Set in Stone, Chapter 6.

The village was an improvement on the house, if only because it contained fewer mirrors and more people willing to look at her directly. Elizabeth had begun to notice the latter as a specific absence. Even the shopkeeper that morning had focused his attention somewhere past her left shoulder while asking what the young ladies required.

“Ribbon,” Lydia said, already at the counter with a length of cherry-colored silk against her wrist. “Masses of it. Kitty, come here, does this suit me?”

Kitty came. Elizabeth stayed by the window, watching the square. The festival preparations were visible everywhere: garlands half-strung between the houses, a platform being assembled near the fountain, bunting in cheerful primary colors. The village teemed with activity, indifferent to her troubles. Elizabeth found this both reassuring and faintly irritating.

“Miss Bennet?”

She turned. The man in the doorway was perhaps thirty, dressed with the studied carelessness of someone who had thought about his appearance a great deal and wished to suggest he had not. His coat wanted pressing. His cravat was silk, loosely knotted, the sort of thing that looked effortless and cost accordingly. He had a leather portfolio under one arm and the eyes of someone who had stayed up too late reading poetry and found the experience spiritually nourishing.

“I believe we have not been introduced,” Elizabeth said.

“George Wickham.” He smiled. It was an excellent smile, warm and slightly rueful, the smile of a man confessing to a minor impropriety he hoped she would find charming. “I apologize for the informality. I saw you through the window and thought I should take the opportunity before it escaped me. I have been hoping to meet someone from Dr. Darcy’s household.”

He was looking directly at her. Elizabeth noted this with something close to relief before she registered the rest of what he had said. “You know Dr. Darcy?”

“We are acquainted.” Wickham moved into the shop properly, setting the portfolio on the counter with the ease of someone used to making himself at home in other people’s spaces. “That is—we were, some years ago.”

Lydia had abandoned the ribbon to study Wickham with the frank interest of someone who had found something more entertaining than shopping. “Are you visiting, Mr. Wickham? You don’t sound local.”

“An extended stay,” Wickham said. “I am investigating certain matters on behalf of a friend who could not make the journey himself. He had heard stories—the sort of stories one hears about old houses and strange goings-on—and thought someone should look into them properly.”

“Strange goings-on?” Kitty leaned forward. “What kind of strange goings-on?”

“The usual sort, I expect.” Wickham’s tone was light, dismissive, the tone of a man indulging a pleasant fancy rather than pursuing anything serious. “Lights where there should be none. The watch-tower, primarily—local legend has it as a site of some interest, though I suspect the interest is more antiquarian than supernatural. Still, my friend was insistent, and I had no particular reason to refuse him.” He glanced at Elizabeth. “You are staying at Dr. Darcy’s house, I understand?”

“We are his guests,” Elizabeth said. The phrasing felt careful even as she said it. “My father knows him professionally.”

“Ah.” Something shifted in Wickham’s expression—not disapproval, precisely, but something she could not quite name. Concern, perhaps. Or recognition. “Then you will have formed your own impressions. I hope they are favorable ones.”

“Should they not be?”

“I could not presume to say.” Wickham smiled again, but the warmth had a shadow underneath it now, something he was allowing her to see. “I knew Dr. Darcy rather better once. He is a brilliant man—no one disputes that. Dedicated to his work to a degree I have rarely seen. I simply wonder, sometimes, whether that dedication serves his patients as well as it serves his research.”

Elizabeth kept her expression neutral. She had the distinct sense of being told something important, though what it was remained just out of reach. “You sound as though you speak from experience.”

“I knew someone who was in his care,” Wickham said quietly. “A young woman—a friend, though I wished she might have been more. She was unwell, though the nature of her illness was never entirely clear to me. Dr. Darcy was very certain he could help her. Very certain, and very… controlling, I suppose, about the terms of her treatment. She was not permitted visitors toward the end. I was told it was for her own good.” He paused. “I am sure it was well-intentioned. I simply could not help but feel that she might have benefited from a second opinion. Or from being informed of her own condition, rather than kept in ignorance for fear the knowledge would distress her.”

