Dyer smiled thinly. “Then forgive my candor, but it is a curious bridegroom who invites legal entanglement on the eve of his wedding.”
Darcy turned away, pacing once toward the mantel. His reflection flickered in the fire screen—tight shoulders, drawn mouth, a man trying too hard not to look cornered.
“I do not waver,” he said at last.
“You delay,” Dyer countered. “You speak of remedy, of Mr. Wickham and Miss Bingley, when you know perfectly well there is no more to be done there. Misgivings, sir?”
Darcy faced him squarely. “You mistake prudence for doubt.”
“Perhaps.” Dyer closed the ledger with a soft thud. “But in my experience, gentlemen who marry for law rarely do so without regret.”
Darcy’s eyes flared, but his voice was iron. “I do not marry for law. I marry because the alternative would ruin my sister.”
Dyer inclined his head—respectful, but not convinced. “Then may the vows serve you well, Mr. Darcy. Let us hope the court believes the same.”
Darcy’s gaze drifted back to the glass. Outside, the street stirred with smoke and Sunday bells. “The court has little to do with it. In two days, I will present my home with its new mistress.”
He said it not with pride, nor with anticipation—but with the grim resignation of a man reciting the hour of his own execution. As if the vows were nothing more than scaffolding around the ruin.
He had not slept.
The house had gone quiet hours before—Lady Catherine retiring with a scowl and muttered warnings about air drafts and morning punctuality, the dowager humming some ancient tune as her maid rolled her away—but Darcy had stayed awake. Pacing. Reading. Ignoring the cold tea at his elbow.
He had known this day would come.
Still, as he descended to the study and found Lady Catherine already settled in his favorite chair, a ledger opened across her lap like a throne decree, the entire morning shifted—less a beginning than a sentence carried out.
“You are late,” she declared, without lifting her gaze.
“It is seven o’clock in the morning,” he said.
“Precisely. And you marry tomorrow. Every minute squandered is another step toward ruin.”
Darcy crossed to the hearth without answering. He took the poker and stirred the coals—not because they needed it, but because he needed something to do with his hands.
The dowager had claimed the corner wing chair, her shawls wrapped like armor, teacup in hand. “Your aunt Catherine has already composed six letters this morning,” she said. “I believe two of them were addressed to God.”
“Do not be vulgar, Mother,” Lady Catherine snapped.
“I am too old to be anything else.”
Darcy’s spine locked, a slow breath catching against the tightness in his chest before he forced it free. “Mr. Dyer’s clerkis expected at half past eleven,” Darcy said, adjusting a stack of correspondence with studied calm. “The settlement will be signed here, witnessed, and dispatched to the Ashfords’ solicitor by luncheon. Ashford himself will be here early so we may conclude the matter without delay.”
He paused, his gaze fixed on the hearth. “It is the final step. Once signed and sealed, the match proceeds without impediment.”
Lady Catherine’s lips thinned. “Assuming he deigns to sign it.”
“He will,” Darcy said. “He has no reason not to.”
“And yet you still have time to come to your senses,” Lady Catherine said crisply. “No papers have been signed. The Ashfords are still silent. That is a door left open. Take it. Call it off before they do, and salvage what little face remains.”
“It is too late for second thoughts.”
The dowager’s brow lifted above her teacup. “Is it?” she replied. “Or are you just too afraid to have them?”
None of them said what they all knew.
Miss Ashford’s father had not replied to his last letter. Nor had he sent word of the planned schedule for tomorrow morning. No carriage. No requests. Not even a list of expected witnesses.
