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Mrs. Reynolds brought the copied sheet nearer.

They read no more of the killing that morning. Elizabeth copied only the account of Elspeth’s hands, placing it beside the description of the work used for Agnes Fletcher. Mara had observed the same movements from a different place, with a different ending.

“Here she leaves the turn open,” Elizabeth said, indicating Agnes’s account. “And here she closes it.”

“Yes.”

“The words are different, too.”

Mrs. Reynolds looked at the two pages. “My grandmother always said the house had been bound against the women who came to it.”

“By something which had once helped them.”

It was not an answer to every question. Elizabeth could tie a knot without bringing harm upon anyone. She had tightened a rope to save Mr. Darcy. The shape alone could not account for what Elspeth had done, and neither woman pretended it did.

“What was she doing before the change?” Elizabeth asked.

“Giving warmth. Attending to the woman beside her.”

“And releasing what held too tightly.”

Mrs. Reynolds nodded.

Elizabeth looked toward the window. Jane hoped to finish a small sleeve before lunch. Charles would be telling her she need not finish it today. Elizabeth could imagine the pleasant argument while November drew nearer.

“This time will be different,” she said. “I am here. I can try to help Jane with what Elspeth used before she turned it against the house.”

Mrs. Reynolds’s eyes filled.

“I have wished so often that there might be someone who could.”

“I cannot promise that I shall succeed.”

“I know, miss.”

“Then do not let me spend every day reading what frightened her. We must learn what she did when she meant to help.”

The housekeeper reached for the packet containing the earlier copies. Elizabeth moved the account of the killing aside, without hiding it or pretending that it ceased to matter. She wanted the birth, the warmth, the turn of thread which left room for something to be released.

They worked until Mrs. Reynolds must go to the kitchen. Elizabeth returned to Jane with a faint bruise upon her knee and two copied movements she could attempt in her own room.

She did not attempt them beside her sister.

That afternoon she helped Jane finish the sleeve, listened while Charles read an agent’s letter aloud, and went for a short walk with Sally. The little path by the stream remained closed. They took the garden walk instead. Elizabeth was relieved to find herself thinking of how the yellow leaves looked against the dark hedge, rather than wondering what every stone might remember.

In the evening she sat in her room with a length of clean thread and the copy upon her desk.

She could make the open turn; keeping warmth in her palm while she did it proved much harder. When she watched the strand slip through, the warmth faded. When she attended to her hand, the thread tangled.

At the fourth failure she began to laugh. Sir raised his head from the rug.

“You may be relieved to learn that I shall not practise upon you.”

He came to have his ears rubbed. Elizabeth put the thread down and obliged him. Afterwards she tried once more. This time the loop opened while a faint warmth remained in her palm. A servant dropped something in the passage, she turned toward the sound, and both warmth and concentration deserted her.

She had managed it for a moment. Tomorrow she would try to make the moment last.

On Sunday, after church, she took her account of the attempts to Mrs. Reynolds. The housekeeper listened without trying to call one small success sufficient.