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At the other end of the table, Elizabeth had somehow steered the conversation toward the safer waters of church architecture, and Miss Ashworth described with considerable enthusiasm the chapel her brother intended to build when he took up his parish. Georgiana listened, eyes shining on Mr. Ashworth, who returned her adoring gaze with his own, plaintive with longing, and blushed most unbecomingly for a gentleman.

And Darcy found himself wishing they had stayed on the topic of abolition, wondering exactly why sitting at the head of the table no longer meant he was the host.

Dinner was blessedly concluded. Elizabeth rose first when the dessert plates were cleared, and the ladies followed: Georgiana reluctantly, Miss Ashworth with composure, Charlotte with a final glance at Richard that carried a private message Darcy could not read. Mrs. Annesley gathered her shawl and departed without meeting Darcy’s eye.

The door closed, and the dining room contracted to three men, a decanter of port, and a silence as weighty as the mahogany table that divided them.

“Shall we adjourn to the study?” Darcy rose from his chair. “I believe there are matters we ought to discuss in private.”

Ashworth rose as well, his expression composed. If he was nervous, he concealed it admirably. “I had hoped for such a conversation, Mr. Darcy. I am grateful for the opportunity.”

Richard set down his glass and stood, his face settling into the careful neutrality of a man preparing for unpleasant duty. “Both guardians present, I assume?”

“Naturally.”

They walked in silence through the corridor, their footsteps echoing on the marble, and Darcy found himself studying the young man beside him with fresh attention. Ashworth moved well—no swagger, no false humility, just the steady gait of a man who knew where he was going and why. His coat was well-made but not ostentatious, his cravat tied with competence rather than vanity. He looked, Darcy realized with some discomfort, like exactly the sort of man a sensible father might have chosen for his daughter.

Darcy poured port for three and took his father’s chair. Richard stood by the fireplace, his expression carefully blank.

Ashworth accepted his port with a murmured thanks and sat in the chair across from the desk.

“Mr. Ashworth,” Darcy began, “you are aware that Colonel Fitzwilliam and I serve as joint guardians to my sister.”

“I am, sir.”

“And you are aware that Miss Darcy is sixteen years of age.”

“I am.” Ashworth held the port glass in both hands but did not drink. In the candlelight, his face was composed but not guarded. “I am also aware that my arrival here, at Miss Darcy’s invitation rather than yours, has placed you in an uncomfortable position, and I must begin by apologizing for it. The fault is mine. I ought to have written to you directly when Miss Darcy first suggested the visit, and I ought to have declined until I had your express permission.”

“Why did you not?” Richard asked from the mantelpiece.

Ashworth met the Colonel’s gaze without shifting in his chair. “My sister counseled against it, but I… I confess I could not resist the opportunity to see Miss Darcy again. To speak with her. To assure myself of her welfare.”

Richard made a small sound—not quite a snort, but near enough. “Her welfare. You speak as though she were in some danger.”

“Miss Darcy’s letters were very generous, and I am aware of the impropriety of her writing to me. Therefore, I am here because honesty required me to come. I could not, in good conscience, continue a correspondence her guardians did not know about. That is the sum of it.”

Richard shifted against the mantelpiece, his fingers drumming a sharp, silent tattoo against the carved wood. “Honesty. A novel defense for a clandestine exchange of letters with a respectable gentlewoman. Did it occur to you, Mr. Ashworth, that the proper expression of honesty would have been to hand her epistles unread to her companion, Mrs. Annesley?”

“I could not,” Ashworth replied without flinching. “Because Miss Darcy’s mind is extraordinary. We found ourselves… kindred spirits, Sir. Her zeal for good works, her profound desire to bring the love of Christ to a suffering world—it is a calling of the highest order. I could not turn away from a soul so purely attuned to charity.”

Darcy listened in silence, taking a slow sip of his port. Across the mahogany, as the young man spoke with such elevated, self-righteous fervor about kindred spirits and Christian duty, Darcy met Colonel Fitzwilliam’s dark, cynical gaze.

Naturally, Darcy thought, with a cold, inward twitch of amusement. It is remarkably easy to discover a kindred spirit when the young lady in question happens to possess thirty thousand pounds and the face of an angel. One suspects his theology might be slightly less ecstatic if she were penniless and squinted.

“A touching discovery,” Darcy said aloud, his voice dropping into that smooth, glacial register that signaled the conversation was entering dangerous territory. “And yet, Mr. Ashworth, your spiritual alignment with my sister does not alter the fact that she is sixteen, corresponded with a gentleman behind her guardians’ backs, and possesses precisely zero experience of the world you propose to save.”

“I know this.” Ashworth set down his port glass and wiped his brow. “Miss Darcy is brilliant, passionate, deeply feeling, and far too young to make a decision that would bind the rest of her life. I know this. I have known it since we first met, and I have reminded myself of it in every letter I wrote to her, though I confess the reminding grew more difficult with each reply.”

Darcy and Richard exchanged a sharp, involuntary glance—the silent communication of two men who had braced for a reckless fortune-hunter and found, to their distinct annoyance, an adversary with both a conscience and a plan.

“The parish in Barbados,” Darcy said, steering the conversation back to hard ground. “You spoke of it at dinner. You intend to take it.”

“I do, sir. The appointment is confirmed for September, but because of the hurricane season, I shall set sail by June, God willing, and I expect to spend no fewer than two years establishing the parish, building the schoolhouse, and securing the living before I can responsibly bring a wife to join me.” Ashworth’s voice remained steady, though awareness flickered in his eyes, perhaps, that two years was a very long time when one was young and in love and sitting in the study of the woman’s brother. “I would not—I could not—ask any woman to share the conditions I shall face in the first years. The climate is dangerous. The accommodations are rough. The previous rector’s wife died of yellow fever within eighteen months of their arrival, and I do not intend to expose anyone I love to such a risk until I can provide the safety and the comfort she deserves.”

Darcy considered this confession and refrained from mentioning Georgiana’s frantic, tearful demands that they wed immediately. Clearly, his young sister had convinced herself she must accompany him to the tropics at once, entirely unconcerned with the small detail of her own mortality.

Richard pushed himself away from the mantel and crossed to the chair beside Ashworth. He did not sit but stood looking down at the young man for a long moment, and then, with a deliberateness that surprised Darcy, pulled the chair back and lowered himself into it.