He hesitated, then added, even lower: “There’s talk. Quiet, but spreading. Someone saw something that day at the Commons. A witness.” His eyes flicked to Darcy. “They think he was behind a pillar. A junior clerk, perhaps. But there’s noise about… silencing him.”
Darcy did not speak. His jaw locked tight.
If Eddleton had heard even scraps of rumor, then the secret was unravelling far too fast. And he was out of time.
They rose together, the scrape of their chairs drowned by a burst of laughter from the nearby table. Darcy nodded once and stepped away—but paused at the threshold.
“You will go to ground,” he said without turning. “Do not return to your flat. Do not speak of this again. You will be contacted, if needed.”
Eddleton gave a faint nod, and Darcy slipped out under a gathering summer storm.
He had barely gone ten steps before he felt it again—that prickling sensation at the base of his neck. A subtle shift in the air.
He glanced back once.
The man by the hearth was gone.
And so was the laughter.
Chapter Twenty
Theafternoonwaned,throwinglong shadows across the drawing room floor. Elizabeth sat with her badly botched embroidery balanced on her knee, though her needle had stilled some time ago. She barely noticed the thread looped loosely between her fingers. Her thoughts were far from domestic concerns, tugged instead toward darker corners—unfinished sketches, whispered suspicions, and the gnawing certainty that something more was coming.
She was just contemplating whether to rise and take some air when Mr. Bennet appeared in the doorway. His expression was, as ever, difficult to read, though his eyes held a gleam of something—amusement, perhaps, or perhaps a warning.
“My dear Elizabeth,” he said with a hint of gallantry, “I have received a rather charming note from my cousin Daniel. I suspect you might find it diverting. You will find it on the desk in the study.”
Elizabeth blinked, startled. His cousin Daniel…?Oh!Right. She rose quickly. “Of course.”
He stepped aside, gesturing with a slight incline of his head. “I shall leave you to it.”
She crossed the hall, the quiet clack of her slippers against the wood barely audible. As she entered the study, the familiar scent of pipe smoke and leather-bound books greeted her—along with something else.
Darcy was already inside.
He stood near the window, having apparently just climbed through it, one hand still brushing dust from his coat. He turned at once, eyes locking with hers, his expression dark.
And she was very suddenly, very completely, alone with him.
“Miss Ben—oh, bother with the disguise. I rather despise it, anyway.”
She puckered her mouth. “Is that what you crawled through a window to tell me?”
Darcy’s expression was taut, his jaw clenched in a way that betrayed more than mere unease. He paced a step away from the window, then stopped himself.
“I apologize for the ruse,” he said stiffly. “Recent developments have necessitated caution, and I would not that Mrs. Bennet… or anyone else… knew I was here.”
Elizabeth stepped forward, hands folding reflexively in front of her. “I understand,” she said quietly. Then, after a beat, added, “If this is about what happened yesterday—Mr. Collins—”
He looked up sharply, surprised. “Collins? No.”
She tilted her head. “Because I thought perhaps you had come to… I do not know. Clear the air? That man has no sense of tact. And you did not deserve—”
“This is not about Collins,” he interrupted, not unkindly. His voice was quieter now, hoarser. “Though if I began addressing every insult he offered, I should never finish.”
She gave a wry smile, but it faded as she took in the rest of his expression. Tension hummed off him like a wound wire, and beneath it—something darker. “Then what is this about?”
There was a pause. Darcy’s hand drifted toward the inside pocket of his coat, but he did not reach for anything. Instead, he fixed her with a look that made her breath catch.
