The shaking ebbed as abruptly as it had come.
Whatremained was wreckage: a chair knocked askew, porcelain scattered like bone across the hearth, the fire snapping too loudly in its grate. Darcy stood bent forward, one hand locked against his breast, breath coming ragged and uneven.
Elizabeth turned on him, white-faced and wild-eyed.
Darcy could not have said who moved first, only that suddenly she was there, solid and breathing and unhurt—and that the certainty of it struck him harder than the pain still clawing at his chest. His hand remained pressed there, as though he might yet fall apart if he let go.
The room felt altered. Not damaged—answered. That this had not been an accident of stone or weather. Something had heard the question he had asked, the test they two had attempted.
And it had replied.
Chapter Forty-One
The door struck thewall hard enough to leave a mark. Darcy could only stare at it in a hazy sort of stupor—his hand had occasioned the violence, but his mind was still too sluggish to gentle his movements.
The sound echoed down the corridor, sharp enough to draw a gasp from Elizabeth beside him. She caught the edge of the door as it bounced back, glancing helplessly at the damage done to the wall. “Are you…?”
“I can walk.”
The words emerged thin, scraped raw on the way out. His chest answered them with a tight, unyielding pressure that made each step an act of balance rather than intention. The floor had stopped moving, but he was not certain how he was connected to it. He reached for the wall, missed it, corrected.
Elizabeth’s hand lifted in reflex, hovering near his sleeve before halting short. “Mr Darcy—”
“No!” He swallowed and forced the rest through more evenly. “Do not… Please, do not.”
She withdrew her hand at once. The space between them felt abruptly colder.
Behind them, the library lay open and ruined: the overturned chair, the scattered porcelain, the darkened patch on the carpet where wax had been stamped and ground into the pile. Smoke lingered faintly in the air. Darcy forced himself to look at it properly, to take note. Evidence required attention.
A shout sounded from the stairs. Another answered it—this one sharper, alarmed.
Elizabeth gaped after the sound in some horror. “We… we have awakened the house.”
“Yes,” he said. “That is to be expected.”
Footsteps pounded along the corridor. A door opened somewhere with a crack like a snapped branch. The house was coming apart into noise and motion, servants calling to one another, voices raised in the careful urgency of those trained to act without panic.
Darcy took one step forward and very nearly lost the second.
Elizabeth caught her breath, stopped herself again from wedging herself under his shoulder. He almost wished she would. Kill him with her mercy and have done with it.
Her face had gone pale beneath the flush left behind by the shock, her loose braid had begun to come undone at the nape. And in the light of the hall, he could see now how hastily done up her gown was, sleeves rumpled as though pulled on without care.
The realization struck him with a sudden, mortifying clarity. Matters did not look… innocent.
He straightened at once, though his spine gave way with a painful twinge that nearly buckled him. His hand remained pressed flat against his chest, fingers splayed, as though he could contain what remained unruly beneath them by force alone.
Voices rose nearer. “Darcy? Where are you?”
Bingley’s, unmistakably. Footsteps hurried along the passage, then slowed, uncertain.
Darcy turned just as Bingley came into view, candle held high enough to throw light across the corridor in a wavering arc. He wore his dressing gown half-fastened, feet still bare, his expression shifting rapidly from relief to astonishment as his gaze took them in together.
“Thank God,” Bingley began—then stopped. His eyes flicked from Darcy to Elizabeth and back again, polite instinct wrestling with a conclusion he was determined not to voice.
Elizabeth moved first, stepping back a pace, as though the space between them had suddenly become improper rather than dangerous.
“There was a disturbance.” Her voice held steady, but her hands were clenched in her skirts. “The library—”
