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“Speak, Mr. Darcy,” she said, spreading her skirts. “Because you seem to imagine that whatever you have to say would result in an undignified swoon from my part. I will have you know that my nerves are made of sterner mettle than my mother’s and I do not faint when angry.”
“No, I do not suppose you would.” Darcy dragged in a long, steadying breath before taking the seat opposite her. “Now, I need to ask you. Has Sowerby divulged to you, in writing, what exactly your uncle’s estate entails?”
“I have written him several times,” Elizabeth said, her brow furrowing at the abrupt shift in tone. “Twice before the wedding, when the banns were read, and twice after. We sent a letter to London the day we left Hertfordshire, and I just dispatched an express informing him of our marriage. Do solicitors take time to execute a will?”
“It depends on how complicated his estate was,” Darcy said. “If it consisted of bank drafts and government notes, then it is a simple matter. But your uncle’s affairs are more complex than that.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow, as if he could not know.
“My uncle, Lord Matlock, has been making inquiries into Henry Bennet’s estate,” Darcy continued, his gaze dropping to the brass hinge of a cabinet that used to hold a collection of Shakespeare scripts. “Purely on my behalf, naturally, should the estate have fallen to me by default.”
“You planned on not marrying me?” She sat up straighter, eyes narrowing.
“Never, Mrs. Darcy. But it was prudent to know the nature of his estate either way.”
“And what did your uncle discover?”
Darcy rubbed the back of his neck, swallowing against the dryness of his throat. “Not as much as we supposed. Although your father believed Henry Bennet owned shipping interests and timber concerns in the Americas, no Bennets appear in any maritime manifests. He owned no freehold property in London. Matlock’s investigators can find no trace of the capital.”
“What does that mean?” Her voice dropped, tightening into a suspicious whisper. “That they cannot locate his holdings?”
“It means that the fortune Sowerby has represented may not be as substantial as he claimed. It means the estate is irregular—that a proper accounting should have been provided before the wedding, but wasn’t. It means—” Darcy stopped himself. All the color drained from Elizabeth’s cheeks and she swayed in her seat. “Mrs. Darcy?”
“Are you saying,” she began, and her voice was not steady now, not at all, “that there may be nothing? That my uncle’s fortune—the eighty thousand pounds—may not exist at all?”
“I am saying that we cannot find where it is.” Darcy heard the concern in his own voice and did not try to suppress it.
Elizabeth stared at him, her eyes wide and stricken. Slowly, she lowered her head into her hands, her shoulders shuddering as her breath caught short. “Perhaps… perhaps the will was one vast, cruel joke. A hoax.”
“The inquiry is still incomplete,” he urged, leaning forward, desperate to steady her. “There may be concealed accounts, or hidden assets. We will not know until we can locate Sowerby.”
“Are you saying he is missing?”
Panic prickled Darcy’s scalp. “No, not at all. He has been… as you noted… not responsive. Perhaps he is tracking down the holdings or negotiating terms with lenders. Typically, all of your uncle’s debts need to be paid before his remaining assets can be transferred.”
“But your uncle’s men found nothing.” Elizabeth’s fingers gripped the leather arms of the chair so tightly her knuckles turned white. “If the will is a hoax, then we are—”
She did not finish. A sheen of perspiration broke across her brow, her complexion turning an alarming shade. With a sharp, shallow gasp, she bent forward, pressing her forehead to her knees.
In a single heartbeat, Darcy was off his chair and on his knees before her. “Elizabeth—look at me. Are you well?”
“My uncle was a jester. He loved a good prank,” she choked out, her voice breaking on a dry, rattling sob. Her shoulders sagged as if every bone in her body had suddenly dissolved. Her head slumped forward, and without a second thought, Darcy caught her weight, drawing her upper body against his shoulder and wrapping his arms securely around her trembling frame.
A low, keening wail tore from her throat, raw and utterly defenseless. “Fitzwilliam… it seems we married for nothing. Whatever are we going to do?”
Darcy closed his eyes, his cheek resting against her dark hair as he gathered her into his arms and lifted her effortlessly from the chair. “I am taking you back upstairs. You need rest, Mrs. Darcy. And by all that is holy, you need not worry.”
Except if she, too, were as penniless as he, then they had married each other’s poverty, and Henry Bennet was laughing still.
“How can you tell me everything will mend?” She mumbled against his shoulder. “How?”
“Because, Elizabeth, we are Darcys.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WE ARE DARCYS
Ordinarily, Elizabeth hated taking breakfast in bed—that kind of behavior belonged to her mother and her pernicious nerves. But the thought that she might have married Mr. Darcy because of a fictitious will, a folly planted by her mischievous uncle, made the headache a convenient excuse to dodge her nonexistent normal activities.
