Chapter 34 #2
The steward hesitated. “Returned to Yorkshire, sir. Some emergency for which his tenants required his attention.”
Indeed? Darcy’s gaze shifted to the card room, where only one table had been laid. “Captain Ellis?”
“Still in Sussex, I believe. He married last month.”
“Yes, I was aware. I had heard he and his bride expected… well.” Darcy shook his head and let that die. Ellis would have talked of nothing but horses and household arrangements, and Darcy would have let him. There was comfort in such particulars. He had not known how much until now.
The steward lingered, as though expecting another name. Darcy supplied it. “Sir Robert Crosby?”
“Remains in Manchester, sir. Business troubles.”
Darcy inclined his head and dismissed him. The room beyond lay quieter than it ought to have been, chairs neatly arranged, fires banked rather than blazing. A few gentlemen sat scattered along the walls, absorbed in their own concerns, not one of them a face he would have sought.
He crossed to the dining room, then stopped short. Only one table had been prepared. No scent of food rose to meet him, no low murmur of anticipation. A servant stood idle near the sideboard, hands folded.
“Is dinner delayed?” Darcy asked.
“No, sir,” came the reply. “There have been fewer reservations this evening.”
Darcy turned away before the explanation could gather shape. He had no appetite for conjecture dressed as reassurance. Instead, he made for the far corridor, where the fencing salle adjoined the club by long-standing arrangement.
The door stood open. Inside, the racks were orderly, foils polished and waiting. But the room itself felt hollowed out. No voices echoed off the walls, no staccato footfalls marked the hour. A single lamp burned, its light falling across a floor unmarred by recent use.
A familiar figure emerged from the adjoining room, sleeves rolled, hands chalked. “Mr Darcy,” the master said, with evident surprise. “I had not expected—”
“Nor had I, Monsieur Armand,” Darcy replied, his gaze sweeping the empty space. “Is instruction concluded for the day? A little early, is it not?”
The man gave a rueful smile. “Concluded for most days, of late. Gentlemen have been otherwise engaged. Travel delayed. Matters at home.”
Darcy removed his gloves, folded them once, then again. “I am sorry to hear that. Very sorry, indeed, for I had come anticipating some company.”
Monsieur Armand hesitated. “If you wish it, sir, I could oblige you with a private lesson. It would be irregular, but you find me at odd ends.”
Darcy did not hesitate. “That will do.”
He set his gloves aside and stepped forward, the decision made not because it promised relief, but because stillness no longer could.
Darcy took the foil Monsieur Armand offered him and weighed it once in his hand.
The balance was familiar. Reassuring. He adjusted his grip, tested the flex with a short, controlled movement, then stepped onto the piste as though he had never left it.
They saluted.
“Begin with footwork,” the master said.
Darcy did. Advance, retreat, recover. Again.
The rhythm settled into him at once. His legs burned where they should.
His shoulders loosened. Sweat gathered at his temples, honest and earned.
When the master corrected him—two fingers to the elbow, a brief shake of the head—Darcy adjusted without thought.
Good.
They moved into simple engagements. Parry. Riposte. Reset. The foil rang against its mate, the sound sharp in the empty room. Darcy pressed, then yielded, his body remembering its lessons with gratifying obedience.
“Again,” Monsieur Armand said.
Darcy lunged. Clean. Too clean. He recovered a fraction too fast and found himself guarding against nothing at all.
The master lowered his blade. “Do not hurry the return.”
Darcy inclined his head and set himself again. He advanced more slowly this time, judging the distance with care. The next exchange was brutal. Steel met steel, the familiar jolt running up his arm. Precisely what his body craved just now.
Another pass. Then another.
Heat gathered beneath his collar. Then sweat. He wiped his brow with the back of his wrist and resumed his stance.
“Once more.”
Darcy obeyed. The exchange quickened. Parry followed parry without pause, the master pressing him faster than before, narrowing the space between them until there was no room for thought at all. Only reaction.
Darcy met each engagement cleanly, but the effort cost him more than it should have. His arm burned. His footing shortened. He pressed to compensate, forcing the distance rather than reading it.
Steel rang again, sharper this time. Darcy recovered too quickly, already guarding against the next attack before it had formed.
That was when the room darkened—not fully, but enough that the line of the blade wavered before his eyes.
Lamplight flared too bright along the steel, then was swallowed in shadow.
Heat rushed where none belonged, and the air seemed too thick for his blade.
His arm moved to counter a strike that did not come.
Steel met nothing.
“Mr Darcy?”
Darcy shook himself. No more of this madness! “Again,” he said, before Monsieur Armand could speak.
They resumed. The master altered the pattern—narrowed the advance, restrained the reach—drawing the exercise inward until it demanded attention without offering release. Darcy complied at once. He always had. His body answered instruction even when his thoughts would not.
At first, the correction brought him round to his old routines.
The familiar measures returned: the clean press of the floor beneath his foot, the expected resistance of steel, the sequence of movements he had rehearsed often enough to trust without question.
This was what he had come for. This was what he understood.
But the exertion did not gather him as it should have.
Instead, it dispersed him. The rhythm he sought refused to settle, each exchange requiring more effort than the last, as though the discipline itself were slipping just beyond his reach.
He found himself counting where he never had before—pace, distance, recovery—forcing order where it ought to have arisen of its own accord.
He drove into the next exchange and waited—waited—for the familiar yielding, the moment when strain tipped into command. It did not come.
He pressed again at once, too hard, breaking distance to force what should have answered him without demand.
His focus wavered at the edge of the next engagement, not enough to halt him, but enough to spoil the instinct that ordinarily guided his hand. He corrected, then corrected again, pressing forward to compensate, seeking firmness in momentum where patience would once have sufficed.
And then—without warning, without sense—her face was there.
Not as memory, not as image recalled, but as presence: intent, unyielding, fixed upon him with that unmistakable look of challenge she reserved for moments when she would not be moved.
It came not gently, nor did it recede when he willed it to.
It stood between him and the line of the blade, intolerable in its clarity.
Darcy broke distance abruptly. His foot slid where it should have held.
The master withdrew at once. “You are overreaching.”
Darcy drew himself back into position with visible care, each movement deliberate, contained. “Continue.”
They did. The pattern sharpened, the exchanges quickened, but Darcy no longer trusted the interval between them.
He drove forward when he ought to have waited, his grip tightening until the hilt pressed hard into his palm.
The discomfort grounded him. He welcomed it, leaning into the certainty of strain, as though pain honestly earned might drown out what discipline could not.
Still, the pressure in his chest did not ease.
“Again,” he said.
Monsieur Armand hesitated, then obliged.
Darcy lunged too soon. The master’s blade slid past his guard with a neat, economical movement that would have scored him cleanly. Darcy felt it even as he twisted aside, a jolt of something like shock passing through him—disproportionate, unwelcome.
He stepped back, breath uneven now, the world narrowing to the strip of floor before him.
“That will suffice,” the master said quietly.
Darcy lowered his blade but did not release it at once. Sweat ran down his spine, chilled already where the air touched it. His legs trembled—not with fatigue alone, but with something unspent.
At last, he set the foil aside.
The room offered him nothing in return. No order restored. No clarity earned. Only the knowledge that motion had failed him—and that whatever waited beyond it would not be met by discipline alone.