Chapter Twenty-Three #2
No words passed between them. None could have, not in that room, not with half the ton about them and every ear sharpened by habit and idleness. But she had never been more grateful for the colonel’s intelligence—or for his capacity to understand much in an instant.
His eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion of her, but in thought. Then he bent, not enough to draw notice, but enough that his words might reach her and no other. “I will call on Matlock House on the morrow,” he murmured. “To speak with you.”
Elizabeth did not trust herself to answer immediately. Her heart was beating too fast; her mind was already leaping ahead, grasping at what this might mean, what might at last be said.
At length, she gave the smallest nod.
Richard immediately assumed an upright posture, his countenance transitioning to a neutral and conventional demeanor. Anne, who had missed nothing, glanced from him to Elizabeth with perception, but asked no question. For that too Elizabeth loved her even more.
The conversation resumed around them or appeared to at least. Lord Matlock spoke again. Lady Matlock observed something about the crowd. Jane turned, perhaps to ask Elizabeth some gentle question she did not hear.
For Elizabeth, however, the scene had already changed. Tomorrow. At last—tomorrow—someone else would speak his true name aloud.
Morning light filtered through the tall windows of the small parlor Elizabeth had claimed for her own use at Matlock House.
The room was more peaceful than the grander apartments below, removed from the constant movement of servants and callers, and she had come to value it for that reason.
It afforded her a measure of privacy she had not known in Hertfordshire, and in recent days, that privacy had become essential.
She had not seen him in the park.
The absence pressed upon her more than she had anticipated.
She had gone out at the usual hour, walking the familiar paths with Jane for a time before separating under the pretense of some small errand.
She had lingered longer than necessary, her steps unconsciously circling the places where she had come, more than once, to encounter him.
Every figure at a distance had drawn her attention.
Every approaching gentleman had stirred a brief, foolish hope. He had not appeared.
Now, seated near the window with a book open upon her lap and unread for the better part of an hour, she felt the strain of that disappointment settle more deeply.
It was not merely that she had wished to see him.
It was that she had come, without quite admitting it to herself, to rely upon those fleeting encounters as proof that he remained within her reach.
Without them, the distance between who he had been and who he now presented himself to be seemed to widen again.
A knock sounded at the door. Elizabeth closed the book at once, though she had not turned a page, and called for the visitor to enter.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was shown in a moment later. He dismissed the servant with a word and waited only until the door had closed before turning fully toward her.
There was no preamble. “How is he alive?” The question landed between them with a force that stripped away every remaining pretense.
Elizabeth rose slowly. She could only look at him, the reality of the moment settling fully into place. This was no longer a private burden borne in silence. Someone else knew. Someone else had seen what she had seen. Tears welled in her eyes.
“I do not know,” she said, despair coloring her tone.
Richard studied her closely, searching her face with an intensity that would have unsettled her at any other time. Now, she welcomed it. There was relief in being asked plainly, in answering without disguise.
“You are certain,” he said.
“Yes.”
He exhaled, though it did not seem to ease him. “And he—” Richard stopped himself, then began again more deliberately. “He does not acknowledge it.”
“No.” Elizabeth moved away from the window, needing motion, needing something to anchor the restless energy that had not left her since the previous evening. She gestured toward the chairs near the hearth. “Sit, if you please. We shall speak more easily.”
He did so, though his posture remained taut, his attention fixed upon her with the apprehension she might vanish if he looked away.
She took the seat opposite him, folding her hands in her lap for want of anything else to do with them. “I have known since I first met him as the count,” she said.
Richard’s brows drew together. “From the first?”
“Yes.” She met his gaze steadily. “Not in the sense of proof, but in certainty. I could not have mistaken him, not even then.” She did not speak of the shock, the disorientation, the moment in which the world had seemed to tilt beneath her feet.
Those things belonged to her alone. What mattered now was the truth that had followed.
“He denied it,” she said in evident frustration. “Or rather, he refused to acknowledge it. He would not meet me in it. Every word, every look was…carefully chosen. He acted like he spoke to a stranger.”
