Page 146

“May we look at the original?” she asked.

Mrs. Reynolds took Mara’s book from its box. She had placed a folded cloth beneath the cover so that it could be opened only as far as the stitching allowed. The surviving leaf beside the account was worn along its outer edge, and one line had run where water once reached it.

They did not force it flatter. Elizabeth leaned nearer while the housekeeper held the loose edge in place.

There was the same name. The same crooked joining of letters they had learned to recognize. Farther down, a dark mark cut through a word which might have been hands.

Elizabeth touched the edge of the page to keep it from lifting.

Heat struck her face.

She heard somebody cry out, a voice so close that she turned toward it. The chair beneath her seemed to vanish. For an instant she could not draw enough air, and the smell of smoke filled her mouth.

Elizabeth lifted her hand from the paper.

The room returned before she had quite risen. Her knee struck the desk. Mrs. Reynolds caught the book before it could slide and laid it safely upon the cloth.

“Miss Bennet.”

“I am here.” Elizabeth gripped the back of her chair. “I know where I am.”

The housekeeper came beside her but did not seize her arm.

“Shall I open the window?”

“A little. Please.”

Cool air touched Elizabeth’s cheek. She looked at the grate until she could see its small, ordinary fire without expecting anything more from it. Then she looked at the door, the inkstand, and the housekeeper’s apron.

There was no smoke in the room.

“I heard a cry,” she said. “I could not make out the words. I felt heat, and I could not breathe.”

“Did you see her?”

“No.”

“Nicholas?”

“No one. Only the heat.”

Mrs. Reynolds nodded. Elizabeth sat down slowly. Her knee hurt where it had struck the desk, and she was grateful for a pain whose cause she understood.

“I took my hand away,” she said after a little while.

“Yes. You did.”

“And it stopped.”

“It did.”

Mrs. Reynolds brought water. Elizabeth drank and set the glass down upon the far side of the desk, well away from the papers.

“I do not wish to touch that again today.”

“Then you shall not.”

“But I should like to keep reading the copy.”