Page 139

Darcy turned toward her.

“On Monday. I asked whether they would consider lodgings. Jane wishes to remain.”

“Did you tell her what you feared?”

“I told her the stories troubled me. I could not tell her about this.” Elizabeth indicated the open papers. “I did not yet know where the wall had been. And I did not tell her about myself.”

“Charles?”

“He thought an innkeeper’s tale a poor reason to remove his wife from the room she has chosen. Jane has met Mrs. Talbot here. She trusts her, and she trusts Mrs. Reynolds. She knows where everything is.”

He knew Charles well enough to hear the reply in his own mind. Before the fall, he might have offered it himself.

“We could tell them the rooms require work.”

Elizabeth regarded him steadily.

Darcy looked down. The lie had suggested itself as readily as an ordinary instruction to a carpenter. There was a danger he could not explain without revealing Elizabeth’s secret, and a means of removing Jane which did not require her agreement to the true reason. He could have it done before he had endured a single difficult conversation.

He was ashamed of how attractive that appeared.

“No,” he said. “I should not invent a defect.”

“Jane would wish to know what was wrong. Charles would ask to see it. And afterwards we should have to decide what else to tell them.”

“You think we should allow her to remain?”

“I think we must ask her again.” Elizabeth touched the edge of her copy. “On Monday I had a story from an inn. Now we have names, accounts, and the place where these women died. I wish I could spare her the fear of it. But I cannot keep this from her and then say that she has chosen with her eyes open.”

“You would tell her about yourself?”

“No. She need not know what I can do to hear what we have found in an account book.”

He looked from her to the household record. He had been prepared to invent a repair before considering how much they could tell without inventing anything.

“We shall take it to her,” he said. “And Charles.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Today. Before I persuade myself that tomorrow would be kinder.”

Darcy looked at the papers between them. There were deaths upon those pages. Whatever Alice Reed had hoped when she went to her mother, the only answer left to him was a line in an account book.

“What have you been trying?” he asked.

Elizabeth took a breath. The change in his question appeared to steady her.

“The warmth. And the thread. Elspeth helped women before any of this happened. There are accounts of those who recovered, too. Agnes Fletcher and her child lived.”

“I read that entry yesterday.”

“She used what she had for something good. I must learn how.”

“Can you?”

The question came out more sharply than he intended. Elizabeth did not pretend to mistake it for encouragement.

“I do not know enough yet. But I know more than I did when I first tried to undo a ribbon.”

He remembered the rope tightening above his face.