Richard’s expression hardened. “That is absurd.”
“It is deliberate,” she said.
He fell silent momentarily, absorbing that. “And you are certain.”
“I am.”
She hesitated then, not from uncertainty, but from what she would say next.
“It was confirmed after Almack’s.”
Richard leaned forward slightly. “In what manner?”
She related how she had sneaked into his carriage, how he had spoken the name Darcy before depositing her at Matlock House. She related how the truth had dawned on her afterward as she reflected upon the encounter.
Richard did not interrupt. There was a gravity in his attention now that matched her own.
“I have watched him since,” she went on. “In company, in conversation, in silence. It is all there, beneath what he chooses to show. The restraint, the distance he maintains between all but his ‘brother.’ The…control.”
She met Richard’s gaze.
“He is not lost to himself.” A pause. “Not that I have observed.”
“But he is hiding,” Richard said.
“Yes.”
“And from you.”
She held his gaze. “From everyone.”
The words lingered. Richard leaned back at last, though the tension did not leave him. “Then the question remains. Why?”
Elizabeth gave a small, humorless smile. “That, I believe, is the same question I would ask him.”
“And I intend to,” he said.
She could not help it; a faint note of levity touched her expression despite the heaviness of all else. “Then perhaps you will learn more than I have.”
He returned the look, though only briefly. “I should like to think so.”
“You will not,” she said gently. “He will not be easily moved.”
Richard’s jaw tightened. “He will answer me.”
“Or refuse you as he has refused me.” Something in her tone must have reached him, for he studied her again, more closely this time.
“You have tried to speak with him again?”
“Yes. He will not be moved.” Elizabeth shook her head sadly.
“And he would not—”
“He would not meet me in truth,” she said. “He speaks to me as Count Vendicarsi. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
Silence settled between them once more.
Elizabeth looked down at her hands, then back up again, the next words pressing forward with a force she could no longer contain. “I fear for him.”
Richard’s expression shifted at once. “In what way?”
She rose again, unable to remain seated any longer. The room felt too small, the air too still.
“There is a quality about him,” she said. “A hardness that goes beyond caution or concealment.”
Richard stood as well, drawn by the urgency in her voice.
“He has suffered,” she stated. “We both must assume that much. Whatever has been done to him, whatever he has endured—it has altered him. I see it in the way he holds himself, in the way he watches others, in the way he chooses every word before he speaks it.”
She turned to face him fully. “And I fear his true purpose is vengeance.”
Richard did not deny it. “I thought as much,” he said. “Why else would he move in society as he does?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes for a brief moment, then opened them again. “If that is so, then he walks a dangerous path. Not only for those he seeks to punish—but for himself.”
Richard’s voice was low, but steady. “Darcy was never a man to act without reason.”
“No,” she agreed. “But reason may be bent when pain is deep enough.”
He considered that. “You think he may go too far.”
“I think he may lose himself,” she said.
The words fell into the space between them with finality. For a time, neither spoke.
Then Richard drew a slow breath. “Then we do not allow it.”
Elizabeth looked at him, something like hope stirring where there had been only fear. “No,” she said. “We do not.”
He stepped closer, his expression resolute now in a way that reminded her strongly of the man who had stood beside Darcy in every trial of his youth. “I will speak to him,” he said. “Not as a stranger. Not as a curious observer. As his cousin. As his friend.”
“And I,” Elizabeth said, her voice lowering but not weakening, “will not cease to reach for him. He may deny me, but he cannot erase what exists between us.”
Richard inclined his head. “Then we act together.”
“Yes.”
There was no need for further elaboration. The understanding between them was complete.
They would not stand aside. They would not allow him to disappear behind the mask he had constructed. Whatever had been done to him, whatever he believed himself now bound to do, they would meet it—not with force, but with truth.
Elizabeth felt the pressure upon her chest ease, if only a bit.
He was no longer alone in his knowing.
And neither was she.
Together, they would find a way to reach him, before he was lost beyond recall.