Fitzwilliam turned slowly back to Darcy.
Darcy braced himself.
“Well,” Fitzwilliam drawled. “This is new.”
Darcy sighed.
Elizabeth lifted her chin. “What manner of fresh cretinery is this?”
“My cousin,” Darcy said stiffly. “And ‘cretinery’ is not a word.”
“It is now,” she decided. “Language adapts to life. There was never a need for such a word until now.”
Fitzwilliam grinned, stepping forward with a flourishing bow. “Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, at your service.”
Elizabeth did not curtsy. She merely narrowed her eyes, looking Fitzwilliam up and down with clear disapproval.
“And you,” Fitzwilliam continued, straightening, “must be the reason my dear cousin looks as though he’s just spent a month marching through the gutters of Whitechapel.”
Elizabeth tilted her head. “I was rather under the impression he always looked like that.”
Darcy exhaled sharply, looking at the ceiling.
“Excellent,” Fitzwilliam said, clapping his hands together. “You do have a sense of humor. That should serve you well. Now then—” He turned back to Darcy, stepping closer and lowering his voice. “I assume you’ve not gone completely mad. What the devil is going on?”
Darcy’s jaw tightened. “I will explain everything,” he said, avoiding Elizabeth’s gaze. “But first—”
“Wait.” Fitzwilliam held up a hand and sniffed.
Darcy stiffened.
Fitzwilliam’s brows lifted. “Do you smell that?”
Darcy exhaled. “I am well aware I have not bathed. We have not been afforded such a—”
Fitzwilliam waved a hand. “No, no, you—” He sniffed again. “You actually smell quite nice.”
Darcy blinked.
Fitzwilliam grinned. “Rosewater,” he declared. “It’s distinctly rosewater.”
There was a silence. Darcy did not move. From the corner of his vision, he could see Elizabeth still as a statue, her arms folding just a bit tighter over herself.
Fitzwilliam’s grin widened.
Darcy cleared his throat, brushing past him toward the window. “That is irrelevant.”
Fitzwilliam laughed. “Is it, now? Well, then, I am all anticipation to learn what you do consider ‘relevant.’”
Elizabeth sniffed and turned away.
Darcy pointed at her. “Lock the door behind us. Am I quite understood?”
She tilted her head just enough to show him the tip of her pointed chin and the slit of one half-lidded eye. Well. That would have to do—she was not going to offer any better promises.
He gestured to his cousin. “Let us have a private word downstairs.”
Darcyhadneverregrettedanything more than answering the Prince Regent’s summons.
