29 January
They reached Lambton justafter three, the lane still thick with slush and the rooftops smoking quietly against the grey. The house his grandmother had described stood exactly where it ought—modest, respectable, stone-framed and tidy.
It was also silent.
Darcy stepped down before the footman had finished descending. He stared up at the door. One window unshuttered. A chimney dark.She could be here. She might open the door.
The knock echoed flatly.
No answer.
A second knock. Longer. Still nothing. The stoop unswept. No boots. No tracks in the snow. The stillness mocked him.
A boy with a bakery satchel passed along the hedge, slowing when he caught sight of the carriage.
“You there,” Darcy called. “This house—do you know the family?”
The boy nodded, chewing. “Mrs. Forster, sir. And her niece and all. Gone, though.”
A beat. The world shifted half a degree.
“Gone?” Darcy asked.
“London, I think?” the boy said uncertainly. “Left yesterday by the southwest road. Took a lot of trunks.”
Darcy stood still, the cold settling deeper now. Not just the weather. Not just the quiet street or the shuttered house. But something final in the air. Heavy. Unforgiving.
She hadbeenhere. Close enough to touch!
And he had missed her.
He turned back toward the carriage, legs moving through what felt like mud. The door opened beneath his hand, though he barely registered it.
The dowager looked up from her embroidery with all the serenity of a duchess at a funeral.
“They are not here,” he said, voice raw.
“No?” she replied, tucking a bit of fringe back into place. “And yet you look like a man with a next move.”
“I am,” he said hoarsely.
Richard leaned forward from the opposite seat, coat still unbuttoned, brows furrowed beneath windblown curls. “Gone, then?”
“London,” Darcy muttered.
The colonel winced. “Well. That is inconveniently large.”
Darcy climbed in and shut the door behind him with more force than strictly necessary. “Pemberley,” he told the driver through the glass.
The wheels lurched into motion, snow and gravel hissing beneath them.
For a while, no one spoke.
Darcy stared out the window, but saw nothing. Not the trees. Not the turns in the road. Only the image of a shuttered house and a bakery boy with too much truth in his voice.
She had been here. And now she was not.
He had not guessed wrong. He was just too late.
