Darcy closed the ballads and heaved a sigh. “Well, Brutus? What now?”
Darcy did not knockso much as announce himself by the force of his fist.
The servant who answered took in Darcy’s coat, unfastened, his cravat imperfectly arranged, the rigid set of his shoulders, and hesitated. “Mr Darcy,” he greeted. “My lord is not yet—”
“I must see him,” Darcy replied, already past the threshold. “At once.”
The servant followed, protesting just enough to preserve the fiction of order, and ushered him into the small study off the eastern hall—the one Lord Matlock used before breakfast, when he wished to read without interruption. Darcy did not sit. He stood where the light fell strongest, the book tucked beneath his arm like an accusation.
Lord Matlock arrived scarcely a minute later, coat half-fastened, hair still unpowdered, surprise plain on his face.
“Darcy?” He took in the scene—the book, the posture, the air that seemed to vibrate around his nephew. “This is… early.”
“I would call it rather behindhand.”
Matlock blinked, then recovered himself enough to gesture toward the sideboard. “You look as though you have not slept. Tea, at least. Or—” His mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Something stronger might better suit the morning you appear to be having.”
“I will have nothing,” Darcy said, and brought the book up between them.
The spine protested as it always did, and Darcy turned straight to the page that had stopped his breath in the small hours. He set his finger beneath the line and held it there, as though anchoring it to the world.
“Did you know,” he demanded, “that this volume asserts—quite plainly, and I shall paraphrase a more modern tongue—that land waskeptin the time of Bedevere?”
Matlock leaned closer despite himself. His brow furrowed, not in alarm, but in concentration. “Yes,” he said slowly. “What of it?”
Darcy’s hand tightened. “Then you knew it preserved this nonsense. These… ramblings. Arthurian relics dressed up as record. Fairy tales, nursery rhymes, the stuff of gothic nonsense! And yet it has been guarded, recopied, handed down for generations like some sacred trust, as though it contained fact rather than fancy!”
Matlock straightened, his expression shifting—not defensive, not dismissive, but genuinely puzzled. “You did not know?”
Darcy stepped closer, his teeth almost baring in frustration. “Knowwhat?”
Matlock did not bristle at the challenge. He regarded Darcy for a long moment instead, as though weighing how much could be said plainly without losing him altogether.
“The Darcys,” he began, “were not always Darcys. That name comes later—Norman, as you observe. Land, titles, even surnames have a habit of reshaping themselves to survive conquest.” He moved toward the desk, stopped as if to sit, then gestured to the chair opposite for Darcy before taking his own seat.
Darcy frowned, then heaved a sigh and sank into the soft leather.
His uncle settled behind the desk and slowly drew out a mahogany cigar box and a pen knife. “Before that, the family was Brythonic. Border people, pushed north by the Romans. They were Keepers of crossings and margins—men who did not rule so much asguardwhere others passed through.”
Darcy’s mouth tightened. “You are describing function, not lineage.”
“They were the same thing, in those days,” Matlock replied mildly. “When the Normans came, the family bent rather than broke. They intermarried, took a name that would endure in court and record. Mine did the same, as you recall. Fitzwilliam—son of William—was not chosen at random. It tethered the old blood to the new order. Mine chose respectability. Yours chose endurance.”
Darcy stared at him. “Endurance?”
“Yes.” Matlock did not look away. “The Darcys carried the line of Bedevere forward—quietly, imperfectly, but without once letting the male line break. The old Welsh name was shed. The land was retained. The duty endured, even as its meaning diluted.”
For a moment, Darcy could not speak. The room felt abruptly smaller, as though some private boundary had been crossed. “Bedevere,” he said at last, the word sounding foreign in his mouth. “You are telling me that my name—the history of my blood—rests on a knight who is half legend, half monastery fiction.”
Matlock’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “You may call him what you like. He can hardly object now.”
“Bedevere?” Darcy repeated. “As in, King Arthur’s last knight,theSir Bedevere of myth and legend? Oh, surely not, Uncle. I came here for information, not… not ghost stories concocted by some Frenchman with an overactive imagination!”
“Indeed, that is the man, but not the version you are thinking of.”
“What other version is there?” Darcy exploded. “King Arthur is a figment. A fairytale invented to sell pamphlets and novels. He never existed! And neither did his knights—that preposterous table—a sword anchored in a stone! It is utter fiction!”
“Some of it. It might truly be argued that Arthur, himself, did not exist as a single man. But Bedevere was recorded before he was romanticised. Witness before he was hero.”