Lydia had gone quiet. Kitty was watching Wickham with something approaching sympathy.

“What happened to her?” she asked.

“She died.” Wickham said it simply, without dramatics. “I was not there. I was told afterward that it was very sudden—that Dr. Darcy had done everything in his power, but that some cases are beyond even the most dedicated physician. I do not doubt his sincerity. I simply wonder whether she might have survived if she had been treated as a person rather than a problem to be solved.”

The silence that followed was broken by the shopkeeper clearing his throat. “Will the young ladies be wanting the ribbon, then?”

Lydia blinked, as though remembering where she was. “Yes. All of it. Charge it to Dr. Darcy’s account, if you please.”

Wickham picked up his portfolio. “Forgive me. I did not mean to cast a shadow over your afternoon. It is only—when I learned that Dr. Darcy was in residence, and that he had patients staying with him, I felt I should say something. As a precaution, you understand. I am sure your father is looking after your interests admirably.”

“I am sure he is,” Elizabeth said. Her voice was steady. She was not entirely certain what she felt.

“The watch-tower,” Wickham said, as though the thought had just occurred to him. “If you have seen it from the house—it is worth visiting, if you are inclined toward that sort of thing. The locals avoid it after dark, but the view in daylight is quite remarkable. I intend to go myself in the next few days, to see what all the fuss is about.” He smiled. “I suspect I will find nothing more alarming than bats and old stones, but one never knows.”

“You are very brave,” Lydia said, with the admiration of someone who thought investigations in the dark sounded thrilling.

“Or very foolish.” Wickham’s smile widened. “I have never been entirely certain which. Miss Bennet—” He bowed to Elizabeth. “I hope we will meet again. I am staying at the inn, if you should wish to continue our conversation.”

He left before she could answer. The shop felt smaller without him, as though he had taken some of the air with him.

“Well,” Lydia said. “He was interesting.”

Kitty nodded. “Do you think Dr. Darcy is really that dreadful?”

“I think,” Elizabeth said slowly, “that Mr. Wickham believes what he is saying.” She picked up the ribbon Lydia had chosen, running the silk between her fingers without seeing it. “Whether what he believes is true is another matter entirely.”

But the words stayed with her as they left the shop—kept in ignorance, treated as a problem rather than a person, I was not there. She thought of Darcy’s careful questions, his refusal to meet her eyes, the way her father and he had exchanged that look when she asked about her mother. She thought of the mirrors, and the locked rooms, and the sense she had been carrying since her arrival that everyone knew something she did not.

Mr. Wickham had looked at her directly, as though she were simply a person he was speaking to. As though there were nothing to be afraid of.

She did not know what to do with that, either.

The walk back to the house was quiet. Lydia chattered about the festival—such a short time away, and there would be dancing, and lamplight, and very probably sausages—but Elizabeth barely heard her. She was thinking about young women who died under mysterious circumstances, and doctors who were certain they knew best, and the watch-tower on the edge of the grounds that she had noticed from her window that morning and then forgotten.

She had not forgotten it now.

When they reached the house, Darcy was in the hall. He glanced up as they entered, his gaze moving past Elizabeth toward some point on the wall behind her. “Miss Bennet. I trust your morning was pleasant.”

“We met a friend of yours,” Lydia said brightly. “A Mr. Wickham. He said he knew you some years ago.”

Darcy’s expression did not change, precisely. It simply closed, the way a door closes when the person inside does not wish to be disturbed. “Mr. Wickham is in the village?”

“At the inn,” Elizabeth said. She watched his face. “He spoke very warmly of you.”

“I am sure he did.” Darcy’s voice was perfectly even, perfectly controlled, and told her nothing at all. “If you will excuse me, I have work to attend to.”

He left. Elizabeth stood in the hall, holding Lydia’s ribbon, and wondered what it was that Mr. Wickham had not told her.

And what it was that Dr. Darcy would not.