Chapter Thirteen #4
The back parlor pleased him most. It was not the grandest room in the house, but it possessed the best view.
A fire had already been lit there, and the dark green walls caught the light in such a way that the whole room seemed close and rich without becoming oppressive.
Books had been placed upon the side tables, and a decanter waited upon a tray near the hearth. The curtains stood open.
Darcy moved toward the window.
From there, one looked not upon his own side of the street, but across and a little down, where the doors of two houses stood in sober and distinguished proximity.
Darcy House. And Matlock House. He stood perfectly still.
For an instant, not longer, the sight of them seemed to narrow the years between what had been and what now was.
He had imagined this view before the purchase was complete, had weighed its usefulness in terms of observation and opportunity, had accounted for every practical advantage it offered.
The reality of it struck more deeply than he had intended.
Darcy House remained outwardly unchanged.
Its stone was the same, its steps the same, its door just as he remembered.
Matlock House, too, stood with all the assurance of long-established rank.
He told himself he was only observing.
As he watched, the door of Matlock House opened.
A young woman emerged. She held a little boy by either hand, one to each side, while behind her came a footman and a nursemaid carrying parcels and cloaks enough to suggest an afternoon excursion.
The children moved with the irrepressible energy of their age, half skipping, half tugging, but the lady kept them in order with an ease that spoke of habit rather than effort.
Darcy’s hand tightened upon the window frame. She crossed the street. Not toward Ashcombe House itself, but past it, and as she did, her face turned just enough that the line of her cheek, the carriage of her head, the motion of her step struck him with such force that his breath failed him.
Elizabeth. The name surged through him before reason could intervene. It was absurd. Impossible.
He leaned forward the slightest degree, his gaze fixed upon her as she passed the window.
The children were speaking all at once, one trying to pull ahead, the other lagging to look back at something the footman had said.
The lady laughed—delicately, perhaps, or perhaps he only imagined it—and drew them onward with patient command.
Not Elizabeth. How could it be? Five years had passed.
London was full of women with dark eyes, with graceful figures, with an ease of movement that might recall another if one were fool enough to invite the comparison.
Hope, memory, and loneliness were poor judges of resemblance.
And she had come from Matlock House. Why would Elizabeth be there?
Darcy stepped back at once, his expression hardening with self-contempt.
Fanciful nonsense.
He had disciplined himself too long, survived too much, to indulge such weakness now.
Elizabeth Bennet belonged to another life, one buried as surely as Fitzwilliam Darcy had been buried beneath accusation, falsehood, and stone.
If she lived in London, if she had married, if she had children near the age of those little boys—what was that to him in this moment?
He could not afford to start at shadows and call them by her name.
Still, his heart protested his mind’s assertions.
Behind him, Lucien entered the room with the unconcern of a man who had never trained himself to read his friend’s face and had therefore become remarkably expert at doing so.
“You look,” he said lightly, “as though the walls have spoken.”
Darcy released the curtain he had not realized he was holding. “They have done nothing of the sort.”
Lucien glanced past him toward the window, then back again. “No?”
“It is nothing.”
“Ah.” Lucien moved nearer the fire, warming his hands. “Then it is, no doubt, something.”
Darcy gave him a look that would once have silenced most men. Lucien only smiled.
“At least tell me this,” he said. “Are you satisfied?”
Darcy let his gaze move once more over the room—the ordered elegance of it, the warmth, the view, the sense of readiness in all things.
“Yes. I am satisfied.” And he was. Ashcombe House stood ready.
His servants were in place. Stone lived under his roof, near enough to report daily and be sent out at a moment’s notice.
The world would now see the Count of Vendicarsi installed in proper style, established with enough wealth and consequence to excite curiosity without provoking disbelief.
Everything was proceeding as it ought.
If, in the space of a single heartbeat, he had mistaken a stranger for the woman he loved, that was no more than the mind’s treachery. He would master it, as he had mastered worse.
When he moved away from the window at last, he did so with the faint and unwelcome impression that some part of the life he had lost had just passed within a few feet of him, close enough to touch—and impossible to reclaim.