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“Not in anything I have read.”

“Or what Elspeth believed?”

“Only that there was much said against her. My grandmother’s copy leaves gaps, miss. I would not supply an answer from the stories.”

“Then keep this apart from the account.” Elizabeth folded her sheet. “But I want to know what became of Agnes afterwards. And the other women brought into this house.”

Mrs. Reynolds looked toward the passage. Jane’s maid had gone by carrying a small basket of baby linen.

“I will look.”

“Today, if you can.”

Elizabeth had not meant the urgency to escape her. The housekeeper did not reproach her for it.

When she had gone, Elizabeth crossed the passage to Jane. Her sister held up two little sleeves and asked which was longer. Elizabeth took them, grateful for an answer she could discover by placing one beside the other.

Chapter Twelve

THE MASON HAD finished before noon on Tuesday. Hammond brought his account to the study with a satisfaction Darcy would have shared more readily if the repair had not followed a wet kitchen and an uncomfortable conversation.

“The upper stones were worse than they appeared from below,” the steward said. “He has made them sound. The temporary covering is down, and Mrs. Bell may use her fire.”

“Has she returned?”

“This morning. Her daughter helped her put the kitchen to rights.”

Darcy examined the account, signed it, and asked Hammond to have the other cottages upon the lower lane inspected before the weather worsened. There was no economy in discovering a defect after it had spoiled flour or driven somebody into a neighboring house.

He sent word to Miss Bennet that he meant to walk down after lunch. Her reply came through Sally: she would be ready whenever it suited him.

At the appointed time, he found her in the hall tying her bonnet. Sir stood beside her with the settled expectation of a dog who had never been excluded from a walk worth taking.

“Does he have permission?” Elizabeth asked.

“From whom?”

“I began by asking him. He referred me to you.”

Darcy looked down. Sir’s tail struck the foot of a chair.

“I fear he has misrepresented our arrangements.”

“Then we must take him and discuss his conduct afterward.”

She smiled as she said it. The pleasure it gave Darcy was unreasonable. He had received perfectly civil answers from her all week; he ought not to distinguish this one merely because she had forgotten, for a moment, to be careful with him.

Sally followed them out. The maid had brought a shawl over her arm, though the sun was warm upon the gravel. Elizabeth asked her to keep it, saying that the walk would soon make her glad to be without it.

They took the path below the orchard. The rain had left the ground soft beneath the trees, and Darcy indicated a place where water still lay in a shallow hollow. Elizabeth stepped around it without accepting his offered hand. The movement was natural enough. He wished he had not noticed it.

“Have you heard whether anything else was spoiled?” she asked.

“Mrs. Bell has been supplied with flour. Hammond tells me the shelf has dried.”

“That is good.”

“The other roofs along this lane will be examined.”