Set in Stone, Chapter 8.

The room Darcy had chosen for the purpose was on the second floor, facing east. Elizabeth had passed it before without particular notice; it appeared to be a former morning room, unfurnished except for a single chair positioned against the far wall and what looked like half the contents of a scientific supply catalogue arranged on a series of tables to the left of the door.

The camera itself was a substantial affair on a tripod, positioned some ten feet from the chair. What arrested her attention was not the camera but the arrangement of mirrors. Two tall cheval glasses flanked the chair at angles she could not immediately parse, and a third, smaller mirror had been mounted on an articulating arm attached to the camera itself.

Darcy was adjusting something on the nearest cheval glass when she entered. He straightened, saw her taking in the setup, and said, “Good afternoon, Miss Bennet. Thank you for agreeing to this.”

“You did say it was part of the treatment.” She kept her tone even. Their last exchange had ended poorly; she had no particular wish to repeat the experience, and he had been scrupulously civil at luncheon. She could match that, at least.

“It is.” He gestured toward the chair. “If you would sit, I can explain what I’m attempting to document.”

She sat. The chair was plain, straight-backed, positioned so that the light from the windows fell across her face without undue harshness. Darcy moved to the camera, made some small adjustment to the mirror mounted beside the lens, and then stepped back to the tables.

“You are familiar,” he said, “with Dr. Charcot’s photographic studies at the Salpêtrière?”

She was not, particularly, though the name was familiar from the medical journals she had glimpsed in the library. “In outline,” she said.

“Charcot believed that what is sometimes called hysteria was a physical ailment which could be cured, at a time when many authorities saw such symptoms as either performative or inherent to the female body.”

“How enlightened of him,” Elizabeth said dryly.

“He documented the physical presentation of hysterical episodes in his patients—the specific attitudes, the facial expressions, the postural markers that preceded or accompanied the attacks. The photographs established that certain presentations were consistent across patients, which suggested a physiological basis rather than mere performance.”

“I see,” Elizabeth said, though what she saw was that he had compared her condition to hysteria, which was not flattering. “And you believe my—episodes—have similar physical markers?”

“I believe,” Darcy said carefully, “that the body shows what the mind cannot observe. If there are markers that precede an episode—changes in the eyes, perhaps, or tension in the musculature—then documenting them might allow earlier intervention.”

This was reasonable enough that Elizabeth could not object to it without appearing obstructive. “And the mirrors?”

“To safely observe what might otherwise be—difficult to observe directly.” He moved back to the camera, made another small adjustment. “The human face is remarkably expressive. Small changes are often visible only in reflected light.”

She had the distinct sense that this was true and incomplete. The phrasing—safely observe—carried an implication she could not quite catch. It seemed to fit with the mirrors throughout the house, the care with which Darcy avoided meeting her eyes directly, her father’s Ovidian deflections.

“Will this take long?” she asked.

“Not today. I need a series of baseline images—your ordinary expression, at rest. Later sessions may be longer.”

She nodded. Darcy stepped to the side of the camera, his hand on some mechanism she could not see from where she sat. “If you could look toward the lens, please. Not directly at the mirror beside it—at the lens itself.”

She did. The room was very quiet. She could hear the midsummer sounds from the open window—birdsong, the faint voices of Mary and Kitty somewhere in the garden—and the small mechanical sounds of Darcy’s preparations. The light from the windows was warm on her face.

“Your medication this morning,” Darcy said, still adjusting something. “You took it at breakfast?”

“I did.” She could not keep a certain dryness from her tone. “As instructed.”

“And the dosage remains tolerably comfortable?”

“I have not noticed any particular discomfort.” This was not entirely true. The Rutinum compositum had a faintly bitter aftertaste that lingered despite the honey provided to disguise it but she had no wish to prolong the conversation into a discussion of her digestion.

“Good.” He moved to the other side of the camera. “The formulation is necessarily imprecise. Rue in particular has a narrow margin between therapeutic and excessive doses, and individual tolerance varies.”

“Rue,” Elizabeth said. “That’s Ruta graveolens, is it not?”

“It is.”

“I did not realize its uses extended to—” She paused, unsure how to finish the sentence. Sleepwalking seemed inadequate; episodes was Darcy’s term, clinical and uninformative; whatever it is I am not being told would be undiplomatic.

“Its applications are varied,” Darcy said. He had bent to look through the camera, and his voice came from beside the tripod, slightly muffled. “Vervain and St. John’s Wort complete the compound. The combination is more effective than any single element.”

