Darcy did not answer.
“Wemustfind her,” Harrowe insisted. “Immediately. The longer she remains unrecognised—”
“She is down the hall,” Darcy said.
Harrowe stared. His eyes widened. He made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had not caught so badly in his throat. “You’re never serious.”
“I am,” Darcy replied.
Harrowe pushed back from the desk as though the wood had burned him. “She ishere? In this house?” He ran a hand through his hair, agitation spilling over at last. “Darcy, what in God’s name have you been doing?”
Darcy’s patience snapped. “Everything!”
The word came out sharper than he intended. He drew a breath and tried again. “She was brought here because she was thought to be dying. Collapsing in fields. Failing without cause. London offered reprieve.”
“London?” Harrowe echoed.
Darcy’s mouth tightened. “No.Idid. It was me.”
Harrowe crossed his thick forearms over his chest. “Go on.”
“When we spoke of it,” Darcy said, slowly now, carefully, “when we tested—”
“Tested?” Harrowe demanded.
Darcy turned on him, the movement sudden and ill-advised. Pain flared hot and immediate through his chest, stealing breath and sense together, but the words broke free regardless.
“I kissed her! It was a test. It failed.”
Harrowe froze, his mouth round with awe.
“It nearly killed me,” Darcy went on, the admission tearing loose everything he had held in check. “And when she drew away—when the bond was broken—the earth shattered.”
He stopped there, breath shallow, the room reeling faintly around him, and said no more.
Harrowe did not speak at once. He stood very still, eyes fixed on Darcy—not with disbelief, but with a sharp, searching intensity that made Darcy’s skin prickle.
“Of course,” Harrowe said at last. The words were almost reverent. “Of course it did.”
Darcy’s temper, already strained to breaking, snapped outright. “Pray, stop speaking of it as though it wereinevitable!”
Harrowe looked up. “But it was.”
Darcy took a step toward him and had to stop himself from taking another. His chest burned, breath coming shallow and ill-managed. “You speak as though I invited it. As though I stood idle and refused discomfort, risk—”
“I speak,” Harrowe said, “having read what you’ve not yet laid eyes on.”
Darcy laughed once, harsh and without humour. “Then show it to me.”
Harrowe shook his head. “Not like this. Not in ink.”
“How? What shall I do? She nearly destroyed me! And…” Darcy swallowed, closed his eyes. “And I would do it again if it spared her.”
Harrowe’s gaze softened—not with pity, but with recognition. “That,” he said quietly, “is theproblem.”
Darcy turned away, pacing the length of the study, then stopping abruptly when the movement sent a sharp lance of pain through his ribs. He caught himself against the back of a chair and forced the rest out, breath by breath.
“You come with warnings and confirmations and fragments,” he said. “You tell me this was foreseen, that it is accelerating, that delay worsens fracture—yet you offer no remedy. No instruction. Only insistence.”
