“About as much as you, I imagine,” he said, taking in the light shadows under her eyes. He hesitated, then added, “I have been thinking.”
Richard gave a low sound into his coffee. “That is one word for what happened last night. I heard you pacing through the wall.”
Darcy ignored him. “Before anything else is decided, we must determine whether the document is genuine. Richard and I will ride to London this morning.”
Elizabeth’s face fell. “London?”
“My father’s former solicitor maintained an office there, though he had correspondents in Derbyshire. If any record exists of the agreement, or if there are papers that might help us compare signatures, witnesses, seals, or practices, we will have them.”
Richard set down his cup. “And if the solicitor proves slow, I shall encourage haste.”
“You will do no such thing,” Darcy said.
“I shall smile. Men have been known to move quickly when I smile.”
“Because you look like a highwayman considering repentance.”
“Exactly.”
Elizabeth smiled then, though worry remained in her eyes. “You mean to go and return the same day?”
“If the roads allow it.”
“They will be awful after the rain.”
“Yes.”
“Horseback will be faster.”
Richard winced. “In a saddle to London and back in one day? Miss Elizabeth, what have I done to lose your good opinion so swiftly?”
“It is not your comfort I am chiefly concerned with.”
Darcy looked at her with a tenderness he could not entirely conceal. “We will take care.”
“See that you do.”
There was no time for more. Darcy longed to remain, to sit with Georgiana, to speak privately with Elizabeth, to plan with Mr. Philips, to do anything except leave the peoplehe loved while Wickham remained at the Meryton inn. Yet action was better than helplessness, and London held answers Hertfordshire could not.
Within the hour, he and Richard were on the road.
It was a hard journey. The rain had left ruts deep and slick, and more than once they were forced to slow where the road had turned treacherous. Richard bore the discomfort with his usual mixture of complaint and inappropriate humor, but beneath it Darcy felt the same tension that coiled through himself. Neither of them spoke of Georgiana for long stretches. It was easier to discuss seals, signatures, solicitors, and whether Wickham could have obtained old paper and ink than to imagine the girl upstairs at Netherfield waking from sleep and remembering his claim.
London was gray, crowded, and damp when they reached it.
Darcy had not visited his father’s former solicitor since the first dreadful months after inheriting, when every appointment had revealed another debt, another imprudent gift, another dishonorable entanglement dressed in legal language. The office had changed little: the same narrow stair, the same dark paneling, the same clerks who looked as if emotion were an error in bookkeeping.
Mr. Hales, the principal solicitor now that his father’s old man had retired, received Darcy with grave courtesy. His expression sharpened when Darcy explained, in as few words as possible, that a document had surfaced purporting to bind Georgiana in marriage by their father’s agreement.
“No such agreement appears in the papers we hold,” Mr. Hales said after a long search through ledgers and correspondence.
Darcy’s relief came too quickly.
The solicitor raised a hand. “That does not prove it false. Your father did not always conduct business through this office. Particularly in his later years.”
Richard stood near the window, arms folded. “The document bears the name of a Derbyshire solicitor. Mr. Alton, of Lambton.”
Mr. Hales frowned. “Alton. Yes. He died not long ago, I believe.”
