CHAPTER FOURTEEN #2
Darcy, when she chanced a fleeting glance at him, looked even worse.
His usually faultless attire was a ruin, his dark hair matted and grey with ash; his face was pale, grimed with soot, and streaked with dried sweat.
The lines of exhaustion were so deep they seemed carved into bone.
His eyes were vacant. He had not slept at all, she was certain of it.
The air in the carriage was almost unbreathable from the caustic smell of smoke. They did not speak for there was nothing to say. They had not succeeded in their task; rather they had, with almost diabolical irony, accelerated the Blight’s destructive course.
When their carriage finally pulled into the courtyard of Pemberley, Colonel Fitzwilliam was there to meet them.
He had clearly been about to ride out, his anxious expression making it plain he had been awaiting their return.
But one look at them was enough to deepen that anxiety into outright alarm.
“Darcy! Elizabeth! My God, what happened?” he exclaimed. He rushed forward, one hand instinctively reaching out to steady Darcy, who swayed as he alighted from the carriage.
“We caused a fire near the ley line at Buxton,” said Darcy hoarsely.
“A fire?” the colonel repeated, his gaze sweeping over them, “Was anyone hurt?”
“We managed to evacuate all the village inhabitants. No lives were lost, thank God. But the homes are all gone. Destroyed.”
“Hell and damnation,” the colonel cursed softly.
Darcy closed his eyes wearily.
Mrs Reynolds, alerted by the commotion, now hurried towards them, her kind face paling with alarm as she took in their ravaged appearance. “Mr Darcy! Mrs Darcy! Oh, dear Lord, what has befallen you?”
“We are unharmed, Mrs Reynolds,” Darcy said, his voice still rough, but somehow he managed a reassuring nod. “Just exhausted. And in need of baths. And perhaps,” he added, with a ghost of his usual dry irony, “a very great deal of restorative brandy.”
But before any restorative measures could be taken, Brooks appeared in the doorway, his face even more sombre than usual.
“Sir, we have received an urgent summons from the Arcane Office. Lord Magister Theron awaits you in the communications room.”
Elizabeth’s stomach plummeted. Darcy’s face seemed to whiten further, his jaw tightening as if bracing against an anticipated blow. “Very well, Brooks. Inform the Lord Magister that I will attend him immediately.”
Without a word, without conscious thought, Elizabeth fell into step beside him, her own weariness momentarily forgotten in a surge of shared, unwelcome destiny.
“There is no need,” Darcy said, his voice flat with fatigue, “I will answer for what has happened.”
But Elizabeth shook her head. “I will face the Arcane Office with you.”
He stiffened at her words. In his sudden rigidity, Elizabeth realised that her offer of quiet support, coming now, served only to sharpen the memory of her cruel rejection.
This painful contradiction was one he seemingly had no reply to.
He simply continued to move forward, his silence that of a man too wounded to refuse, and too defeated to argue.
He could not fight the Blight, the Arcane Office, and her, all at once.
The communications room, with its shimmering silver basin, felt even colder than before. Lord Magister Theron’s image coalesced upon the surface of the water, his face exuding an aura of icy authority.
“Mr Darcy. Mrs Darcy,” his voice resonated from the basin in cutting tones, “You can be in no doubt as to why you have been summoned to answer before this Office. We have been informed of the catastrophe at Buxton. We have heard of an uncontrolled, wantonly destructive magical power unleashed, of an entire village devastated. Explain yourselves.”
Darcy stepped forward, moving with a deliberation that spoke less of pride and more of carefully managed pain. Yet when he spoke, his voice, though scratchy with smoke and fatigue, held a core of resolve.
“I do not dispute the report, my lord. In our attempt to cleanse the ley line at Buxton, my assessment of the volatile energies was in error, and my control proved insufficient to the task. This failing directly precipitated the disastrous outcome. I hold myself responsible.”
Lord Magister Theron’s image radiated an even colder displeasure. “You alone, Mr Darcy?” he said suspiciously, “Do you truly expect us to believe that Mrs Darcy played no part in this lamentable debacle?”
Before Darcy could reiterate his sole culpability, Elizabeth stepped forward, her chin lifted with determination beneath the streaks of soot. “The fault is entirely mine. The destructive power originated from my magic, not his.”
Darcy’s head turned sharply towards her. Before the Lord Magister could respond, he spoke quickly, his voice tight with a renewed urgency, “While her magical input is a vital component of the Concordance, her magic acted as I directed it. The ultimate accountability rests with me.”
The Lord Magister’s eyes narrowed, his gaze shifting between the two of them. “So, we have Mr Darcy claiming sole responsibility due to a failure of judgement and direction, and Mrs Darcy claiming sole responsibility due to a failure of magical discipline. A most comprehensive acceptance of blame.”
Guilt churned in her stomach. The Lord Magister’s summary was an injustice. Darcy had claimed responsibility out of honour, but she knew the truth. The destruction had been fuelled by her. She opened her mouth to speak again, but the Lord Magister spoke first:
“I have heard enough. I cannot understate the atrocity. An entire community has been displaced. Trust in our mages has been shattered, and the fabric of magical stability in that region has been grievously, perhaps irreparably wounded.
“This Office now finds itself in a most invidious position. This act of gross negligence and magical irresponsibility warrants the full measure of justice: stripping your magic, imprisonment, or perhaps even transportation. Yet to enact such a sentence would be greatly detrimental to the war. The Concordance is a weapon we can ill afford to lose.”