“Hence Rutinum compositum,” Elizabeth said. “I confess I find the name even more grandiose now that I understand it describes a mixture of garden herbs.”

She had not meant it as a criticism, exactly, but Darcy straightened from the camera with what might have been the ghost of chagrin in his expression. “Scientific nomenclature tends toward the Latinate,” he said. “It confers an air of authority.”

“Does it require it?”

“In some quarters, yes.” He moved back to the tables, selected a plate from a neat stack, and returned to the camera. “If you could remain still, please. This first exposure will take approximately thirty seconds.”

She had been photographed before; she knew what was required of her. She fixed her gaze on the lens, kept her expression neutral, and did not move. Darcy opened the shutter. She heard the soft mechanical click, and the room went very quiet. Thirty seconds was longer than one might think. Her eyes wanted to drift toward the windows, toward the mirrors, toward anywhere but the blank glass eye of the lens. She held.

The click of the shutter closing. Darcy removed the plate, set it aside, and returned with another. “Once more, if you please. Same position.”

They repeated the process. Then again. On the fourth exposure she was conscious of a faint stiffness in her neck from holding the same posture, and on the fifth she allowed herself to shift slightly in the chair, at which point Darcy said, “That will do for today.”

She blinked. The afternoon light seemed brighter than it had been a moment ago. “That’s all?”

“For baseline documentation, yes.” He was returning the unused plates to their box, his movements precise and economical. “If you are willing, I would like to schedule another session at the end of the week—similar images, to establish consistency.”

“And then?”

“Then we determine whether there are any observable changes preceding your night episodes.” He closed the box, set it on the table, and turned back to her. “The goal is to identify a prodromal phase—a warning, if you will—that might allow earlier administration of Rutinum compositum before an episode fully develops.”

This was, again, reasonable. It was also deeply unsettling in ways Elizabeth could not fully articulate. “You believe my face shows something I don’t know I’m showing.”

“I believe,” Darcy said, “that the body often knows what the mind does not. Whether that knowledge is legible in a photograph is the question I hope to answer.”

She stood. The chair had left her back stiff. “I find it rather alarming,” she said, “to think that I might be observed by everyone around me in some state I cannot myself perceive.”

“The markers I am looking for,” Darcy said, “are subtle. Most people would not notice them. I may not notice them. That is why the camera is necessary.”

“Because the camera notices what you cannot?”

“Because the camera does not look away.”

The phrasing caught her oddly. She looked at him. He was standing beside the camera still, his expression unreadable, and she said, “I take it you have tried observation without the camera.”

“I have found it impractical.” His tone had gone slightly stiff. “The photographic plate is more reliable than human attention.”

This was almost certainly true. It was also not, Elizabeth thought, quite what he meant. She let it pass. “When will you develop these?”

“This evening, perhaps, or tomorrow afternoon. The darkroom is adjacent to my study; the process is straightforward.” He paused, then added, “If you would like to see the results, I can show you the plates once they are developed.”

“Would I understand what I was looking at?”

“Perhaps not entirely. But you would see yourself as the camera sees you, which is not without value.”

She considered this. The idea of standing in Darcy’s darkroom, looking at glass plates of her own face, felt uncomfortably intimate in a way she could not quite name. “I think,” she said, “I will wait until you have determined whether the images show anything of significance.”

“As you prefer.” He inclined his head slightly. “Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Bennet.”

She nodded and turned toward the door. She was halfway across the room when she paused and said, without looking back, “Dr. Darcy.”

“Yes?”

“The mirrors. You said they allow you to safely observe what would be difficult to observe directly.”

“Yes.”

“What would happen,” Elizabeth said, “if you tried to observe directly? Without the mirrors?”

The silence that followed was just long enough to be noticeable. Then: “I find reflected observation more reliable,” Darcy said. “Direct observation can be…difficult.”

This was not an answer, or not a complete one. Elizabeth turned to look at him. He was standing very still beside the camera, his expression carefully neutral, and she thought: He will not tell me. He has decided I should not know, and he will not tell me.

“I see,” she said.

She did not see. But she was beginning to suspect there were things being kept from her that the camera itself might inadvertently reveal, and that Darcy’s scrupulous formality was not entirely the product of medical detachment. She decided to ignore this for now, and went downstairs to find her father and his Ovid and the faint reassurance of wit deployed as shield.

Behind her, in the bright second-floor room, Darcy stood beside his camera and did not move for some time.