Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
The direction the clerk had given him stood in a street that resisted easy classification. Not poor, not respectable—brick worn smooth by use rather than broken by neglect, windows crowded close together as though privacy were an afterthought. Darcy paused once to confirm the number, then knocked.
There was a moment of silence, and Darcy knocked again. This time, the knock was followed by the thump of footsteps, then the door opened a narrow span.
A man filled the gap—broad-shouldered, thick through the chest, his shirtsleeves rolled up despite the cold. His hands were marked by old scars and ingrained dirt, the sort that did not come away entirely. He looked Darcy over without hurry, eyes unblinking, expression incurious.
“Aye?” he said.
“I am here to see Mr Harrowe,” Darcy replied.
The man’s mouth twitched, though not into anything like a smile. “He ain’t seein’ no one.”
“I believe you misunderstand. I have come from the Royal Library archives.”
“Have you,” the man said. “That’s fine.”
“Yes. And I have been given this address on the understanding that Mr Harrowe would be found here.”
The man shifted his weight, the door creaking faintly against the jamb. “Well, you’ve found me. An’ I’m tellin’ you he ain’t seein’ no one.”
Darcy’s gaze flicked briefly past him, taking in what little of the interior he could see—books stacked without order along the walls, loose papers everywhere, a chair shoved aside to make room for a table scarred by use rather than age.
“I am not in the habit,” Darcy said evenly, “of being dismissed at the threshold.”
“Then you’re knockin’ at the wrong door,” the man replied, unperturbed. He stepped back as if to close the door.
Darcy’s hand shot out to brace against the wood. “My business is not trivial. I am seeking information pertaining to pre-Conquest custodianship of ecclesiastical lands—specifically those preserved through monastic record and popular tradition.”
The man blinked. Once. Slowly.
“Popular tradition,” he repeated. “That what they’re callin’ it now.”
Darcy glanced around at the faces in the street.
More than one onlooker had slowed at the sight of a well-dressed gentleman knocking at this door.
With his luck, the gossip rags would be full of his name tomorrow.
He lowered his voice, but was no longer courteous.
“I am acquainted with the Harrowe ballads. Or rather, with the scholarly disdain afforded them. I was directed here precisely because I understand Mr Harrowe has examined materials others have chosen to ignore. The ones I currently seek.”
The man leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, blocking it entirely now. “You a scholar, then?”
“I am a man who does not have the leisure to wait upon institutional approval,” Darcy replied. “And I will not be turned away by a servant who lacks the authority to do so.”
The man’s brows lifted at that. Just a fraction.
“A servant?”
“I am certain,” Darcy growled, “that your master will find what I have to say interesting, at least.”
For a moment longer, he said nothing. Then he reached up and pushed the door open fully, stepping back just enough to allow Darcy a clear view inside.
“You might want to watch how you say that,” he remarked mildly. “Especially to the man you’ve come to see.”
Darcy stared at him. “You—”
“Aldous Harrowe,” the man said, extending one large, scarred hand as if this were the most ordinary of introductions.
“Compiler of certain archaic poetry. Chronic nuisance to clerks. Occasional dockworker to put bread and ale on the table. An’ at present, the only person in this house inclined to decide whether you’re worth the trouble. ”
Darcy accepted the man’s hand numbly, still staring. The cockney speech, the hulking form, the gruff ways… could this man possibly have anything of value to tell him?
Harrowe tilted his head, studying Darcy now with open interest. “Well?”
Heat. Too much of it—pressed beneath the skin, caught there, with nowhere to go.
Then cold, sharp as pins, racing along her arms, her ribs, her spine.
She tried to draw her knees closer, but found they would not answer her.
The blankets weighed a great deal. Or perhaps it was only that her limbs had grown distant, untrustworthy.
Water touched her mouth. It tasted wrong. Bitter, thin, with a faint edge of leaves. Tea. She turned her head away, but the cup followed, insistent, brushing her lip again. Someone murmured encouragement, the sound sliding past without settling into sense.
Leather and dust. Books. Still the library, then. Not her room. Her father would not have allowed it. The thought pleased her dimly, then slipped away.
The air shuddered. Or perhaps the floor.
She could not be certain which. A noise rose beyond the walls—voices?
Shouting?—too many of them, tangled together, swelling and breaking apart again.
