“Say you will come tonight!” Bingley beamed. “We can discuss breeding charts and oats!”
“We shall have to decline, Bingley.” Robert stood up and buttoned his coat. “We have pressing engagements this evening. Maybe some other day. I wish you and your... your fetlocks every happiness.”
“Shame! Well, another time! Darcy, I shall send you the pedigree of the grey!”
“Do that, Bingley,” Darcy whispered.
The three Fitzwilliam men turned and walked out of the room. They did not speak until they had retrieved their hats and stepped out onto the bustling pavement of St James’s Street.
The roar of London washed over them, but Darcy heard nothing. He stopped on the corner, leaning against the brick façade of the club.
“Well.” Robert adjusted his beaver hat. “I believe that concludes the investigation. The patient is not only alive; he is entirely unaware that he was ever wounded.”
“A dappled grey.” Richard shook his head. “He replaced a beautiful woman with a horse in less than six months.”
Darcy closed his eyes.
I sundered a match the man forgot within a season,he thought, his stomach churning with a sickly mixture of relief and shame.
“It is guilt without the option of repair,” he whispered aloud, staring blindly at the cobblestones. “I cannot fix it. I cannot undo the pain I caused her sister, because Bingley does not even possess the depth to realise what he threw away.”
Robert placed a sympathetic hand on Darcy’s shoulder. “You cannot repair Bingley, Fitzwilliam. There is nothing to repair. He is whole, he is happy, and he is superficial.”
“But Miss Bennet suffered,” Darcy argued, looking up at his cousin, the memory of Elizabeth’s furious, tear-filled eyes in the parsonage burning in his mind. “Elizabeth suffered for her.”
“Miss Elizabeth,” Richard interjected, “is waiting for you in Cheapside. Tomorrow morning.”
Darcy looked at his cousins. They were right. The past was a landscape of mistakes and miscalculations, but the future was waiting in Gracechurch Street.
He stood up straighter, pushing away the brick wall. The guilt remained, a scar upon his conscience, but the pathforward was crystal clear. He could not undo the past. He could not make Bingley into a man of depth.
But he could face the woman he loved.
He resolved, in that moment, to lay the final, unvarnished truth at Elizabeth’s feet. He would go to Cheapside tomorrow, sit in the parlour of the uncle in trade and tell her about the Gospel of Mares and Geldings. He would offer her the honesty of his own foolishness, and pray that she found it as ridiculous as he did.
“Come.” Darcy found his commanding resonance once again. “We have preparations to make for tomorrow. I believe I have a fish cart to locate.”
Robert grinned, the rakish spark returning to his eyes. “That’s the spirit, Cousin. I shall ensure Dawson packs your best gutting knife.”
Chapter Sixteen: A Broken Viscount
HUNSFORD PARSONAGEhad operated on a timeline dictated by Mr Collins’s digestion, but the Gardiner household in Cheapside was currently operating under the meticulously orchestrated dictates of Aunt Madeline’s fretting.
It was Saturday morning. Elizabeth stood in the centre of the drawing room, wearing her best muslin gown, attempting to project an aura of calm that she did not possess. Her heart was beating wildly. He was coming today. Fitzwilliam Darcy, the master of Pemberley, the author of the most catastrophic and beautifully unhinged letter in English history, was expected to call.
And her aunt was waging a holy war against a speck of dust on the mantelpiece.
“The cushions, Lizzy,” Aunt Madeline commanded, fluffing an embroidered pillow and tossing it onto the sofa. “Are they symmetrical? They must be symmetrical. Men of vast estates have a keen eye for symmetry.”
“They are perfectly aligned, Aunt,” Elizabeth assured her, suppressing a nervous laugh. “I promise you, Mr Darcy is not coming to inspect our cushions.”
“You do not understand, Elizabeth.” Madeline Gardiner halted her dusting to press a hand against her chest. “I grew up in Lambton. Five miles from the Pemberley gates. I used to see the late Mr Darcy riding through the village when I was a girl. The Darcys are not merely gentlemen, Lizzy; they are an institution. They own half of Derbyshire, and the other half likely owes them rent. And you have somehow managed to make the current, notoriously proud incarnation of that family fall madly in love with you.”
“I did notmakehim do anything,” Elizabeth protested, a warm flush creeping up her neck. “It was an accident.”
“No matter how many times you make that statement, Lizzy, I shall retort that it was a miracle,” her aunt said, moving to straighten a candlestick.
From his armchair by the window, Mr Edward Gardiner lowered his morning paper, bemused by the martial law that had overtaken his usually cheerful home.
