Saye took another noisy slurp of his drink. “I daresay a hotel will be better than staying another moment in a cursed house, listening to the ghostly scratchings of an out-of-tune fiddle. Then again, you never did hear that, did you? Nor were you overly troubled by the bones in the walls or the eerie markings on the windows.”
Darcy shook his head distractedly and then, though he knew it would make him appear ridiculous, could not resist asking, “Did you speak to her before you left? Miss Bennet, I mean. You must have—to discuss closing up the house.”
“Do you think me a housekeeper? Of course I did not discuss such trivial things with her. I left it to my man, like a civilised person does.”
Darcy let out a breath but sucked it back in again when his cousin added, “I did see her, though. With Hartham. Unchaperoned, roaming about the town.”
Devil take it, why did I ask?“Did they…” He clamped his mouth closed, but when Saye simply sat staring at him expectantly and still vaguely petulant, he swallowed the last of his pride and asked, “Did she seem happy?”
“Why would shenotbe happy?” his cousin replied. “Her sister is safe, rescued thanks to yours truly?—”
“You?” Darcy interrupted. “It was I who paid off her debts and escorted her home! It wasmeto whom Miss Bennet came for help in the first place.”
“And it wasIwho had to arm wrestle a prostitute to win back my grandfather’s snuff box after you and my gumboil of a brother left me there to fend for myself!”
Darcy could not defend himself there. He still had not heard the whole story of what happened after he and Fitzwilliam left Sullivan’s party. It sounded as though he would do better not to enquire.
“As I was saying,” Saye continued, “thanks toyours truly, Miss Bennet has much to be happy about. Her sister has been saved, her family are all in raptures about her marriage?—”
“How do you know that?”
“Good grief, Darcy, can you not let a man finish a story?”
“No! How do you know her family are in raptures?”
Saye sniffed. “She mentioned it.”
Darcy’s chest tightened. He had tried to convince himself that Elizabeth’s family must be mistaken somehow about her engagement, but clearly, they were delighted by it—and she was pleased enough by their delight to be speaking of it to others. It was as he feared: Elizabeth had wanted him to know that she loved him, but she was sticking with Hartham.
Quick footsteps brought his head up in time to see Fitzwilliam enter his study. He watched him cross the room and settle into a chair, saying to his brother as he passed him, “I heard you were here. Georgette is delivered back safely, then?”
“Yes, yes, I took care of her,” Saye replied impatiently. “Not that she deserved any such courtesy from me. It is the last time I put myself out for any of you, in fact. The three of you all deserve to dance the Tyburn jig.”
Fitzwilliam raised an eyebrow. “Not quite sure what any of us have done to deserve such a fate, but might we men return to Brighton first? Would not want to miss Lady Foley’s ball at the end of the week.”
Darcy looked between his cousins in confusion, too numbed by misery to make sense of what either was saying. “Where would we stay?”
Fitzwilliam screwed up his face. “At the house.”
“We cannot. The lease is up.”
“Since when?”
“I do not know. Ask him,” he said, pointing at Saye, who shrugged.
“I did not say the lease was uppresently. I said it was going to come to an endat some point. Happily, we have not yet reached that point.”
Darcy was instantly suspicious. “Fitzwilliam, what was that you said about Saye bringing Miss Hawkridge back to town?”
“Just that. She needed to be conveyed here but did not fancy driving the whole way in a phaeton, and since I was otherwise occupied with Georgiana and you, I volunteered my brother for the service.”
Darcy pushed to his feet and glared at Saye. “Have you been trifling with me? Because I tell you, I am in no humour for it.”
“No humour?” Saye sneered. “Did I seemin a humourto hear a damned fiddler in the middle of the night? Did I seemin a humourto have my eyes nearly burnt from my head by green fire? Florizel nearly choked to death on one of those bones, by the bye. Did I seem in a humour to watchthat?”
Fitzwilliam gave a snorting chuckle. “Who told you?”
Saye made a disgruntled noise. “Georgette filled inthe details, but it was Darcy’s Miss Bennet who let the cat out of the bag.”
