“You’ve no choice left in it, sir. You’ll either keep to it or you won’t. And it’s standin’ before you even now.”
Darcy heaved a sigh. “At the end of it… I am altered beyond retrieval.” He turned to stare at Harrowe. “Am I not?”
Harrowe did not contradict him. “That’s the fear,” he replied. “And it is not an idle one.”
Darcy’s gaze drifted back to theLiberwhere it lay open in Harrowe's hands. “And there is no other means? There must be a way… some manner in which all can be saved from ruin.”
Harrowe drew a heavy breath. “What I know—and it ain’t much—is this: once before, a man stood where you’re standin’. Loyal past reason. Faithful near to breakin’. And when the hour came that asked the last of him… he wouldn’t give it.”
Darcy’s fingers curled slowly against his palm. “Wouldn’t? Or simply made a mistake, chose the wrong path?”
“I can’t tell you the particulars. The record don’t set down his precise fault.” Harrowe kept his finger on the line. “But it sets down what followed. The Lady faded from the keeping. The land went wanting without its guard. And Britain—” His jaw tightened. “Britain was plunged into centuries of darkness.”
Darcy sank back into his chair, resting his forearms on his knees and leaning forward to stare into Harrowe’s square face. “You cannot mean to imply—”
“Your history books are rot,” Harrowe said flatly. “Rome pulls out, Arthur rises, brings a spell o’ peace—and when he’s gone, so’s Britain. That’s how they tell it.” He gave a short,humourless breath. “‘The dark ages,’ they say.” His mouth twisted. “Dark. They don’t know the half of that word.”
He rubbed a thumb along the edge of the page. “We scraped through, mind. Raids, wars, pestilence—still we held. The old Britain’s here yet.”
His gaze shifted toward the window, toward the sprawl of the city beyond. “But this time… with France watchin’. The sea unsettled.” His voice lowered. “I ain’t certain England would weather it twice.”
Darcy searched his face, desperate now for contradiction, for some sign that this was exaggeration, that history had softened the truth. “What must I do?”
Harrowe frowned and gestured to theLiber. “Give me a day or two with it,” he said. “Might be there’s a thread left to pull. Long as you don’t go throwin’ yourself on a blade before I’m done.”
Darcy closed his eyes. The image rushed unbidden—firelight, the sound of water, a presence he could not approach without harm—and he drove it back with a well-worn sort of violence.
At last, Darcy reached for his coat and drew something out of the pocket. “Here is my card. I will instruct my butler that you are to be admitted at any time, day or night.”
Harrowe’s brows arched as he pinched the card between calloused fingers. “Me? Callin’ at the home of a gentleman like a dandy in a powdered wig?”
“You could wear Wellingtons and reek of fish for all I care. You are the one man in all London who would take any of this seriously.” Darcy buttoned his coat and took up his hat. “And pray… do not be too long in coming.”
The motion came first.
Not a jolt, not a fall—only the steady, rocking insistence of it, the sense that the world had narrowed to a small, enclosed rhythm that would not stop. Elizabeth surfaced into it without alarm, aware only that she was no longer lying flat, that the air pressed close on all sides, and that something warm and woollen had been tucked too carefully beneath her chin.
The air itself felt different—cooler, thinner, carrying the faint, uncommitted light of a morning not yet decided. Wheels whispered rather than clattered, as though the road were being crossed before it quite belonged to anyone.
A voice drifted in and out of reach. “…only a few hours—yes, that’s it—Lizzy, can you hear me?”
Jane. The sound of her sister’s voice did not startle her; it belonged where it was, even if Elizabeth could not quite place why. She meant to answer, but the effort scattered before it reached her mouth, and the motion took her again.
At some point, a hand brushed her temple, smoothing hair back from her face. The touch lingered, light and familiar, and Elizabeth turned toward it without opening her eyes. The leather beneath her cheek creaked faintly. The scent of lavender gave way to something sharper—cold air, perhaps, or the trace of horse-sweat carried in on coats not yet dry.
Jane spoke again, too brightly. “She’s warmer,” she said to someone else. “I think she’s warmer.”
Another voice answered—lower, male, careful in its cadence. Mr Bingley? Elizabeth caught his name only because Jane repeated it, as though to check herself. There was reassurance in his tone, though the words themselves slipped past Elizabeth before they could be weighed.
The carriage slowed. Stopped. The sudden stillness squeezed oddly against her, and for a moment the effort of breathing felt deliberate, as though she had forgot how to do it without thinking. Outside, boots struck the ground. A man called out. The door opened, admitting a sharper draft that cut along her throat and made her shiver despite the blankets.
“She has not stirred,” a woman said. “She is not dead, is she?”
“She took a deep breath, just now,” Jane replied, a touch defensively. “Did you not, Lizzy?”
Elizabeth tried again to answer. Her lips parted. Nothing came. The world tipped, blurred at the edges, and she was carried back under before she could feel the disappointment of it.
Time lost its order.
