Richard shuddered. “You take the desk, Darcy. I do not want to touch anything he touched. This is worse than the aftermath of a battle. At least death in battle is clean.” He gingerly approached the laboratory table, his hands tightly clasped behind his back.
Darcy opened the top drawer of the desk. Quills, a knife for mending pens, paper, a bottle of ink – nothing surprising. To be safe, he felt along the back of the drawer for signs of a hidden compartment, but it seemed solid.
The next drawer held leather-bound notebooks. Darcy lifted out the topmost and opened it. The ink had faded, but the crabbed handwriting was still legible. The first page seemed to be a list of ingredients for an experiment, followed by the annotation ‘Useless. Waste of time.’ The next page showed a recipe that seemed to have been more successful, since it was followed by a list of names and quantities – one dram, two drams. The names all sounded like commoners. Had Sir Lewis been experimenting on the servants and the tenants? Bile rose in Darcy’s throat.
A book slammed shut with a bang. Richard said tautly, “Eversleigh, whatever you were doing, stop it.”
“I was merely reading the book,” said Eversleigh mildly.
“Well, don’t read it!” Richard sounded on the edge of an explosion.
Darcy asked, “What were you reading?”
Eversleigh looked apologetic. “It was a spell. It is indeed a book of sorcery, but I was only reading through the spell, not performing it, as if I would ever do such a thing.”
Richard was standing on his toes, his hands clenched. “Then skip the spells!”
“Certainly,” Eversleigh said calmly. “Fitzwilliam, it seems to me we have enough evidence already to say that your father will need to see this, so perhaps you would do best to ride for London now. You are one of the strongest men I know, but clearly you would be better off out of this place.”
Richard looked at Darcy who nodded. “Very well. I cannot be of much use here in any case.”
“But if we ever need a sorcery-sniffing hound, you will be very useful.”
Richard grimaced. “I would be happy never to smell sorcery again. I imagine I will return in the morning. Any messages, Darcy?”
Darcy shook his head. “Safe travels.”
After Richard left, Eversleigh said, “I have sometimes envied sources for their peaceful abilities, but I am grateful not to be one today. I cannot imagine what it took to distress him so much.”
“You were right to encourage him to leave. I have never seen him react that way.” But the more Darcy saw in the notebooks, the more he sympathized with Richard. “How damning are the books?”
“Very damning indeed. Apart from a few on alchemy, all the ones I have looked at are sorcery texts.” Eversleigh heaved down another large volume from the shelves.
Darcy turned reluctantly back to the notebooks.
ELIZABETH JUMPED TOher feet. “Mr. Darcy wishes to see me? At this hour? Did you tell him Lady Frederica and Miss de Bourgh have already retired?” She would have been abed herself if her body had not still hummed with nervous energy from the stressful day, or so she tried to convince herself. Or perhaps the rushing noise of the wind outside was responsible for her agitation. But those were just excuses. It was thoughts of Darcy that had kept her awake. Now he was here, and her body felt suddenly alive, her skin tingling with anticipation.
“I explained that, miss, but he insisted you were the one he wishes to speak to. Do you want me to stay with you while he is here?” The maid’s heavy eyelids were at odds with her offer.
“I will ring for you if I need you.” Elizabeth spoke with more assurance than she felt. She had been alone with Darcy on several occasions, both before and after his proposal, and he had never made any attempt to take advantage of the situation, but now she wondered how much she could trust herself. She had not been able to stop thinking about him since their brief conversation outside Titania’s bower whenshe had experienced that unaccountable urge to throw herself into his arms. He must know it, or why would he wish to see her alone in the middle of a windstorm? Or perhaps something had gone amiss at Rosings.
She tidied her hair, although at this point nothing would make it look freshly styled, and made her way downstairs to the sitting room. The maid had not yet taken the time to clean it fully, since she would have had no reason to expect guests before morning.
Darcy stood by the fireplace, his elbow resting on the mantel and his hand across his eyes. His hair looked as if the gardeners had taken a rake to it, and his usually tidy cravat was wrinkled, the earlier complex folds now retied into a simple schoolboy knot.
Her heart sank. Something must be very wrong. “Mr. Darcy, what is amiss?”
He started at her words and collected himself enough to bow. “My apologies for calling at this hour. I was walking the grounds and saw the light in your window. I hoped talking to you might clear my head.”
How did he know which window was hers? He had not been upstairs in the Dower House since she had moved there. And why did his head need clearing? He did not appear to be foxed, but he might well be less than sober. “It is late to be walking the grounds.”
His mouth twisted. “Going to sleep was not an appealing option.”
He was not going to make this easy for her. “How did your examination of Sir Lewis’s library go? Did you find proof of sorcery?”
His shoulders sagged. “We found an abundance of proof. I spent hours reading his journals. Sorcery is a viler thing than I ever realized. I feel unclean, as if nothing can ever wash away what I saw. That any man could do such things, much less a man I knew...” He turned haunted eyes to her.
The poor man! He was clearly suffering. But what comfort could she offer? “It takes great courage to confront the stuff of nightmares. Theold stories of sorcerers – they are terrifying.”
