Sixty thousand pounds. Elizabeth felt sick at the pronounced sum. It was almost unimaginable, a king’s ransom. It would be a tremendous burden to lay upon Darcy, upon Pemberley, already so afflicted by the Blight, on top of the considerable sums he was undoubtedly expecting to expend for the immediate relief and eventual rebuilding of the village at Buxton.
Darcy, however, received the pronouncement with stoicism. There was only a slight clenching of the muscles around his jaw, and the faintest whitening of his knuckles where his hands wereclasped behind his back. “I understand, my lord,” he said, his voice betraying nothing of the crippling burden just placed upon him.
“You would do well to proceed with more circumspection,” came the Lord Magister’s warning, his gaze sweeping once more over both of them, lingering on Elizabeth with with an unnervingly speculative gaze.
With that, his image flickered, wavered, and dissolved, leaving the surface of the water in the basin still.
The silence he left in the communications room rang with the frigid echo of condemnation. Darcy did not move, a figure carved from granite, and Elizabeth felt too ill to speak.
Then, a convulsive tremor ran through him.
The illusion of his composure was shattered. In its place, she saw the public shame of the crippling fine, the private humiliation of being spurned by her, and the haunting, relentless guilt over the village he had let burn. His honour, his heart, and his conscience were all grievously wounded.
This was the man who had, amidst their bitterest argument, declared his ardent love. And oh how she had repaid him.
Her heart clenched painfully.
“Mr Darcy,” she started softly, not quite sure what she would say, what paltry and insufficient words she could possibly offer. An apology felt like a dangerous imposition. He was a man holding himself together by a thread of will alone. To ask him to bear the burden of her remorse now would be to risk the complete collapse of what little he had left. It was a comfort she could not demand at his expense.
She was therefore entirely unprepared for his next words to be not of his own burdens, but of the danger she had unknowingly courted.
“To offer yourself for their censure was a precarious position to take. The Arcane Office would readily sacrifice a relatively unknown woman to preserve their own reputation.”
He fell silent, a faint wince tightening the corner of his mouth as if he instantly wished to recall his words. The pause that followed was a statement in itself, a conscious withholding of more, and yet she heard his unspoken sentiment as clearly as if he had voiced it:I would not have had you face that danger. You ought to have allowed me to answer for the catastrophe.
And it was this very selflessness, so contrary to her expectations, that brought a fresh sense of discomfiture. She knew that the Elizabeth of yesterday would have listened with uncharitable ears, hearing only the familiar insults to her connections and judgement, while remaining deaf to the honourable motive that lay beneath.
This uncomfortable truth forced her to consider the deeply unsettling possibility that her dislike for him was not purely a reflection of his character, but of the flaws in her own.
She swallowed hard, knowing no softness in her voice now could ever truly atone for the viciousness in her words then. But it was a start, a meagre offering where an apology was due. She chose her own reply with care. “Pray, do not think I am anything but immensely grateful for the honour of your defence. It is a kindness I feel I have done little to deserve. The failure was truly mine, and I could not have, in good conscience, left you to bear it alone.”
This seemed to pull Darcy’s full attention, as he finally pushed away from the basin. She saw then that his exhaustion was a visible thing, a force that had stripped him of all his usual defences. There was hurt in his brittle stillness; it was the same bruised pride she had seen in him before, now layered with a deeper, more personal sorrow. Her words had only seemed to give him further pain.
“What I said before the Office was said in earnest. I have no wish to quarrel over it,” he said quietly.
Elizabeth, seeing the shadows under his eyes, agreed.
At the top of the grand staircase, Darcy paused.
“I must see to the immediate necessities,” he said, his voice still strained. “Alerting Brooks. And my steward. Ensuring the household is prepared for whatever inquiries, or indeed, whatever repercussions, may come.”
“And I shall have a word with Mrs Reynolds, so that comforts such as a hot bath and a suitable repast may be made ready for you once you have discharged your duties.”
Still he would not, or could not, meet her gaze. His attention remained fixed on some distant, unseen point down the corridor. The memory of her rejection, so recent, so brutal, was a wall between them, making her presence a source of both comfort and pain.
He remained silent for so long that Elizabeth thought he might simply walk away without a word, leaving her standing in the echoing corridor with her rejected olive branch.
But when at last he spoke, his voice held none of the anger or resentment she expected, but was instead quiet and hollowed out. “You have my thanks.”
With a final, weary inclination of his head, Darcy turned towards his study. She then sought out Mrs Reynolds and made the promised arrangements before finally retiring to the solace of her own chambers.
Her sleep was haunted by screams of terror.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The morning light, usually a welcome guest in the breakfast parlour at Pemberley, seemed today to possess a feeble quality, as if reluctant to fully illuminate the sombre mood that had settled upon the house.
Elizabeth, after a night of restless, fragmented sleep, descended to a room already occupied by Colonel Fitzwilliam.
