The Bennets departed after breakfast. Jane and Elizabeth in the carriage, Mrs. Bennet having sent it with strict instructions to bring her daughters home before noon, when the neighbors would begin calling and the engagement must be displayed. Darcy walked them to the door. In the entrance hallway, in the same alcove where he had pressed his forehead to hers and asked her to tell him she felt nothing, he caught Elizabeth's hand for a moment as Jane turned away.
"Tonight," he said, low enough that only she could hear. "I will call at Longbourn."
She squeezed his fingers. "I will be in the garden."
The day that followed was productive and agonizing in equal measure. Darcy reviewed correspondence, wrote to his steward at Pemberley regarding Christmas preparations, and answered a letter from Colonel Fitzwilliam with a brevity that would later require explanation. All the while, the library haunted him: the feel of her hair coming loose in his hands, the taste of her skin, the sound she made when his mouth found her collarbone. He relived every moment with the obsessive precision of a man cataloguing treasure, and the hours until evening stretched before him like a desert.
At four o'clock, a letter arrived that burned the desert away.
It was from Colonel Forster, addressed jointly to Darcy and Bingley, informing them that Lieutenant George Wickham had been seen in Meryton that afternoon in close conversation with Miss Lydia Bennet. The colonel wrote with the careful neutrality of a military man delivering uncomfortable intelligence, but the implication was clear: Wickham was circling the youngest Bennet sister with an attention that had nothing to do with affection and everything to do with revenge.
Darcy read the letter twice. The second time, his hands were steady, but something inside him had turned to iron.
"Bingley."
Bingley looked up from his own correspondence. His expression changed when he saw Darcy's face. "What is it?"
"Wickham. He is paying attention to Lydia Bennet."
"Lydia? She is -- what, fifteen?"
"Sixteen. Young enough to be flattered. Young enough to be foolish. And exactly the right target if one wished to cause maximum damage to the Bennet family and, by extension, to me."
Bingley set down his pen. "What do you want to do?"
"I want to ride to Meryton and put George Wickham through a wall." Darcy's voice was calm. His knuckles, wrapped around the letter, were white. "But that would be unhelpful. What I will do instead is speak to Colonel Forster and then to Elizabeth."
He rode to Longbourn.
Elizabeth met him at the gate. She was wearing a pelisse over her gown, her cheeks pink from the cold, her expression shifting from warm anticipation to alarm when she saw his face.
"What has happened?"
He told her. He watched her face as the information landed: Wickham, Lydia, the calculated cruelty of targeting a girl who was all impulse and no judgment. He watched concern become anger become fear, and then, most remarkably, he watched fear become something harder. Something that looked like his Elizabeth's particular brand of courage: the kind that burned hottest when the people she loved were threatened.
"I will speak to my father," she said. "Lydia must be restricted. Her walks into Meryton, her interactions with the officers --"
"Forster is already aware. He will keep Wickham under observation. But Elizabeth --" He hesitated. "Wickham is not merely predatory. He is strategic. He knows that harming your sister would harm you, and that harming you would wound me. This may be aimed at us as much as at her."
"Then we will address it together."
The simplicity of it -- we, together, the first time she had placed them on the same side of a battle line -- struck him with a force that had nothing to do with Wickham and everything to do with the woman standing in front of him, fierce and frightened and choosing to fight beside him rather than alone.
He could not help it. He reached for her, pulling her against him in the shadow of the Longbourn gate, his arms wrapping around her as though he could shield her from every threat through sheer physical determination. She came willingly, her face pressed against his chest, her hands grippingthe lapels of his riding coat, and for a moment they simply stood there, holding each other against the cold and the fear and the dawning realization that caring about someone made you vulnerable in ways that pride could never protect against.
"We will handle Wickham," he said against her hair. "I promise."
"I know." Her voice was muffled against his coat. "I trust you."
The words were small. The weight of them was enormous. He tightened his arms and pressed his lips to the top of her head and thought: she trusts me. After everything, she trusts me.
It was the first time anyone had given him something more precious than respect.
Then the evening went wrong.
Elizabeth spoke to her father, who listened with unusual seriousness and agreed to curtail Lydia's liberties. She returned to the garden to report this to Darcy, and found him standing at the stone wall, his expression a study in carefully contained fury.
"What is it now?" she asked.
