“You look delighted,” Fitzwilliam said. “It is always pleasant to be received by a relation as if one had ridden north bearing plague.”
“I should perform delight better if you had warned me of your approach.”
“Had I warned you, you might have found a reason to prevent it, and then where would family feeling be?” Fitzwilliam gave one quick, assessing glance. “You have slept poorly. Good. I dislike being the only man swaying on his feet. Shall we tip a bottle and finish ourselves off with a bit of gossip?”
Darcy lowered his voice. “Not here.”
“No. One sees at once this hall has ears, eyes, and very likely opinions enough. Very well. Give me food, fire, and privacy in the order most likely to preserve your civility.”
Mrs Reeves, summoned by instinct rather than bell, provided the first two withoutquestion. Within fifteen minutes Fitzwilliam had been refreshed, nourished with a tray substantial enough to reconcile his constitution to the north, and restored to a cheerfulness incompatible with true humility.
Only then did Darcy lead him into the study and close the door.
Fitzwilliam glanced around once, noting the desk crowded with ledgers, the maps pinned near the shelf, the muddy boots by the hearth, the fresh draughts of water-channels inked in Hadley’s blunt competent hand.
“So it is true,” he said. “You have become a man of ditches.”
“If you rode two hundred miles to sneer at drainage, I shall send you back unfed.”
“No. I rode because your last letter was the most alarming example of restraint I have received from you in years, and because that style in you generally signals either disaster or devotion. Sometimes both.”
Darcy said nothing.
Fitzwilliam’s expression altered. Wit ceded to seriousness. “I was right, then. There is a matter here.”
Darcy moved to the window before replying. The yard offered no help. “There is a lady in this house,” he said at last, “whose circumstances are not what they should be.”
Fitzwilliam made a small, impatient sound. “That much my horse knew by the time he reached your gate. Try the next degree of accuracy.”
Darcy turned. “You will not speak her name outside this room.”
“Then I shall need it inside.”
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
Fitzwilliam’s brows rose. “Ah. Lady Catherine has mentioned that name in my hearing. And, I take it, at least half what she told me was even true. But I imagine there is more, even than our aunt has imagined.”
It was intolerable how quickly he saw. “Our aunt has information enough,” Darcy said, “but not the sort that makes her useful.”
“No,” Fitzwilliam said slowly. “I suppose not.”
He took the armchair by the hearth without waiting, the privilege of cousins and soldiers. “Go on.”
Darcy did, though not clearly. He withheld what Elizabeth had not trusted him with. He told the rest—the rescue, the injury, her wish to flee the house before her leg had healed, the existence of papers Elizabeth feared to expose, his sense that any formal enquiry might endanger her and anyone aiding her.
Fitzwilliam listened without interruption, a sign both of seriousness and alarm. When Darcy finished, he turned one glove between his hands. “And Georgiana knows?”
“Not the particulars.”
“The widowed sister you mentioned?”
“I imagine she knows the whole of it.”
“The servants?”
“Only what any household might observe when two ladies arrive half-drowned and one with a wound that would have killed most.”
“And you,” Fitzwilliam said evenly, “my dear Darcy, I presume only what your face has always taught me—that you can labour like six men and still, where affection is concerned, place yourself in absurdity by excessive delicacy at the wrong end of the question.”
