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“Mr. Vale measured them for me.”

“The surveyor?” Darcy asked.

“Yes. I told him Jane would wish to manage them comfortably with a child in her arms.”

Jane put her hand over her husband’s for a moment before examining the upper floor.

Caroline indicated the largest bedchamber. “That must be yours, Jane. Three windows and a dressing room. Are the curtains included?”

“They are not,” Charles said.

“Oh.” Caroline considered the plan again. “They might be persuaded.”

Jane traced the wall between that bedchamber and the room beside it. “What is this one?”

“A second dressing room at present.”

“Does it have a fireplace?”

“It does. A proper one, and Mr. Vale examined it.”

“And its own door to the passage?”

Charles showed her.

“Then I should like that for the nursery.”

Caroline leaned forward. “There is a much larger room on the floor below. It catches all the afternoon sun.”

“I should like the baby beside me at night,” Jane replied. “This room will do very well.”

“The nurse could bring the child up.”

“I know. But I should still like it here.”

Jane spoke so pleasantly that Caroline could scarcely object to her manner. Darcy saw Miss Bennet lower her eyes to the plan, concealing an expression which was not quite a smile.

Charles took a pencil from his pocket and wrote nursery within the smaller room.

“Then that is settled.”

Darcy thought of the room prepared at the Hargreaves’ cottage, of Ruth rising to Anna, and Martha knowing which movement of the child meant she would not go back to sleep. He had commissioned everything they asked for. Charles had written one word upon a paper because Jane wished to hear her own baby through an adjoining door.

He turned his attention to the surveyor’s notes.

“What did Vale find beneath the floor?”

Charles’s pleasure diminished. He took a folded account from within the plans.

“The joists at the far end of the west passage have rotted where a roof valley leaked. The upper landing is affected, too. Not all of it, but enough that the boards must come up before he can say how much timber will be needed.”

“Does it prevent use of these rooms?” Jane asked.

“Not by itself. But the workmen must pass through the landing to reach them. There are two chimneys to rebuild as well, and the back stair requires attention.”

Caroline drew back. “They advertised the house as fit for immediate occupation.”

“They did.” Bingley’s answer was unusually short.