The light had shiftedtwice without Darcy noticing.
It lay now in a long, slanted bar across the rug, catching the edge of Harrowe’s scattered papers and the spine of a book propped open by the weight of another. Ink dusted the desk. A candle had been burned down and replaced without comment. Somewhere beyond the windows, the house had resumed the ordinary rhythms of a day that refused to wait for clarity.
Elizabeth had gone upstairs, and he had not stopped her.
He could forgive her anger. He understood it too well to resent it. She had seen what Harrowe was proposing and named it for what it was. She had seen him sitting there, accepting, deteriorating, and had stepped away—not in abandonment, but in protection. Making space. Removing herself because her presence sharpened the cost.
It had been the hardest kindness of the day.
Harrowe sat hunched over the desk now, coat discarded, sleeves rolled, hair escaping its tie as he muttered to himself, fingers moving between margins and verses with a restless certainty that bordered on obsession.
“Boundary crossings,” he murmured. “Always crossings. Never stillness—no, no, that comes later. Here—listen to this—”
Darcy did not.
He sat back in the chair he had not left since midday, one hand braced on the armrest, the other resting flat against his thigh as though to reassure himself that his limbs still answered. Each breath required attention now. He had learned how much he could draw without provoking the tight, clawing protest beneath his ribs. The knowledge came with an intimacy he would have preferred not to acquire.
Harrowe shuffled papers again. “If the Lady names the bond—no, not names—acknowledges. Acknowledgement precedes action. Always. Then the Witness—”
Darcy closed his eyes briefly and pinched the bridge of his nose. He did not know what else to do but remain.
Leaving would change nothing. Sending Harrowe away would only delay what was already advancing. And if there was a pattern to be found—some articulation of duty that did not require Elizabeth’s consent to his ruin—then it would not be found without him there to hear it.
The door opened without a knock. Darcy’s eyes opened at once.
Bingley stepped inside, already halfway through a frown. He glanced first at Harrowe—taking in the spread of books, the disorder, the man himself—and then back to Darcy, his expression darkening with quiet suspicion.
“I told the footman we were not to be disturbed,” Darcy said.
“You also sent him away to order luncheon,” Bingley replied. “I took advantage of the interval.”
Harrowe looked up at last. “If you’ve come to object—”
“I have not,” Bingley said pleasantly, and turned his attention back to Darcy. He crossed the room and tilted his head toward the far corner, away from the desk. “May I?”
Darcy rose. The movement drew a sharp line of pain across his chest, but he mastered it and followed, one step at a time, until they stood near the window where the light fell less harshly.
Bingley lowered his voice. “You have a guest outside. I told the housekeeper to show him to the drawing room.”
Darcy’s breath stalled. “You admitted someone to my house?”
“It is hardly a stranger off the streets, Darcy. It is Mr Bennet.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Darcy paused at thethreshold of the drawing room long enough to master his breath.
The room was orderly, chairs set straight, the windows admitting a calm afternoon light that bore no trace of the night before. Mr Bennet stood near the mantel, hands clasped behind his back, his posture easy, his expression composed in the way Darcy had learned to distrust.
“Mr Bennet,” Darcy said. He inclined his head. “You are welcome.”
“Thank you, sir,” Mr Bennet replied. “I hope I do not intrude.”
Before Darcy could answer, footsteps sounded behind him.
He turned and found Wickham already crossing the room with an ease that suggested he had been there all along. The familiarity of his smile struck like a wrong note.
“Darcy,” Wickham said warmly, as though this were a chance meeting rather than an arrival carefully timed. “How fortunate to find you at home today.”
