“Drink,” he said. “You look like a man who’s been starvin’ himself on principle.”
Darcy did not touch it.
Harrowe glanced at the untouched cup, then back at Darcy, his expression shifting—not offense, but calculation, as though filing away another inconsistency.
“So,” he said at last, lowering himself into the chair opposite. The chair protested, but held. “You’re him.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened. “If you mean to be obscure, I warn you I have no patience left for it.”
Harrowe barked a laugh. “No, no. Not obscure. Just… unlikely.” He leaned forward, beefy forearms braced on the table, eyes alight now in a way that had nothing to do with class or manners. “I’ve been lookin’ for you near twenty years, sir. An’ here you sit, complainin’ about my tea.”
“I am not—” Darcy stopped, pressed his fingers briefly to the bridge of his nose, then lowered his hand with care. “You have been looking forwhat, precisely?”
Harrowe’s gaze did not waver. “The heir.”
Darcy’s pulse jumped, sharp and immediate, as though struck. He sat back slightly, the chair legs scraping the floor. “Heir towhat?”
There it was. Bare. Unvarnished. The question that had gnawed at him since Matlock’s library, since the book, since the dreams that refused to loosen their grip. His own family had the benefit of tradition, family lineage to point to him and claim he stood to inherit some legacy or other.
But that someone else had identified that thread, discovered a hole, and concluded that theremustbe a man to fill it…
Harrowe studied him for a long moment before answering. Not with the indulgence of a scholar addressing a novice, but with something closer to reverence—tempered, oddly, by relief.
“Christ,” he muttered under his breath. “You’re as ignorant as a wee lad.”
“No one has told me anything that survives examination. Lord… my uncle has produced certain volumes which justify further study, but offer very little in the way of answers.”
“And who is your uncle?”
Darcy locked his jaw. Well, what matter if he confessed it? He had uncovered too much of himself already, and it would be the work of a moment for a curious man to discover his relations. “Hugh Fitzwilliam, Lord Matlock.”
Harrowe grunted—if it was a sound of surprise, his face did not register it. “You were sayin’?”
Darcy threw one hand in the air. “I was saying that I am buried beneath conjecture and riddles and family pride dressed up as duty. I am told I stand at the centre of a history no one can explain, and I am running out of time to pretend that does not matter.”
Harrowe reached for his own cup and drank, grimaced, then drank again. “That’d be the old way,” he said. “Keep it tight. Keep it quiet. Guard the thing so fierce they forget why they’re guardin’ it at all.”
“You speak as though you know them.”
“I knowofthem,” Harrowe replied. “Which ain’t the same thing. Which line are you?”
Darcy stiffened, the hair raising on the back of his neck. “I beg your pardon?”
“Well, you must’ve come from one of the old knights. Bedwyr would be my bet, but there’s also Peredur. Not likely to have been Gwalchmei or his younger brother Gwrgi. Bors forsook inheritance for heaven. Certainly not Cei… Nay, it’s got to be one of the first two.”
Darcy’s hand dropped hard on the table. “How did you…”
“Which is it? Bedwyr or Peredur?”
Darcy had to clamp his mouth shut with an audible click before he could answer. “I… Both. So I am told.”
Harrowe gasped, like a man beholding the sunrise after an age of darkness. “By thunder… it’s happened, then!”
Darcy rubbed his eyes. “If you please, this all still sounds like madness to me.”
“Nay, nay!” Harrowe was holding a hand in the air, his eyes scattering about the room as if pulling together the threads of an unravelled tapestry. “Darcy… that’s the Bedwyr line. Itmustbe—the male line. And the other—Peredur’s descendants are now the Fitzwilliam family. Blimey, I was a blind old fool to miss that!”
Darcy laced his hands and tapped his thumbs together impatiently. “Perhaps you would be so good as to enlighten me.Howdid you surmise in a few seconds what was kept secret from me for the whole of my life?”
