Darcy’s eyes moved down the column.
“‘River levels along certain branches of the Medway and Thames have steadied despite continued frost. A millstream near Gravesend, formerly obstructed by silt and fallen timber, is said to have cleared overnight without further collapse of its banks.’”
Matlock took the second broadsheet. “And here—listen.” He read aloud. “‘A convoy delayed for want of sound flour has resumed its course, the casks having been found serviceable upon re-examination. Officers decline to speculate as to the cause of the earlier deterioration.’”
Harrowe leaned both hands upon the table, staring at the papers as though they might rearrange themselves into a map. “They will call it all an accident,” he muttered. “Panic and public hysteria. Merchants eager to recover losses.”
“Parliament will call it coincidence,” Matlock agreed. “And that will be the end of it, in any official matter.”
Darcy lowered the page. “And the War Office?” he asked quietly.
Matlock’s expression sobered. “If supplies truly stabilize—if transport ceases to fail at every turn—they will not trouble themselves over the manner of it. They will be content that the thing is so. And perhaps we will have Richard home again by spring.”
Darcy looked again at the lines of print. The language was cautious. Restrained. No hint of miracle or sensation. Only the slow correction of what had been unravelling.
He folded the broadsheet carefully and laid it upon the table. The three men stood in silence a moment longer, while outside the city moved on, ignorant of the hinge upon which it had nearly turned.
At last, Matlock spoke. “You understand,” he said, “that no one will ever credit the truth of it.”
Darcy allowed himself the smallest, private smile.
“They need not,” he replied. “It is enough that it stands.”
Darcy closed the doorhimself.
The latch settled into place with a soft, definitive click, and the sound seemed to divide the world neatly in two: what clamoured beyond, and what remained within.
Elizabeth stood near the hearth, arrayed in a fresh gown, her hair neatly pinned up once more, and her hands loosely clasped before her as though uncertain what to do with their freedom.
He remained where he was for a moment longer than was strictly necessary. Merely drinking her in as a man parched. “You are certain,” he said at last, “that you feel no ill effect?”
She turned toward him fully then. There was colour in her cheeks—not fever, not strain. Merely life.
“I feel,” she said, and paused as though searching for a word that would not diminish what she meant, “myself.”
The simplicity of it struck him more forcibly than any declaration could have done.
He crossed the room slowly. He had known courage in battlefields described by others, had admired composure in men who rode into cannon smoke, but this—this quiet approach toward her without fear of what might follow—felt more daring than any of it.
He stopped within reach. “May I?”
Her answer was not spoken. She placed her hand in his. He exhaled.
“I thought,” he said, still gazing down at the miracle of her hand in his, “that I understood what was required. That I had made peace with the consequence.”
“You had,” she replied softly. “That was why your choice was accepted.”
He lifted her hand and turned it gently, examining the faint marks at her wrists where the thorns had bound her. There were no wounds now. Only memory.
“I only chose it because I could not endure a world in which you were taken from me.”
She searched his face, as though verifying the absence of exaggeration. “And if it had not restored the land?”
He considered that honestly.
“Then at least the choice would have been mine.”
Her composure wavered at that—not into weakness, but into something far more vulnerable. “You arrogant, impossible man,” she whispered, and there was no anger in it at all.
