“And to what purpose, madam? To prove that your power is better suited to large, destructive acts than to small, controlled ones? Your suggestion only reinforces my concern.”
“My point, sir, is that my magic is not of the same character as yours. It is folly to expect it to answer to the same methods of command. It is another nature of power altogether.”
“Power without governance is not another nature. It is a liability.”
That word again. The first time it had been an insult; the second, it was a verdict.
“A liability,” she echoed. “Yes, I can see how it must appear so in your estimation. Any force that does not conform mustnaturally be a liability to a mind that finds any disruption to order so disagreeable.”
He smiled thinly. “I will not apologise for a partiality for competence and order.”
“Nor would I expect you to. It must be a great comfort to have one’s preferences and one’s prejudices so perfectly aligned.”
“Your magic has no thought for its ramifications.” Darcy began to gather the scattered, crumpled papers from the floor, his every movement radiating derision. “It speaks to a remarkable degree of parental negligence. To have a child possess such power, and to allow through sheer indulgence, indolence…”
A sharp crack echoed through the room. Darcy’s wine glass, which had been sitting innocently on a side table, now bore a thin, spidery fracture down its side. Slowly, deliberately, Darcy raised his head and looked at her. His gaze was as pointed, as accusing, as a drawn sword.
She was on her feet, though she had no memory of rising. “Sir, whatever failings you perceive in me are my own. Pray, leave my father out of it.”
“Your father?” he scoffed, a sound of pure, unadulterated disdain. He took a deep, steadying breath, as if consciously reining in his own rising irritation, before continuing, his tone now more measured, yet his words no less cutting. “His lamentable lack of foresight in this matter — ”
The great window nearest to him shattered, not with a violent explosion, but with a series of cracking sounds, as if an invisible hand had struck it, the glass falling inwards in a cascade of glittering shards.
But before any shard could reach him, a heavy force surged into the air, a shield of golden light that not only blocked the debris but seemed to smother the magic that had propelled it.
“That will be quite enough, madam,” Darcy said, his voice cold as ice.
But it was more than an ask. As he spoke, Elizabeth felt it as if a heavy blanket had been thrown over her, a suffocating weight that dampened her magic. It was a deeply unwelcome sensation, almost violating, and her power recoiled.
It was a disturbing thought, how with so little effort he could overpower her. Yet he did not press his superior advantage; the suffocating weight remained, a tangible warning, but it went no further. The fact that he chose not to — that he merely contained her — was somehow even more grating of a realisation.
“You have made your point, sir. I trust you will now release me.”
He did so, immediately.
“What a gift it must be, Mr Darcy, to be so assured in one’s own judgement and to possess a certainty that leaves no room for doubt.” Her voice trembled as she spoke, but it was not from anger. She was entirely past anger. It was a deep, aching pain.
Darcy straightened, a sheaf of crumpled pamphlets in his hand. His eyes were filled with a hard, almost pitying light. “I speak of what I see,” he said, his voice forced into a semblance of calm. “I see a power that should have been a vital asset in this war, but was instead, through sheer neglect, allowed to become a danger.”
“A liability, I think you mean to say.” A laugh broke from her then, a fragile sound. It held no mirth, only the cutting edge of a grief too old and an indignity too fresh. “You perceive a want of discipline. But what if you were to learn that avoidance was the only control I possessed? The only means I had to ensure a certain cost was never paid again?”
The words were out before she could stop them, torn from a place of buried sorrow she had foolishly believed she could walloff with logic and wit, and she knew instantly she had revealed too much.
Darcy stared at her, his earlier anger momentarily checked, almost entirely eclipsed, by the anguish in her voice. He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again.
But Elizabeth could bear his presence, his scrutiny, his…hispity…no longer. The casual way he had stumbled upon the deepest shame of her life was what pushed her from pain into agony.
She pressed her fingers to her temple, a gesture that was not entirely feigned. Her composure was a fragile shield against the rising tide of memory and embarrassment.
“Pray, excuse me,” she said, her voice strained, “I find I am suddenly unwell.”
With a brief, almost abbreviated curtsy, she turned and swept from the room before he could offer a single word of protest or unwanted sympathy, leaving him alone with the chaos of his library.
Later that afternoon, as the sun began its slow descent, Elizabeth sat by her window and stared absently outside. Sarah had tried, with gentle persistence, to coax her into taking some tea, some light refreshment, but Elizabeth had waved her away, needing only to be alone with her memories.
Her mind drifted back to a time when she was younger, a magically precocious girl of seven, her own unique magic just beginning to awaken within her. She remembered the yearning she had felt then to understand it, to make it hers. She had devoured a few, simple, magical texts her father possessed,practising in the locked solitude of her room, trying, with a child’s unwavering faith, to coax a spark from an unwilling candle, to make a feather dance on the wind, just as Darcy had so recently demanded.
There had been incidents, of course. Small, mostly harmless, often comical. A sudden, entirely localised, and rather drenching downpour inside the Longbourn drawing room during one of her mother’s particularly trying afternoon tea parties. The memorable time when all the apples on their oldest apple tree had ripened, detached themselves, and fallen simultaneously, with a series of loud thuds.
