Richard raised a brow. “London?”
“No. Netherfield.”
“Ah.” Richard let the word hang, thoughtful rather than amused. “So, Hertfordshire has claimed you at last.”
Darcy did not look at him. He crouched beside Brutus, checking the dog’s paws for burrs. “Bingley writes that the house suits him. The land, he swears, is the best in all England. And he wishes for company.” He rose again. “He always does.”
“Hertfordshire is not short of company,” Richard said mildly. “Nor of old boundaries.”
Darcy straightened. “If you are about to quote my aunt, spare me.”
Richard smiled, but did not retreat. “I only mean that she has been saying for years that when certain things begin to go wrong, they do so first on ground that has been argued over before. Borders. Old holdings. Places people stopped naming but never stopped minding.”
Darcy shook his head. “Coincidence dressed up as foresight. I am not riding south in pursuit of a parable.”
“Of course not,” Richard said easily. “You are going because Bingley asked, and because it costs you nothing to oblige him.”
“That is reason enough.”
“Well,” Richard said, stretching, “I only thought the location curious, whether you care for that fact or not.”
“Our aunt mutters about everything,” Darcy said shortly.
“True,” Richard conceded. “But she mutters louder when she thinks timing is involved.”
Darcy gave a low, humourless laugh. “Timing, place, lineage—she selects whichever suits the argument of the moment. Last year, it was Kent entire. Before that, the Thames corridor and every acre south of there. If I recall correctly, she once suggested this puzzle she obsesses over lay somewhere between Rosings and nowhere at all.”
“Kent is not nowhere,” Richard said mildly. “And she does at least haveonejustification, however strained.”
Darcy glanced at him. “And?”
“Well, if you ask our aunt, the difficulty lies in other people not reading carefully enough. Or else in refusing to accept what seems obvious to her.”
Darcy did not look up. “Which is?”
“Why, Kent, of course. She has said it often enough, and with such confidence that one might suppose the matter settled.” He paused, then added, more mildly, “She claims there are old writings to support it. Copies, she calls them. My father, however, has never seemed inclined to discuss them.”
“And what does he say?”
“Very little,” Richard admitted. “Which, in this family, usually means he says nothing at all.” He shrugged. “I have never seen the texts myself. Nor, I think, has anyone who speaks of them so freely.”
Darcy only grunted.
Richard glanced at him, then away again. “In any case, it has long been treated as a question best left alone—except by our aunt, who has never found restraint much to her taste.”
Darcy’s mouth thinned. “So, a blot of ink decides an inheritance.”
Richard smiled. “Or a smudge. Or a monk with a fondness for geography he half remembers. One ancient ‘boundary’ is the same as another’s ‘gateway.’ You know how these things go—one scribe copies what he thinks he sees, the next copies him, and by the third generation everyone is prepared to swear to it.”
“And to build obligation upon it,” Darcy said. “Remarkable.”
“And what did your father think?” Richard asked. “Surely George Darcy had an opinion on the matter. Aunt Catherine would have made sure of that.”
Darcy hesitated—only long enough to be truthful without inviting speculation. “My father regarded it as invention compounded upon invention. A handful of half-remembered Roman names, some unfortunate Saxon lore, a monk with too much patience and not enough discipline, and a family unfortunate enough to preserve what ought to have been forgot.”
“That is one way of settling the question,” Richard said.
“It was the way he preferred,” Darcy replied. “He allowed that such things made passable stories, and that they might amuse antiquarians with time to spare, but he would not hear of obligation being built upon them. Particularly not obligation that required sacrifice beyond sense.”
