Chapter 39 #2
The study received him in lamplight and order. Books towering on the shelves. The clock upon the mantel marking time with a patience that felt, at present, almost offensive. Darcy shut the door and stood with his hand upon it a moment, listening through the oak for the sound of her footsteps.
But that was silly. The ladies had all retired for the night, and he had watched Brutus stubbornly following Elizabeth up the stairs himself.
He crossed to the desk and set his palms upon its surface, leaning there without sitting.
His thoughts refused their accustomed discipline.
They returned, again and again, to the shape of her presence in the house—so near it altered the air, so ordinary it seemed impossible that it should cost anything at all.
Darcy forced himself into the chair and reached for the topmost paper.
His steward’s hand. A sensible request for more funds from the coffer to cover the increased grain price he had negotiated.
He read the first line, then the second, then found himself at the end of the paragraph with no memory of how he had arrived there.
The page slid aside. Another followed it. Then another. Each failed him in turn.
At last, he abandoned the pretence and reached instead for the folded sheet Harrowe had sent that morning, already creased thin from having been opened, read, and read again. Harrowe’s hand was heavy and uneven, the ink pressed deep as though he had not troubled himself with elegance.
Mr. Darcy,
I have not come because I am still at the work, and because what I have found does not yet warrant the disturbance. I write only so you will not suppose I have forgot you.
Beyond the Liber and the Ballads, there are only scraps worthy of the name. Late marginal hands, a travelling bard’s verse copied by a parish clerk, a death notice altered and crossed through. None of it would stand before a learned society, which may be the reason it endures at all.
One such verse follows Bedevere into old age. It claims he lived long, retained his name, and was spoken of with respect, but never again with honour. The bard dwells much on barrenness: of land, of house, of legacy. I send it for what it is worth, which may be little.
There is also this: several late sources describing the years after the Roman withdrawal record flooding, land loss, and sudden abandonment of settled places.
The accounts disagree in detail and offer no explanation.
Their only commonality is timing. That may signify something, or nothing at all. I cannot yet say.
I will come when there is something worth the hire of a hansom. Until then, do not wait on me. Such things were never kept to spare a man discomfort.
—H.
Harrowe had offered no instruction. No safeguard. Only the same brutal narrowing of choice that had haunted him since Hertfordshire.
He set the note down and leaned back, one hand lifting to his mouth as a cough forced itself loose—short, controlled, dismissed as soon as it came. The effort left him momentarily light, as though he had stood too quickly.
Elizabeth Bennet slept beneath his roof again tonight. The knowledge struck him again—not as wonder, not as comfort, but as pressure. As demand. And there was little he could do but to answer, so he reached for the bell pull.
When the footman appeared, Darcy did not turn from the hearth. “Ask the upstairs maid whether Miss Elizabeth is still awake and dressed. If so, find out if she would do me the kindness of a few minutes’ conversation,” he said. “In the library. If she feels equal to it.”
The footman bowed and turned to go, but Darcy stopped him. “Wait… if she desires to have her sister present, that will suit as well.”
The wording mattered. He would have it so.
The footman went to do his bidding, and Darcy closed the study for the night, asking for the fire to be banked. Then he went to arrange the library to his liking. The fire built higher, the lamps burning brightly—not too intimate, no. This was not a seduction.
He studied the effect, then crossed to the chairs by the fire and adjusted them—not side by side, not too near—until they faced one another with a small table between, as though this were to be a discussion of books or weather or any of the other safe, ordinary things he had long since abandoned.
Yes, that would… no, there should be a third chair. In case she came with a chaperone. If she were wise, she would.
The fire flared and then dimmed while he waited. He stirred it, watching the embers catch and climb. The light shifted across the shelves, the spines of books rising and falling in shadow.
And then, footsteps sounded in the passage.
Darcy came to his feet, fingers lifting instinctively to his cravat before he caught the motion and let his hand fall. His throat burned; he cleared it once, softly, irritated by the sound. His heart had begun to miscount, and no amount of discipline seemed inclined to correct it.
Elizabeth entered alone. She wore a simple morning gown, not the one she had worn to dinner.
So, she had been preparing for bed and changed to indulge him.
Darcy’s heart tried crawling up his throat at the thought, but it was the sight of her hair unpinned and twisted into a loose braid over her shoulder that made the moment seem… intimate. Nearly sensual.
No, no, this was not what he had intended! Pricks of heat sprang across his brow, his lip, and he looked away, letting his eyes be scorched by the heat of the fire rather than blazing at her. But he was weak… and he looked back.
Elizabeth’s expression was composed but alert, as though she had been summoned for something she had already begun to guess. The warmth of the fire touched her cheeks like a caress, and that smile simmered on her lips.
“You wished to see me?” Her mouth curved, mischief tempered by kindness. “I comforted myself by recalling that the last gentleman who summoned me so gravely merely wished to explain my future and my moral failings to me. I trust you will require less temperance on my part.”
“I promise nothing so trying,” Darcy replied. Then, more evenly, “I must thank you for your time. If you are not too fatigued to stay a few moments, pray, sit.” He gestured toward the chair nearest the hearth.
She did, then folded her hands in her lap and looked at him with that familiar, unsettling directness that had always made him feel as though he were being judged and assessed—not as he appeared, but as he was.