Her heart answered it without asking her leave, hammering against her ribs until she wondered vaguely whether it might escape altogether.
Cold again. Her teeth struck once, twice, a sound she recognised only because it echoed too sharply in her head. Hands came to her arms, firm, steadying. Her father’s, she thought. They had always been warm.
“Elizabeth.” Her name, low, close. She tried to open her eyes. Light flared instead, white and unfocused, streaked at the edges. She shut them again at once.
Something brushed her cheek. Cloth. A handkerchief, damp. The pressure lingered too long. She turned her face away and found she could not tell why.
A bark cut through the fog—sudden, sharp, near enough to startle her fully awake for a breath or two.
Brutus? The sound carried with it the cold of morning walks, the snap of frost beneath her boots, the solid comfort of a body pressed close at her side.
She reached for it without knowing she had done so, her fingers curling weakly into the coverlet.
“Quiet,” someone said—not to her. “She is worse again today.”
The barking ceased, but the echo of it remained, pacing the edges of her thoughts.
Her mother’s voice rose, broke, rose again—words tumbling over one another, all urgency and dread. Jane answered her, soft and uselessly hopeful, as though gentleness alone might persuade the world to behave itself. Elizabeth tried to smile at that and could not remember how.
Another voice joined them then. Smooth. Even. It slid easily into the spaces the others left open, as though it had always belonged there.
“—not a common fever,” it was saying. “You see that, sir, do you not?”
Her father replied, but she lost the words midway through the sentence, caught instead on the cadence of the other man’s speech. It carried no strain. No fear. Only assurance, laid carefully atop uncertainty like a hand smoothing wrinkled linen.
Elizabeth turned her head, seeking the source of it. The movement cost her more than it ought. The room tilted in response, bookshelves leaning inward, the ceiling pressing lower. She swallowed against a wave of nausea and tasted tea again, though no cup touched her mouth.
The voice came closer.
“It is that burden I told you about,” it said gently. “External. Not of her making, but brought upon her, all the same.”
Something in her recoiled at that—not violently, not consciously, but with the same instinct that had drawn her hand toward the echo of barking. She tried to speak. Her tongue felt thick, misplaced.
“Papa?” she managed, or thought she did.
A hand closed over hers at once. Her father’s. Solid. Real. She clung to it, anchoring herself there while the other voice continued on, patient, persuasive, explaining things she could not follow and did not wish to hear.
The heat surged again, sharper this time, chased immediately by a chill so deep it left her gasping. The library darkened at the edges, sound thinning to a narrow thread she could barely hold.
Somewhere beyond it all, a dog scratched once at the door.
Then even that was gone.
The tea was dark, over-steeped, and smelled faintly of something burnt. Harrowe sloshed it into a chipped cup without apology and shoved it across the table as though this were the natural conclusion to any conversation of consequence.
“Drink,” he said. “You look like a man who’s been starvin’ himself on principle.”
Darcy did not touch it.
Harrowe glanced at the untouched cup, then back at Darcy, his expression shifting—not offense, but calculation, as though filing away another inconsistency.
“So,” he said at last, lowering himself into the chair opposite. The chair protested, but held. “You’re him.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened. “If you mean to be obscure, I warn you I have no patience left for it.”
Harrowe barked a laugh. “No, no. Not obscure. Just… unlikely.” He leaned forward, beefy forearms braced on the table, eyes alight now in a way that had nothing to do with class or manners. “I’ve been lookin’ for you near twenty years, sir. An’ here you sit, complainin’ about my tea.”
“I am not—” Darcy stopped, pressed his fingers briefly to the bridge of his nose, then lowered his hand with care. “You have been looking for what, precisely?”
Harrowe’s gaze did not waver. “The heir.”
Darcy’s pulse jumped, sharp and immediate, as though struck. He sat back slightly, the chair legs scraping the floor. “Heir to what?”
There it was. Bare. Unvarnished. The question that had gnawed at him since Matlock’s library, since the book, since the dreams that refused to loosen their grip. His own family had the benefit of tradition, family lineage to point to him and claim he stood to inherit some legacy or other.
But that someone else had identified that thread, discovered a hole, and concluded that there must be a man to fill it…
Harrowe studied him for a long moment before answering. Not with the indulgence of a scholar addressing a novice, but with something closer to reverence—tempered, oddly, by relief.