While her skin dried and her wounds were re-bandaged with ointment and silk, Elizabeth’s mind drifted—slipping past the quiet murmurs of the maids, past the perfume of lavender water, and back to the wet-black woods and gunpowder smoke of the cabin. The floorboards had been slick with blood. Her flesh still remembered the sting of glass, the slippery weight of Darcy’s body, the hollow terror of thinking he might be gone.
How Darcy had slumped against her in the carriage, half-lost to pain and exhaustion, murmuring incoherently. Names. Places. Once, a prayer. But then—softly, brokenly—her name.
Always, he came back to her name.
And when his head had dropped to her shoulder, heavy and unguarded, she had not shifted a muscle. She had held still for miles, letting him lean into her. Letting herself believe, just for that magic time, that she was allowed to be the one he leaned on.
That weight had felt like both an anchor and a promise.
She reached for that memory now. Clutched it. Buried it under her ribs and held fast. Because she did not know what would come next. And she needed something to believe in.
A gown was produced—seafoam silk, finely embroidered—and she stepped into it, letting them button her up like a paper doll.
The mirror showed her a stranger.
There was no dirt, no blood, no signs of the shattered cottage. Her face was pale but composed, hair pinned back into elegant submission, her figure smoothed and shaped into a version of herself that fit Carlton House’s expectations.
Except her hands. Those, only dark-colored long gloves would be able to disguise entirely, and if she moved her hands just so, even now, a little blood would stain them. How Alice would fret at her!
She closed her eyes and gulped.Alice.
She could not ask the maids. They bustled efficiently, their attentions fixed on ointments, ribbons, and hairpins. What would they know of a missing lady’s maid vanished weeks ago into the belly of a conspiracy? They were servants of the royal household, not spies.
But she had asked the colonel. In the cabin, when the colonel’s men were securing the surroundings and Darcy was half-drugged with spirits at her side, she had begged an answer to the question she had been holding on her tongue since the rescue.
“Alice. My maid. Has there been any word?”
His answer had been spare. “It appears she may have escaped. But as of now, no fresh intelligence.”
Elizabeth had nodded, but the uncertainty had sunk its teeth into her and refused to let go. Escaped… to what? And was she truly alone? Or recaptured? Dead?
But then, even her fears for Alice had paled compared to her worry for Darcy.
His head propped on her shoulder, he had looked like something carved from cold stone—bloodied, silent, too pale. She had watched the pulse in his neck to be sure it still beat. She had whispered to him in the dark when he flinched in his sleep, and when he had murmured her name.
She had not told the Prince about the kiss. The near-seduction. It was the truth, after all, and it might have been enough.
She could have. She had been tempted.
One word, one cleverly dropped suggestion, and the scandal would have been theirs. Her ruination. His obligation. It would not have mattered what her father thought of him, not when honor demanded redress. Darcy would be hers, and if the Prince thought the whole thing satisfying enough, Pemberley would be his.
But she had said nothing. Because Darcy had looked at her with that gaze she knew too well by now—serious and shuttered and painfully noble—and warned her not to do it. He had promised he would deny it. That if she threw herself on the sword of scandal, he would not catch her, though she knew in the pit of her soul that bit was a lie on his part.
And so she had let the opportunity pass.
What now?
What would her father say, if he saw the truth of what had unfolded? Would he believe her untouched, when the whole of the Prince’s household had seen her arrive bloodied and disheveled beside a man who was not her husband?
Could she ever see Darcy again without the shadow of what might have been?
She did not know. But the ache in her chest said she would never stop wishing it.
Darcyfoundhimselfstandingon the grand steps, trying to force his posture erect. The oil lantern on the corner was blinding, and the early evening bustle of London streets seemed distant, muffled by the pounding in his head. His shoulder throbbed where the bullet had torn through, the graze at his neck burned, and the bruise on his temple sent waves of nausea with every heartbeat.
A carriage pulled up outside Carlton House, its lacquered panels gleaming with the Prince Regent’s insignia—a symbol of power, opulence, and distance. But it was not for him. It waited for her.
Darcy paused at the edge of the square, one hand braced against the lamppost as though the iron might steady the unraveling ache in his chest. He was already meant to be gone—already late to collect his final documents—but the sight of the carriage held him rooted. A footman adjusted the harness; another swung the step into place. Above, behind one of the tall windows on the upper floor, a curtain shifted. A maid, perhaps. Or someone closing off the view. He would never know. But he felt it, that invisible pull in his chest, the absurd hope that it was her—watching, wondering, waiting.
