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Reynolds took a newer sheet from the box.

“My grandmother copied that phrase from papers kept by Mara, who served Elspeth Darcy. Mara was my ancestor. The original notebook is here, but some pages are too fragile to handle often. These copies are easier to read.”

Darcy knew the name Elspeth. He had heard it attached to threats made against the old house, never to a notebook among his housekeeper’s possessions.

“Your family kept these?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did my father know?”

“He knew there were old family papers. He did not ask to read them.”

Elizabeth described the ribbon and the first experiments. She attempted to pass quickly over the cushion, but Reynolds reminded her that Darcy had been present for the consequence.

“You were caught by the thread,” he said.

“I was attached to Mrs. Reynolds’s cushion by the thread.”

“And I blamed your sewing.”

“That was much the more comfortable conclusion.”

He smiled. He remembered her trying to hold both arm and cushion out of Sir’s reach, and the relief which he now understood better when Reynolds brought the scissors.

“The greenery at supper?” he asked.

Elizabeth looked resigned. “Yes.”

“Miss Bingley believed somebody had misunderstood the arrangements.”

“Miss Bingley was fortunate enough to have an explanation.”

Reynolds’s mouth twitched. Darcy would have liked to pursue the matter, but Elizabeth was unwrapping the journal, and the discoloured linen drew his attention.

“A later dream showed me where this had been hidden,” she said. “In the window seat of my room. Mrs. Reynolds opened the catch.”

He watched them uncover the damaged book. They supported the leaves upon a folded cloth, leaving the stuck pages alone. Elizabeth showed him the name, the date they had read as 1555, and the few lines she had copied upon a fresh sheet.

Before he began, Elizabeth showed him two other sheets. One recorded her dream of a birth, a quarrel over the work, and rosemary upon a pillow. The second copied Elspeth’s own account of her husband bringing the rosemary when she first came to the house.

“You wrote this before finding the journal?” he asked.

“Weeks before. Mrs. Reynolds kept it for me.”

Darcy looked at the matching detail. The dream might give Elizabeth a feeling as well as a room or a name. He remembered the tenderness which had seemed his own before the face in his dream changed.

He did not ask whether she had felt it, too.

He read the sentence about the healing spirit twice.

“It came to her here.”

“That is what she wrote.”

“And you think the same thing has happened to you.”

“Yes. I do not know why.”