Burke inclined his head. "Very good, sir. I'll see that it's made ready."
There was something unusual in his manner. Burke had served the Darcy family long enough to speak with an ease bordering on insubordination, now every word was measured and respectful, as though he feared saying too much. Under any other circumstances Darcy might have thought it unusual. Today he was in too much pain to care. If Burke supposed his subdued spirits arose from parting with Miss Bennet so soon, he could scarcely be blamed. Darcy wished that were the whole of it.
Burke watched him for a moment after he had gone. There was something in his master's face he had never seen before, a bewilderment that sat strangely upon a man usually so composed. He had expected anger. Cold, controlled anger perhaps, but anger nonetheless. Miss Bennet could scarcely have concealed what had happened, and no man alive would have received such news calmly. Yet Mr Darcy had said nothing.Burke frowned to himself. Perhaps they had not yet spoken of it. If so, he suspected a reckoning was still to come.
Chapter Fourteen
Darcy had no notion how long he had been sitting before the fire. The inn had grown quiet around him. The voices from the taproom had long since faded, replaced by the occasional groan of settling timbers and the soft crackle of the fire. A single lamp burned upon the table beside him, throwing warm light across the now largely empty decanter of French brandy Mrs Goose had produced with evident pride after supper.
He rarely drank to excess. His father had never approved of strong drink. "A gentleman ought never to seek escape at the bottom of a glass," he had once remarked after watching an acquaintance make a spectacle of himself at Pemberley. "If a difficulty cannot be met with a clear head, it is unlikely to improve with a clouded one." Darcy had accepted the lesson and scarcely thought of it since. Tonight, however, he found himself wondering whether even his father might have struggled to face such thoughts entirely sober.
He turned the glass slowly between his fingers, watching the fire catch the amber liquid. He could not have said whether the brandy had dulled his thoughts or merely slowed them. Elizabeth's face rose before him regardless. The warmth with which she had looked at him that morning across the courtyard. The sudden fear in her eyes scarcely an hour later. The instinctive recoil when he had touched her.
Had he mistaken gratitude for affection? Loneliness for attachment? Had he persuaded himself that the happiness of one extraordinary night meant more than it ever had to her?
He did not hear Burke enter. He took in the scene with a single glance. "You don't usually drink alone, sir. But when a man imbibes like that, there is usually a woman at the bottom of it. I’ve seen it often enough."
Darcy made a noise somewhere between a growl and a groan.
"I was not aware I required your permission to take a drink."
"You don't." Burke glanced at the decanter and frowned. "But it’s difficult enough to keep you looking respectable enough when you insist on fetching and carrying for the last few days. I’m not sure what will become of your wardrobe if you take to hard drink."
Burke waited a moment before crossing to the hearth. He crouched to settle one of the fallen logs with the poker until the flames sprang higher, then rested both hands upon its handle.
"I've known you a good many years, Mr Darcy."
"So you frequently remind me."
He regarded the fire rather than his master. "I've seen you after your father's funeral. I've seen you after a failed harvest. I've even seen you endure a fortnight at Rosings while being bombarded with your noble aunt’sadvice."
Darcy let out a weary breath that was between a laugh and a wince.
"And yet," Burke continued, "I cannot once remember seeing you sit in silence with a decanter for company."
At length Darcy said, without lifting his eyes from the glass, "She would scarcely look at me today."
Burke's expression softened and he let out a low whistle. "Miss Bennet?"
"She could hardly bear my touch."
The words emerged more quietly than Darcy had intended. Spoken aloud, they sounded even worse than they had within his own mind. "I have spent every hour since wondering what I did." He stared into the brandy. "It appears I have spent eight-and-twenty years overestimating my own judgement. A lady smiles atme for a single evening and I immediately begin constructing an entire future upon it."
Darcy took another swallow of brandy. "I thought..." He stopped, shaking his head. "No matter what I thought. I was mistaken."
Burke watched him for a long moment, the easy familiarity that usually marked their conversations giving way to something more serious. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost every trace of humour.
"I don't believe you were mistaken, sir."
Darcy frowned and looked up at him for the first time that evening.
"What do you mean?"
Burke hesitated. It would have been easier to remain silent. Henderson was gone and the matter could not be undone. The lady had come to no real harm. Yet every instinct he possessed told him that what had happened that morning lay at the heart of the misery before him. If he held his tongue now, he would be serving neither Miss Bennet nor the man who had trusted him for decades.
"I think," he said carefully, "there is something you ought to know."
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