Honor Requires (Darcy and Elizabeth Variations)

Prologue

Pain returned before memory did.

It pulsed through Darcy’s ribs with every breath, sharp enough that he remained still for several moments after waking, uncertain where he was or why the air smelled of wet stone and old salt.

His cheek rested against something rough.

Straw perhaps. Or rotted rushes. The distinction hardly mattered.

Water dripped somewhere nearby.

He opened his eyes.

Darkness pressed close around him, broken only by pale light shining through the bars on a heavy wooden door several feet away. The faint glow revealed little beyond uneven walls slick with damp and the vague outline of iron bars farther down the corridor beyond his cell.

Darcy shifted carefully onto one elbow.

A mistake.

Pain tore through his side so violently he nearly collapsed back onto the floor. His hand flew instinctively toward the injury and came away damp. Blood. Not fresh, but enough to stiffen the torn fabric beneath his coat.

The beating.

Memory struck in fragments afterward.

Hands dragging him from the carriage.

Questions shouted over one another.

His refusal to sign anything he had not read.

Then fists. Boots. The crack of something hard against the side of his head.

Darcy pressed his fingers briefly against his temple. Tender swelling met his touch.

He drew a slow breath through his teeth and forced himself upright against the wall behind him. The chamber tilted alarmingly before settling again. Cold seeped through the stone at his back. His mouth was dry enough to ache.

For a time he listened.

The prison possessed its own language. Water dripping through cracks overhead. Distant footsteps. A cough somewhere far beyond the corridor. Metal scraping stone. Then silence again.

Not true silence. Never true silence.

Even the sea announced itself here.

He could hear it now beneath everything else, low and restless beyond the walls.

An island then.

Or near enough to the coast that the waves reached this place.

Darcy closed his eyes briefly.

His last clear memory before the attack rose with painful clarity. Ramsgate. Elizabeth standing near the terrace wall while the wind tugged strands of hair loose around her face. She had been laughing at something Mrs. Gardiner said, though he no longer remembered the remark itself.

Only her expression remained.

The memory struck with such sudden force that his throat tightened unexpectedly.

Elizabeth.

He bent forward, forearms braced against his knees while he gathered control of himself again. She would know nothing yet. Perhaps she still expected him in London within days. Perhaps she had already received some excuse manufactured on his behalf.

The thought disturbed him more than he cared to admit.

Darcy lifted his head slowly and examined the cell again, forcing his mind toward practical matters.

The room was scarcely eight feet across.

No window save a narrow slit high in the outer wall through which damp air entered in weak drafts.

A bucket stood in one corner beside a chipped pitcher. Someone had left bread near the door.

Untouched.

His stomach turned faintly at the sight of it.

He attempted to stand.

The first effort failed. His injured leg threatened to buckle beneath him before he managed to catch himself against the wall. A bitter laugh escaped him then, short and humorless.

Excellent, Darcy.

He tried again more slowly.

This time he remained upright, though every bruise in his body protested the effort.

He crossed the chamber in uneven steps until he reached the door.

Thick oak reinforced with iron bands. No handle inside.

He pressed his palm against it anyway as though pressure alone might reveal weakness hidden within the wood.

Nothing.

The corridor beyond remained empty.

“Hello?”

His voice sounded rougher than expected.

No answer came.

Darcy rested his forehead briefly against the cold iron and closed his eyes.

This could still be corrected.

The thought persisted stubbornly despite everything surrounding him. Men disappeared under suspicion during wartime. Mistakes occurred. Once his identity was confirmed, once he spoke to someone possessing actual authority—

Footsteps interrupted the thought.

Darcy straightened at once despite the pain in his side.

A lantern appeared beyond the bars, throwing uneven light across the corridor stones before a man stepped into view. Middle-aged. Broad shouldered. Weathered face. He carried a ring of keys at his belt and regarded Darcy with the detached expression of someone inspecting damaged cargo.

“You are awake then,” the gaoler muttered.

Darcy gripped one of the iron bars. “I demand to know by what authority I am held here.”

The man snorted and crouched near the door, setting down a dented tin cup.

“You demanded that earlier too.”

“I was denied an answer earlier.”

“Aye.”

The gaoler slid the cup through a narrow opening at the bottom of the door.

Water.

Darcy hesitated only briefly before taking it. His hands were less steady than he would have preferred. The water tasted stale and faintly metallic, but he drank every drop regardless.

“What prison is this?” he asked.

The man rose again. “Questions will not improve your situation.”

“My situation,” Darcy replied, struggling to keep anger from overtaking reason entirely, “is unlawful.”

That earned him the ghost of a reaction. Not amusement precisely. Weariness perhaps.

“Most men here believe themselves innocent.”

“I am not most men.”

The gaoler studied him for an instant longer. Lantern light flickered across the damp corridor walls.

“No,” he said at last. “You are not.”

Then he turned away.

Darcy stepped forward sharply. Pain flared through his ribs hard enough to stop him against the bars.

“Wait.”

The man paused without looking back.

“I require paper. Ink. A letter must be sent to my family.”

“No letters.”

“You cannot prevent correspondence indefinitely.”

“Can I not?” the gaoler answered.

The footsteps receded afterward, lantern glow shrinking gradually into darkness until only the sound of the sea remained once more.

Darcy lowered himself back against the wall.

No letters.

The reality of it settled heavily upon him then, less dramatic than terror and somehow worse for it. Isolation possessed a physical weight here. He could almost feel it pressing inward from the stone itself.

He dragged a hand through his hair and stared toward the slit of grey light high overhead.

How long had he been unconscious after the beating? Hours perhaps. More?

Georgiana would be frightened once his absence became impossible to explain away. Richard would investigate. Bingley too, if word reached him quickly enough.

Elizabeth—

His thoughts halted there.

Memories surfaced unbidden, tormenting him and increasing his longing.

Darcy shut his eyes hard against the recollections.

He had intended to speak upon his return. He loved her.

The admission had arrived gradually over months until one day it no longer resembled discovery at all, only fact. As inevitable as breath. As constant as thought itself.

And now—

Darcy stopped abruptly before the thought carried further.

The prison air had grown colder. Or perhaps exhaustion was finally overtaking him. His body ached with deepening insistence. Somewhere down the corridor another prisoner shouted incoherently before falling silent again.

Darcy drew one knee upward and rested his arm across it, staring into the darkness beyond the cell door.

He tried to imagine Elizabeth reading in the Gardiners’ sitting room. Tried to picture her walking along the cliffs above the sea with wind catching at her skirts. Ordinary moments. Simple ones.

The effort hurt more than his injuries.

Because the world beyond these walls still existed unchanged while he remained buried beneath stone like a man already half erased.

Darcy lowered his head.

Fear pressed fully through him—not fear of pain or imprisonment, but of absence. Of becoming unreachable. Lost somewhere beyond the reach of those who knew him best.

Of Elizabeth believing he had abandoned her without word or explanation.

His hand closed tightly against the rough fabric at his knee.

“No,” he said aloud into the darkness, though whether he spoke to the prison, to fate, or merely to himself he could not have said.

The sea maintained its endless assault beyond the walls.

Darcy leaned his head back against the stone and fixed his thoughts stubbornly upon Elizabeth Bennet—her voice, her wit, the warmth in her eyes when she forgot to guard it—and held there through the long hours before dawn.