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“Will you set aside the tape again tomorrow? And the pages about the women Elspeth helped. I want to understand what she actually did.”

“We can look after breakfast, miss.”

Elizabeth thanked her. She could not promise Jane safety by looking frightened at a nursery door. She could learn what lay within her power, and make herself useful beside the people who already knew how to care for her sister.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

THE RAIN BEGAN while Charles was explaining why he intended to keep only two hunters at Alderbrook.

A gust drove water against the library windows. Darcy glanced toward them, then returned his attention to his friend’s account of a horse which, upon further inquiry, belonged to a man who did not wish to sell it.

“That appears to settle the matter,” Darcy said.

“It settles that horse. There must be another.”

“Very probably.”

Charles laid the letter down. “You might offer an opinion.”

“I should advise against buying the animal which is not for sale.”

“That is precisely the assistance I had hoped to obtain.”

Darcy smiled. For once he had no wish to hurry Charles through a conversation which had no immediate consequence for the estate. The letter to his cousin had gone. Elizabeth’s thanks, and her readiness to laugh with him afterwards, had left him in better spirits than a sensible man ought to derive from a discussion of winter clothes.

Charles folded his horse dealer’s letter and watched the rain.

“Jane wanted to walk as far as the terrace after lunch. I fear she must be content with the length of the gallery.”

“She will find it drier.”

“And Lizzy will walk it with her until they have considered every picture. My wife has a great capacity for being pleased by something she saw yesterday.”

“So have you.”

“Yes, but it is generally my wife.”

Darcy shook his head, still smiling. Charles seemed unembarrassed by saying what another man might have thought too sentimental to admit. He made Jane’s happiness a subject of conversation without supposing it diminished him.

Darcy had spent months speaking of Georgiana in precisely measured sentences, as if grief became more tolerable when nobody could hear its extent. He wondered what Charles would have said if he had told him the truth. Not today, with the rain and a horse dealer’s letter before them; perhaps not soon. But the thought no longer ended automatically with a refusal.

A knock interrupted them. Hammond entered carrying a wet hat, which he kept carefully away from the papers upon Darcy’s desk.

“The cart has come back from the lower lane, sir. They got the flour through before the water rose at the ford.”

“Will anybody else need to use it?”

“I have sent word to take the road bridge. It is farther, but the carrier was still at the smith’s when our man passed.”

“Good.”

Hammond described a branch down beside the paddock and water backing against a blocked drain. Neither required Darcy to leave the house. He gave permission for the men already clearing the drain to finish before attempting the branch, and asked whether any cottages needed attention.

“Nothing reported yet, sir. I shall know more before dark.”

After the steward left, Charles rose to go upstairs.

“I am glad of your roads,” he said. “And your roof. I have lately taken an interest in roofs which I should never have supposed possible.”