The look in his eyes was so bleak that Darcy immediately felt ashamed. “I apologize, Fitzwilliam. I cannot imagine what you have been through these years.”
“Someone has to do it,” the colonel said with another shrug.
“Still, I am grateful.”
“Thank you.” The colonel’s voice was hoarse.
“You do nothaveto do it, you know. You have your allowance from your father and the small estate from your mother’s brother.”
“But I did not have those things when I enlisted.”
“You do now, though. Why not sell your commission? Surely there are others who can
“I have put off retirement these last few years,” the colonel said, “only because I refuse to quit until I have stopped Le Corbeau. Ifwe can catch him in Hertfordshire, then perhaps…perhaps I can at last be free.”
Darcy studied his cousin in the flickering candlelight. His cousin looked tired—older than the man who had laughed his way through so many London drawing rooms, the same man who had once charmed every matron in Mayfair with a wink and a bow. This version of Colonel Fitzwilliam bore weight in his eyes that no jest could dispel.
“I will help you,” Darcy said quietly. “Whatever it takes.”
The colonel gave him a faint smile. “I know. That is why I brought you into this. Not just because you were close to the child, but because I knew I could trust you to do the right thing.”
Silence stretched between them as the last vestiges of sleep fell away and tension tightened like wire in the small chamber.
At last, Darcy stood again, pacing a few steps before stopping near the hearth. “We tell Mr. Bennet everything. No more half-truths. He deserves to know exactly what we are facing—especially after tonight.”
The colonel nodded. “I agree. If he is to protect his family, he must understand what they are up against.”
“We will tell him as soon as it is light, then.”
The following hours were spent attempting to read to pass the time, although Darcy spent more of it staring blankly at the same page as opposed to actually reading it. At last, the dim room grew lighter. Darcy turned towards the window and saw the sky streaked with the faintest grey-blue of coming dawn.
“It is time,” he said.
Fitzwilliam pushed away from the wall and reached for his coat. “Then let us be off.”
They left Netherfield in silence, their horses cutting through the frost-covered ground with urgency. As Darcy rode through the dim, mist-hung morning, the wind bit at his cheeks and the reins burned against his gloved hands—but he barely felt it. His thoughts were too loud.
The moment he had read Mr. Bennet’s note, something within him had snapped tight, like a wire drawn too far.Elizabeth fought off an assassin.
The words replayed in his mind over and over, each time twisting the knot deeper in his chest.She fought Le Corbeau.
He could have lost her.
The thought of Elizabeth—alone in the dark, armed with nothing but courage, facing down a trained killer—filled him with both awe and terror.
His hands tightened on the reins. If anything had happened to her...
Icannotlose her. Not when I have just found her.
He knew not when he had first fallen in love with her—it was as if he were in the middle of it before he even realized it. But when he did know…
That knowledge had come to him like a tide at high moon—gradual, inevitable, and now all-consuming. But he had told himself to wait. She had already borne so much—the fire, the child, the revelations. He had not wanted to burden her with the weight of his feelings while she was already carrying the weight of the world.
He had imagined a peaceful day, some quiet moment after the danger had passed, when he might speak to her alone, take her hand, and offer her not just his heart, but a life of calm and certainty.
But there was no calm.
There was no certainty.