The room felt altered with her seated there, the firelight catching along the line of her hair, the warmth gathering itself into a halo about her as though it had been waiting to coronate her.
Darcy turned away abruptly and crossed to the sideboard.
He opened one cabinet, then another, his movements disorganised and ill-matched to his thoughts, until he found what he sought.
Sherry. His mother’s, laid in years ago and scarcely touched since.
He poured carefully. Two glasses, though he had no true appetite for his own.
He carried one back and set it into Elizabeth’s hand.
“For the chill,” he said, though she showed none.
She accepted it with a look that held more curiosity than gratitude and raised it to her lips. Darcy remained where he was, his own glass untouched, the weight of standing preferable to the confinement of a chair.
Her eyes lifted from the rim of the glass to him, bright with a glimmer of humour he recognised too well. “Mr Darcy, do you mean to interrogate me or simply to intimidate me by looming so?”
Darcy coloured and took the chair opposite her at once, the motion a shade too quick to be graceful. The fire popped softly between them. He placed his untouched glass on the table and folded his hands as though they might be persuaded to keep still.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I had no intention of—of hovering.”
“So I presumed.” She glanced down at the glass again and smiled. “It is excellent sherry.”
“I am glad you find it so. My mother preferred it for evenings.”
She nodded, as if this were an intimacy he had offered on purpose, and let her gaze wander to the shelves. The titles gave him a merciful moment. He opened his mouth, closed it again. Tried once more.
“What I wished to say—” He stopped. “That is—”
She waited, tilting her head and studying him with an earnest, open expression that seemed to permit patience without mockery. Thank Heaven for that. He felt like madman enough already.
“I am not practiced at…” He broke off and pressed his lips together. The fire leaned, just then, toward her skirts, a wavering curl of heat that should have singed the hem. It did not. It bent away, as if corrected by an unseen hand.
Darcy stared. Blinked. Cleared his throat and tried not to wonder what sort of woman this was, whom even fire seemed to worship.
“You may proceed at your leisure, sir. I promise not to faint at incomplete sentences.”
He drew a breath. “You can be in no doubt why I asked to speak with you.”
She considered him over the rim of her glass, then smiled—only a little.
“On the contrary. I have entertained at least a dozen possibilities. As I believe you to be a gentleman, however, several of them may be dismissed out of hand. Most of the others are merely the product of a fanciful imagination, and I doubt you are a man ruled by fancy. So, there, I am entirely at a loss, sir.”
He tried to answer her jest and could not.
The breath caught halfway in, misfired, and tore loose instead.
The sound that followed was not brief, nor decorous—something harsh and scraping that bent him forward before he could master it.
He turned away, one hand braced hard on the chair, but the cough came again, deeper this time, dragging at his chest as though it meant to empty him of more than air.
Elizabeth was on her feet at once. “Mr Darcy—”
He shook his head. Tried to beg her to excuse him, wave it off as nothing. Perhaps a bit of sherry would do… but he could not cease coughing long enough to pick up the glass.
“Mr Darcy, you are unwell.” She crossed the small distance and laid a hand on his shoulder, as if she could pat his back to loosen his cough like she would a small child.
The room tipped.
The chair bit into the backs of his legs as his strength fled him, not slowly, not politely, but all at once, as though a marionette’s strings had been cut. He caught the edge of the table and missed it. The glass rang. His knees folded, and his forehead smacked the wood floor.
Elizabeth cried out and sprang back. “Oh—good Heavens, what have I done? Mr Darcy!”
He lifted a hand at once, palm outward, more plea than command.
“Nothing. Pray—do not—” The words broke apart as another rasp seized him.
He turned from her until it broke off, scrambled to his feet too quickly, and crossed the short distance to the hearth with a gait that betrayed him despite every effort at control.
She moved again, instinct driving her forward. “But let me help. Please, you are very unwell.”
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said hoarsely, gripping the mantel with both hands now, knuckles whitening against the carved stone. “Stay where you are. Please, I beg you.”
She retreated, but not without a soft growl of protest. “Very well, sir.”
The fire snapped softly behind the grate.
Darcy leaned into the cool solidity of the mantel as though it were the only thing in the room that could be relied upon.
His shoulders worked as he drew breath by force, jaw clenched, fighting the urge to cough again.
A sound escaped him despite that resolve—low, ugly, gone as soon as it came.
He shut his eyes until the world steadied into something he could bear.
“Shall I fetch… someone?” she offered.
Darcy shook his head. “I am quite recovered,” he said, the words less broken now. He remained where he was, one hand still upon the mantel, the other easing away only after he was certain it would hold.
He could feel her behind him. Not by sound. Not by sight. By the same indefinable awareness that had plagued him since her arrival—an attention that refused direction, that would not be commanded.
“It occurs to me,” he went on, carefully, “that it is a grand—if perverse—coincidence that we should both have been subject to so many… irregularities of late.” He paused, choosing each word as though it might betray him if mishandled. “I wonder whether you have observed the same.”
Elizabeth did not answer at once.
He felt her behind him—still, intent—before she crossed the small distance to the hearth. She held her hands out to the fire, not close enough to warm them, only near enough that the flames leaned subtly in her direction, restless in a way Darcy had learned to distrust.
She watched them for a moment. Then she looked away.
“Yes. I noticed it,” she said, her voice almost matter-of-fact. “From the first time you touched me.”