It was his cousin.
Colonel Fitzwilliam stood near the bench, his stance seemingly casual—hands clasped loosely behind his back, head tilted as though surveying the horizon.
But when he turned and their eyes met, Elizabeth saw at once that there was no indifference there.
No kindness, either.
Only a grim, searching intensity that sent a fresh wave of dread coursing through her.
She faltered, her feet slowing against her will.
The sight of him—alone—seemed a silent verdict.
He has not come.
Her hands clutched the edges of her shawl more tightly, as if to bind herself against the sudden chill that swept through her.
It was not merely the morning air that left her cold.
It was the terrible, yawning fear that she had lost Fitzwilliam Darcy for good.
"You did not sleep either," she said quietly, her voice hardly more than a thread of sound between them.
He did not answer at once. His gaze swept past her, out across the misted hills, as if the landscape might offer clarity where his own mind could not.
At last, with a measured voice, he said, "You told him."
Elizabeth nodded, the movement small but unwavering. "Yes. As I promised."
There was a beat of silence. The early birds chirped overhead in the sparse branches, their songs bright and cruel against the heavy stillness between them.
Elizabeth stepped nearer, the damp grass brushing against her shoes, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. She hesitated only a moment before asking, "Do you believe me?"
The Colonel’s mouth quirked—not in amusement, but in something far more unsettling. Uncertainty. Thoughtfulness. Perhaps even a shadow of sympathy.
"I believe..." he began, then broke off, shaking his head slightly. "I do not know what I believe. It is all too Shakespearean. Too perfectly mad. A lady who claims foreknowledge of all our fates? Even in camp, I have not heard such tales without the influence of strong drink."
Elizabeth’s lips pressed together, her pride wounded but her courage undiminished. She had expected nothing less.
Still, when she spoke, her voice was steady. "Isabel García."
The name dropped between them like a stone into deep water, rippling outward unseen.
Colonel Fitzwilliam stiffened imperceptibly, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly.
A soldier's reaction. A man assessing new intelligence he could not easily explain.
He studied her then—not as a lady of gentle breeding, not as the daughter of a country squire—but as something far more dangerous: a puzzle he could neither solve nor safely dismiss.
"What do you know of her?" he asked at last, his voice low, wary.
Elizabeth met his gaze without flinching, though her hands trembled where they gripped her shawl. "Enough," she said quietly. "Enough to know why you hate the sound of Spanish music, why you flinch at the scent of oranges, why you never wear your medals."
His breath left him in a short, involuntary gasp—barely a sound, but enough. Enough for Elizabeth to know she had struck true.
The silence that followed was not the easy quiet of old acquaintances, but a strained, terrible thing—taut with the knowledge that too much had been seen, too much guessed.
When he spoke again, it was with a roughness he did not attempt to disguise.
