cooler air. Mrs?Winter declared the earth “refreshed and instructive—remember, even stubborn seasons bend to change.”

Elizabeth wrote to Jane that evening, ink flowing swift:

The heat has broken, and with it, I think, a certain stubborn silence.

Mr?Darcy speaks now—not in florid promises but in simple truths, and I find I prefer them.

We planted lilies that will open long after this letter reaches you; their buds already appear fat with secret fragrance.

Tell Papa thunder has taught the roses humility—they bow much prettier after rain.

She sealed the letter, heart light. Outside, water still dripped from apple leaves into puddles that mirrored a sky wiped clean.

Somewhere near the orchard gate Darcy’s low voice conferred with Mrs?Winter about staking delphiniums toppled by wind.

Elizabeth listened a moment, smiling. Cicadas thrummed—not a tyranny now, but a chorus to summer’s quieter movement.

Roots, once starved by heat, could drink again.

Buds could swell. And words, once lost, might yet find their way to the proper ears.