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Darcy remained where she had left him. His hand still recalled the warmth of hers. He was disappointed, profoundly so, but there had been no fear in her face when she asked him to wait. He had seen fear that morning upon the bank. This was something he did not yet understand.

When Reynolds returned with the tray, he asked her to leave the second chair where it stood.

Chapter Thirty-Two

DARCY DISCOVERED THE next morning that an injured hand did not prevent him from attempting to use it.

He reached for the pen before remembering the dressing, and stopped with an impatience which made Hammond look up.

“Shall I write it, sir?”

“Please.”

The steward put the paper before himself. The damaged approach had been barred on both sides, and the carpenter had examined the bridge without crossing it. Replacing its support would be useless until somebody determined how much of the remaining bank had been undermined.

“Keep it closed until both can be made sound,” Darcy said. “The longer walk is an inconvenience. Another fall would be considerably worse.”

Hammond wrote the instruction and read it back. Darcy approved it, then asked after Foster and the man who had helped him home. Both were at work. Mrs. Bell’s washhouse covering had held, and the carpenter could replace the lifted board once the timber was dry.

These were matters Darcy understood. They required workmen, time, and money, all of which he knew how to supply. He was grateful to settle them before Elizabeth arrived with her old book and the explanation he had scarcely stopped considering since yesterday.

She came with Reynolds just after ten. The housekeeper carried a wooden box. Elizabeth had a cloth-wrapped parcel and several sheets of newer paper, which she placed upon the clear end of the library table.

“May we sit where the light is best?” she asked.

Darcy moved a chair for her with his left hand. He was aware of the moment in the sitting room yesterday, and of how easily the ordinary courtesy might become awkward if either of them looked too conscious of it.

Elizabeth thanked him and sat. Reynolds took the chair opposite. Darcy closed the library door before joining them.

“Who else knows?” he asked.

“About the books?” Elizabeth said.

“About what you can do.”

“Only Mrs. Reynolds. Until yesterday.”

“Sally knows we found something behind the panel,” Reynolds added. “She thinks we are interested in the history of the house.”

“Which is true,” Elizabeth said.

Darcy looked at the covered volume. “Charles believes you secured a rope and brought help. I told him no more than that.”

“Thank you.”

“Would you prefer that it remain between us?”

“Yes. Jane would worry about me. She would not believe the explanation, and she would not stop worrying merely because she did not believe it.”

Darcy understood. He could readily imagine Charles’s kind alarm if told that Elizabeth believed herself able to move things without touching them. Yesterday morning he would have shared it.

“Then I shall say nothing.”

She relaxed a little. Perhaps she had been waiting to hear whether he considered the decision his to make.

Reynolds opened the box. “Perhaps we had better begin with what Miss Bennet saw first.”

Elizabeth laid her dated account before Darcy. She told him of the cradle and the unfamiliar passage she had dreamed of after meeting Anna, then the woman in the bed, the red thread and the words, “Loose the binding.”