Darcy inclined his head. “Yes.”
Matlock did not speak at once. He sat with his hands folded, his gaze lowered to the table, as though turning Darcy’s account over until it would lie flat. When he looked up again, it was not to Darcy but to Harrowe.
“And you?” he said. “You have followed these records longer than my nephew. Tell me what you believe.”
Darcy felt the question land like a weight he had been holding at arm’s length. He nodded once, giving permission he would rather not have to grant, and turned slightly aside, bracing himself against the back of the chair. Harrowe did not waste the opening.
“The accounts match in their shape, if not their words. Where the breach spreads, it’s answered there. Not by stand-in. Not by sign alone.” He tapped the page. “The Witness stands where the land’s torn and sets the bond right by deed. Blood, at the least.” He hesitated only a fraction. “And…uh… union with her. Proper. Witnessed. Meant to result in… issue to keep the line going.” His gaze lifted to Darcy. “Because the Witness won’t be walkin’ away.”
Darcy felt heat rise beneath his collar. He kneaded his brow, refusing to look at either of them, but he did not interrupt. He had learned the cost of doing so.
“Go on,” Matlock urged.
Harrowe cleared his throat. “It holds together, if you look at it plain. The land don’t answer to what you mean. It answers to what you do.” He gestured toward the page. “She bears the weight. The Witness takes it back. They called it fertility because that’s how folk once reckoned endurance. Children meant the line went on. Without it, the land keeps reachin’ for what was sworn and never made good.”
When he fell silent, Darcy realised his jaw had tightened to the point of pain. He forced it to ease and looked to Matlock, already prepared to see disbelief, or at least resistance.
He saw neither.
Matlock regarded Harrowe with a thoughtful expression that chilled Darcy more than outrage would have done. “It is inelegant,” he said. “But not unreasonable. History has never been delicate where necessity was concerned.”
Darcy stared at him. “Youacceptthat?”
“I accept that it accords with ancient precedent,” Matlock replied. “And with the failures that followed when men attempted to soften it into metaphor.”
Darcy’s hand tightened on the chair. “You speak as though that recommends it.”
“I speak as one who recognises that systems rarely survive refinement,” Matlock said. “If you reject this account, then you must have another to offer. What do you propose instead?”
Darcy drew a breath, slow and deliberate, and felt the familiar resistance rise again—this time not to speech, but to what speech would concede. “Lady Catherine has been explicit in her views.”
Matlock’s brows lifted. “I should be astonished if she had not been.”
“She believes the matter may be settled by binding me in marriage and restoring the centre to Kent,” Darcy said. “She is convinced theLibersupports her.”
“Which it does not, according to you.”
“No,” Darcy replied. “It does not.”
Matlock’s mouth curved faintly. “She will not have been persuaded by that.”
“She was not,” Darcy said. “Nor was she dissuaded from ‘acting.’”
Matlock snorted. “That has always been her favourite threat. But ‘acting’ how? What does she mean to do, truss you up and throw you in a coach for the Hunsford church?”
Darcy hesitated only long enough to know that evasion would serve nothing. “I would not put that past her, but she knows that I believe Elizabeth Bennet of Hertfordshire to be the Lady.”
Matlock did not rise and pace, did not raise his voice, did not reach for outrage or denial. His uncle remained seated, hands folded, as though the weight of what had just been said required steadiness rather than motion.
“Then let us be plain,” he said. “You are persuaded of the Lady’s identity. You have evidence enough to convince yourself. You have dismissed Kent. You have rejected ritual as it is recorded. What, then, do you intend?”
“I intend to proceed with greater certainty,” he said. “If distance alters her condition, if removal eases what has been drawn upon her, then perhaps the matter may be put aside long enough for—”
Matlock lifted one hand, not sharply, but with unmistakable authority. “No.”
Darcy faltered. “No?”
“No more waiting. No more testing by absence. You speak as though you have the luxury of time, Fitzwilliam, and I tell you plainly that you do not.”
