Page 130 of Honor Requires

“You will not,” she said gently. “He will not be easily moved.”

Richard’s jaw tightened. “He will answer me.”

“Or refuse you as he has refused me.” Something in her tone must have reached him, for he studied her again, more closely this time.

“You have tried to speak with him again?”

“Yes. He will not be moved.” Elizabeth shook her head sadly.

“And he would not—”

“He would not meet me in truth,” she said. “He speaks to me as Count Vendicarsi. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

Silence settled between them once more.

Elizabeth looked down at her hands, then back up again, the next words pressing forward with a force she could no longer contain. “I fear for him.”

Richard’s expression shifted at once. “In what way?”

She rose again, unable to remain seated any longer. The room felt too small, the air too still.

“There is a quality about him,” she said. “A hardness that goes beyond caution or concealment.”

Richard stood as well, drawn by the urgency in her voice.

“He has suffered,” she stated. “We both must assume that much. Whatever has been done to him, whatever he has endured—it has altered him. I see it in the way he holds himself, in the way he watches others, in the way he chooses every word before he speaks it.”

She turned to face him fully. “And I fear his true purpose is vengeance.”

Richard did not deny it. “I thought as much,” he said. “Why else would he move in society as he does?”

Elizabeth closed her eyes for a brief moment, then opened them again. “If that is so, then he walks a dangerous path. Not only for those he seeks to punish—but for himself.”

Richard’s voice was low, but steady. “Darcy was never a man to act without reason.”

“No,” she agreed. “But reason may be bent when pain is deep enough.”

He considered that. “You think he may go too far.”

“I think he may lose himself,” she said.

The words fell into the space between them with finality. For a time, neither spoke.

Then Richard drew a slow breath. “Then we do not allow it.”

Elizabeth looked at him, something like hope stirring where there had been only fear. “No,” she said. “We do not.”

He stepped closer, his expression resolute now in a way that reminded her strongly of the man who had stood beside Darcy in every trial of his youth. “I will speak to him,” he said. “Not as a stranger. Not as a curious observer. As his cousin. As his friend.”

“And I,” Elizabeth said, her voice lowering but not weakening, “will not cease to reach for him. He may deny me, but he cannot erase what exists between us.”

Richard inclined his head. “Then we act together.”

“Yes.”

There was no need for further elaboration. The understanding between them was complete.

They would not stand aside. They would not allow him to disappear behind the mask he had constructed. Whatever had been done to him, whatever he believed himself now bound to do, they would meet it—not with force, but with truth.