Elizabeth pressed her lips together, evaluating how much of her internal realisations she could share. “Because I have come to understand that the responsibility for our past failures lies with me, Richard, not with him. Whatever there has been between us, it has never been indifference. Quite the opposite. There is a constant tempest of emotion, and I am only now beginning to comprehend my own part in it.”
She looked away then, glancing towards the stream where the leaf had long since been carried away, as if finding the courage for the rest in the memory of her own small success.
“My magic is inextricably tied to that turmoil,” she continued, her voice quieter now. “When Mr Darcy would try to teach me, his instruction would touch upon an old, deep-seated fear. My magic would become chaotic in response, but my pride refused to admit that fear when it was far easier to project the blame outward. I cannot subject him to that again until I have mastered this internal battle.”
“Elizabeth, I cannot agree to this secrecy.”
His refusal, so blunt and absolute, made her flinch inwardly, but she did not let it show. Instead, she held his gaze, her own softening from explanation into a plea.
“Then let me offer you a promise instead of a reason,” she said. “I will reveal my progress to him soon. And I promise you, Richard, if it ever feels dangerous, if I feel the power slipping from my grasp, I will inform him immediately. I beg you to trust me.”
The colonel considered her words for a long moment, his gaze hard and penetrating. “I wish you two would simply speak to each other,” he finally said, with a rare edge of frustration in his voice.
Elizabeth’s heart twisted, but she did not offer a reply.
Without another word, the colonel remounted his horse and guided it back the way he had come, leaving Elizabeth alone with the rueful realisation that she had managed to exasperate one of the most amiable men in all of England.
Darcy, when he appeared for breakfast, was already dressed for the road. His practical riding boots and the dark, functional cut of his coat made him a figure of purpose.
“Good morning, Darcy!” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, his own cheerfulness a sharp contrast to his cousin’s sombre expression. “I had not realised you had any pressing engagements this morning.”
Darcy offered a curt nod in his cousin’s direction, his focus clearly elsewhere. “An express arrived from the Arcane Office this morning.”
Elizabeth’s hand stilled, her teacup halfway to her lips. She felt a knot of apprehension tighten in her stomach. “Is it a mission?”
“One might call it so,” he replied, his gaze not quite meeting hers. He walked to the sideboard and poured himself a cup of tea. “There is a faltering node a short ride south of here, near the old crossroads. The Office has bid me to see to it.”
The word ‘me’hung in the air. Elizabeth set her cup down with a click before the porcelain could betray her hand’s tremble. “And am I to understand,” she began, her voice carefully even, “that you are to go alone?”
“That was the directive,” he confirmed.
So. This was the consequence of Buxton. The Arcane Office did not trust their Concordance. Yet as she glanced at his averted face, a colder, more painful thought took root. Perhaps it was Darcy who had lost faith.
“The Office believes that given the minor nature of the decay, my own magic should be sufficient to the task,” Darcy added, after a pause.
Elizabeth studied her plate, praying her composure would hold.
Across the table, she could feel the weight of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s gaze upon her. It was an urgent plea, a silent pressure urging her to speak, to tell him of the leaf that had danced and the whirlpool that had spun at her command.
No. She could not. To confess her progress now, to potentially create fresh division between them and to risk compromising his control before a mission that demanded his absolute magical focus, was unthinkable. Their last attempt, fuelled by their own emotional turmoil, had already ended in the fires of Buxton.
Ignoring the colonel, she drew a breath and schooled her features into a mask of polite concern. “Then I wish you a safe journey, Mr Darcy.”
He did not reply at once. He simply looked at her, and for just an instant, she caught something utterly forlorn in the depths of his gaze. It was the look of a man standing on a desolate shore, staring out across an impassable sea. Then, before she could study it further, there was a subtle shift, a flattening around his mouth, and his expression was once more perfectly closed off.
He said, “Should all go as planned, I shall be returned to Pemberley by the morrow.”
And with that, he set down his cup and quit the room. The silence that followed his departure was broken only by the colonel’s heavy sigh. Elizabeth’s gaze fell to her teacup, where her own reflection stared back at her, distorted and wavering in the tepid liquid.
She had needed this time alone with her abilities to finally separate the magic from the fear, the power from the pain. She had succeeded, although the control she had acquired was a new and tenuous thing, and the prospect of bringing it into the charged atmosphere of his presence was still terrifying. But to see him ride off alone like this, while she deliberately kept him in the dark, transformed her efforts into something that felt disturbingly like a betrayal.
She resolved that upon Darcy’s return, she would offer a full account of the entire matter.
But until that moment, what a profoundly useless thing their marriage seemed. They were not truly husband and wife, they were not friends, and now, they were no longer even fellow conscripts in the one task that had bound them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The expected day of his absence stretched into two, and then three, and then into a full two weeks. A single letter was her only news: the node had been more stubborn than anticipated, and then, once that had been resolved, his conscience had demanded a detour to Buxton to oversee recovery efforts.
