He watched her ascend the staircase, each step steady and untroubled. Only when she had disappeared from sight did he allow his shoulders to lower fully.
He turned back toward the front hall and sought a footman. “Please inform the house that we shall be receiving company shortly. Miss Bennet’s family will no doubt call without delay, and I expect Lord Matlock and Mr Harrowe as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh…” He had turned away, then stopped. “Mr Harrowe will be arriving with Brutus. He was shot, but has been seen by a surgeon and requires perfect quiet for his recovery. Please see that Cook has some broth ready for him, and make up a comfortable pallet for him… by the hearth in Miss Bennet’s room.”
The servant frowned. “Of course, sir.”
The house resumed its rhythm around him—servants moving, doors opening and closing, a fire being coaxed to life somewhere above. Darcy remained where he stood for a moment longer. The world had not ended. It had merely altered.
And this time, the alteration did not demand blood.
Matlock stood waiting inthe library, tall and grave, as though the intervening hours had been spent neither pacing nor arguing but merely considering. Harrowe occupied the window embrasure, his broad frame half-turned toward the square, as if London itself might offer annotation to what they had witnessed.
They did not speak at once.
Darcy crossed the room and laid theLiberflat upon the desk. The page he had last consulted lay open still, its margins crowded with Harrowe’s cramped notes.
“It was never the county,” Harrowe said at length, without looking away from the glass. “I’ve been arguing geography for twenty years. Fault lines. Watercourses. Inherited soil. But it were not the soil that required correction.” Harrowe’s mouth curved without mirth. “It was the vow.”
Darcy remained standing. He had not yet grown accustomed to the simple miracle of a floor that did not shift beneath his feet.
“It awakened in Hertfordshire,” Harrowe continued. “The fracture followed there. But it weren’t kept there.”
Matlock inclined his head. “No.”
“It was kept,” Darcy said, “where choice was made.”
A contemplative, almost reverent silence followed.
Harrowe lowered the glass at last and turned from the window. “You rode south,” he said slowly. “Not toward Kent in obedience. Not toward Hertfordshire in defence.”
“I rode toward her,” Darcy replied.
“Yes.” Harrowe’s voice softened. “And she toward you. How the devil you both knew…”
Matlock crossed to the table and laid his fingers upon the map Harrowe had so often annotated. The Thames curved there in ink, the old Roman road cutting across it like a scar half-healed. Dartford marked plainly enough. The ferry crossing. The raised causeway where marsh gave way to firmer ground.
“Here,” the Earl said.
Darcy did not need to look. He saw it still—the churned earth, the ditch, the gathering crowd. The place where neither Kent nor Hertfordshire held dominion, where boundaries blurred, and road and water met.
“Itisa crossing,” Harrowe murmured. “Neutral ground. Neither inheritance nor estate. A place of passage.”
“An ancient place of meeting,” Matlock corrected quietly.
Darcy drew a slow breath. “We believed the question to be one of possession. Which land. Which line. Which steward had claim.”
“And it was not?” Matlock asked.
“It was alignment,” Darcy said. “Not of soil, but of will.”
Harrowe let out a sound that was almost a laugh. “All my life, I’ve hunted proof of who the heir was, and that the Lady belonged to one county over another. That the fracture would close when the proper inheritance was restored to its proper seat.” He shook his head. “I mistook symptom for cause.”
“It was never to be enforced,” Matlock said. “Nor coerced.”
Darcy’s hand strayed, unconsciously, to the pale ridge at his wrist. “It was to be chosen.”