“However,” he continued, his voice dropping again to that steely tone that made Elizabeth’s blood run cold, “the law is the law. The authority of this Office cannot permit such a grievous transgression to pass. We cannot allow the perception that any are above the statutes that govern us all. It would set a dangerous precedent.”
The Lord Magister paused, allowing the terrifying implications of his words to settle in the room.
Darcy’s face, already pale beneath the ash, seemed to take on a greyish tinge.
“You will be summoned, in due course, before the full Arcane Court to receive their final judgement,” Lord Magister Theron declared then, each word falling with the finality of a judge’s gavel.
“Given the extenuating circumstances, I shall recommend a pecuniary penalty to the Court. A fine, Mr Darcy, of sixty thousand pounds, to be levied against the estates of Pemberley.”
Sixty thousand pounds. Elizabeth felt sick at the pronounced sum.
It was almost unimaginable, a king’s ransom.
It would be a tremendous burden to lay upon Darcy, upon Pemberley, already so afflicted by the Blight, on top of the considerable sums he was undoubtedly expecting to expend for the immediate relief and eventual rebuilding of the village at Buxton.
Darcy, however, received the pronouncement with stoicism.
There was only a slight clenching of the muscles around his jaw, and the faintest whitening of his knuckles where his hands were clasped behind his back.
“I understand, my lord,” he said, his voice betraying nothing of the crippling burden just placed upon him.
“You would do well to proceed with more circumspection,” came the Lord Magister’s warning, his gaze sweeping once more over both of them, lingering on Elizabeth with with an unnervingly speculative gaze.
With that, his image flickered, wavered, and dissolved, leaving the surface of the water in the basin still.
The silence he left in the communications room rang with the frigid echo of condemnation. Darcy did not move, a figure carved from granite, and Elizabeth felt too ill to speak.
Then, a convulsive tremor ran through him.
The illusion of his composure was shattered. In its place, she saw the public shame of the crippling fine, the private humiliation of being spurned by her, and the haunting, relentless guilt over the village he had let burn. His honour, his heart, and his conscience were all grievously wounded.
This was the man who had, amidst their bitterest argument, declared his ardent love. And oh how she had repaid him.
Her heart clenched painfully.
“Mr Darcy,” she started softly, not quite sure what she would say, what paltry and insufficient words she could possibly offer.
An apology felt like a dangerous imposition.
He was a man holding himself together by a thread of will alone.
To ask him to bear the burden of her remorse now would be to risk the complete collapse of what little he had left.
It was a comfort she could not demand at his expense.
She was therefore entirely unprepared for his next words to be not of his own burdens, but of the danger she had unknowingly courted.
“To offer yourself for their censure was a precarious position to take. The Arcane Office would readily sacrifice a relatively unknown woman to preserve their own reputation.”
He fell silent, a faint wince tightening the corner of his mouth as if he instantly wished to recall his words.
The pause that followed was a statement in itself, a conscious withholding of more, and yet she heard his unspoken sentiment as clearly as if he had voiced it: I would not have had you face that danger.
You ought to have allowed me to answer for the catastrophe.
And it was this very selflessness, so contrary to her expectations, that brought a fresh sense of discomfiture.
She knew that the Elizabeth of yesterday would have listened with uncharitable ears, hearing only the familiar insults to her connections and judgement, while remaining deaf to the honourable motive that lay beneath.
This uncomfortable truth forced her to consider the deeply unsettling possibility that her dislike for him was not purely a reflection of his character, but of the flaws in her own.
She swallowed hard, knowing no softness in her voice now could ever truly atone for the viciousness in her words then.
But it was a start, a meagre offering where an apology was due.
She chose her own reply with care. “Pray, do not think I am anything but immensely grateful for the honour of your defence. It is a kindness I feel I have done little to deserve. The failure was truly mine, and I could not have, in good conscience, left you to bear it alone.”
This seemed to pull Darcy’s full attention, as he finally pushed away from the basin.
She saw then that his exhaustion was a visible thing, a force that had stripped him of all his usual defences.
There was hurt in his brittle stillness; it was the same bruised pride she had seen in him before, now layered with a deeper, more personal sorrow.
Her words had only seemed to give him further pain.
“What I said before the Office was said in earnest. I have no wish to quarrel over it,” he said quietly.
Elizabeth, seeing the shadows under his eyes, agreed.
At the top of the grand staircase, Darcy paused.
“I must see to the immediate necessities,” he said, his voice still strained. “Alerting Brooks. And my steward. Ensuring the household is prepared for whatever inquiries, or indeed, whatever repercussions, may come.”
“And I shall have a word with Mrs Reynolds, so that comforts such as a hot bath and a suitable repast may be made ready for you once you have discharged your duties.”
Still he would not, or could not, meet her gaze. His attention remained fixed on some distant, unseen point down the corridor. The memory of her rejection, so recent, so brutal, was a wall between them, making her presence a source of both comfort and pain.
He remained silent for so long that Elizabeth thought he might simply walk away without a word, leaving her standing in the echoing corridor with her rejected olive branch.
But when at last he spoke, his voice held none of the anger or resentment she expected, but was instead quiet and hollowed out. “You have my thanks.”
With a final, weary inclination of his head, Darcy turned towards his study. She then sought out Mrs Reynolds and made the promised arrangements before finally retiring to the solace of her own chambers.
Her sleep was haunted by screams of terror.