Harrowe laughed and poured himself more of that tar-like tea. “Simple elimination. Those are the only two lines that utterly vanished from the record.”
“Vanished? Something can only vanish if you know where it began. Something that old?” Darcy shook his head. “There are perhaps two civilizations in the entire world who kept family records over a thousand years. The Chinese and the Hebrews, once. Even Rome could not manage it without mythmaking. And you would have me believe two English families achieved it in silence?”
“More than two, Mr Darcy.” Harrowe leaned back in his chair and hooked one heavy boot on a nearby stool. “The Benedictines traced at least five lines they believed descended from Arthur’s household knights. Two ended as most familiesdo, within a handful of generations. One was butchered entirely when the Normans came through. Names broken, lands seized, records scattered. And Gwrgi—now he’s got an interestin’ tale. The king’s nephew, died in the war, but not before siring a son. You’d know him as Gareth, and James I claimed, rather privately, I might add, to descend from that line.”
He tapped the page with a blunt finger. “The other two did not end. They folded in upon themselves. No public annals. No marriages proclaimed for advantage. The blood runs quiet, turns inward, disappears where it ought to have been loud. You don’t do that by accident or oversight.”
Darcy pinched the bridge of his nose. “And you concluded from this absence that I existed.”
“I concluded,” Harrowe said slowly, “between the records and what I could see with my own two eyes thatsomeonewas still carryin’ the burden. An’ that whoever it was, he’d been raised not to look too close. The signs are too real to ignore now.”
Darcy pushed his chair back and rose, unable to remain seated. The room was too small, the walls too crowded with paper and ink, and the very bulk of their master’s physique.
“You speak of me as though I were an artifact,” he said. “As though my life were an appendix to a story I did not consent to inhabit.”
Harrowe watched him pace. “Aye,” he said. “That’s about it.”
Darcy stopped short. “You find that amusing.”
“No. I find itterrifyin’. Which is why I’m still breathin’. Anyone who treats this lightly’s already dead to it.”
He gestured, finally, to the cup Darcy had not touched. “Drink your tea, Mr Darcy. It won’t fix a damn thing, but it’ll keep you upright long enough to hear the rest.”
Darcy looked at the cup.
Then, at the man who had spent decades chasing a shadow that bore his name. And against his will—against reason, against pride—he sat back down. The tea was vile.
He swallowed it anyway.
She surfaced the wayone surfaces from deep water—without knowing she had been below.
Voices were already there when awareness returned, arranged above her like figures leaning over a well. They overlapped, separated, drew together again. For a moment, she could not place herself among them. The ceiling resolved first. The familiar crack in the plaster. The tall shelves beyond, their shadows no longer shifting.
Jane’s voice reached her. “…has not truly woken since before dawn. Sir, I—”
Elizabeth swallowed. Her throat rasped in protest, dry and sore, as though she had been breathing smoke. She tried to turn her head and managed only a fraction of the movement.
“Lizzy?” Jane’s hand closed over hers at once. It was cool. Close. Jane had been sitting there a long while.
Elizabeth opened her eyes. The effort sent a pulse of heat through her temples. Faces came into view—Jane, pale and intent; her father standing a little back, his shoulders drawn tight; Mr Bingley near the window, hat still in his hands as though he had forgot to set it down.
“You are awake,” Jane said, the words trembling despite her care. “Oh, praise be! Papa is here, and so is Mama. Everything is being seen to.”
Elizabeth tried to smile. Her mouth would not cooperate. Instead, she frowned, distracted by the absence of something she had been expecting.
“Where…?” The word scraped its way out. She swallowed and tried again. “Where is the dog?”
The question seemed to move through the room without landing anywhere. They glanced at one another until her father lowered his head and scratched his brow. “She keeps asking about some dog. It was but another dream, Lizzy.”
“No.” She shook her head insistently. “I heard him outside. Brutus—I know I…”
Jane blinked. “Mr Darcy’s wolfhound?” She cast a helpless glance over her shoulder at Mr Bingley, who only shrugged.
“Darcy took his dog back to London with him. I’ve no idea what she could mean. Does Sir William have a dog that might have wandered?”
Jane shook her head and turned a tight smile back to Elizabeth. “There has been no dog here, dearest. Only Mr Wickham and Mr Denny, still guarding the house.”
Elizabeth frowned harder. The library felt wrong without the weight of him at her side. She could have sworn she had but to drop her hand over the edge of the bed and it would find his nose. She searched the edges of the room, confused. “Hewas—”
