Page 125 of A Debt Inherited

He stopped beside the map, one hand upon the table’s edge.

Bishop’s Hostel returned by degrees: rain at the window, port too hastily poured, Julian Ashby’s father’s letter lying crushed between four young men, and Julian himself white about the mouth despite all his careless grace.

“Lady Marjorie?” Bennet had asked.

“My elder sister,” Julian had said. “Lady Marjorie Kerr, now. Widowed, dependent, and with a son my father may remember as blood or dismiss as another man’s boy whenever it suits him. She will always be Ashby to me, but she married Major Robert Kerr of Drumcairn.”

The memory stopped there.

Bennet looked up. “You did say Kerr.”

“I did.” Darcy’s gaze did not move from him. “The name means something to you.”

“It does.” Bennet lowered himself into the chair, his cane supporting his weight. Exhaustion crept up his legs. “It belonged to a room I had believed shut these thirty years.”

Darcy’s eyes sharpened. “What room?”

Bennet looked at him for a moment. Edmund’s nephew. George Darcy’s son. Lady Anne Fitzwilliam’s son. The old names had not gone; they had merely changed faces.

“Cambridge,” Bennet said. “Bishop’s Hostel. We were four then: Edmund Darcy, David Fitzwilliam, Lord Julian Ashby, and I.”

“David Fitzwilliam was my mother’s brother.”

“Yes. And he was my friend.” Bennet looked towards the fire. “Edmund, David, and I were second sons. It made a brotherhood of its own, or so we thought. Then Ashby came along.”

Darcy remained still. “And the Kerr connexion?”

“His elder sister.” Bennet looked down at the map, though he no longer saw it. “Lady Marjorie Kerr. Widow of Major Robert Kerr. She had a son.”

Darcy’s face changed by no more than a degree, but Bennet saw the calculation enter it.

“The man at Ramsgate called himself Kerr. Wickham used no Christian name in my hearing.”

“Then we have only a surname and a wound thirty years old.”

“That may be enough.” Darcy leant forward. “Was there money?”

Bennet gave a short, bitter breath. “There is always money when families speak of blood.”

Darcy waited.

“Julian Ashby was heir to Glenbride. His father meant to bind him to a Highland alliance. Julian loved another.”

“And you assisted him.”

“We all did,” Bennet said. “Edmund with a purse. David with gate passes. I with a path to Gretna.”

Darcy’s eyes widened. “An elopement?”

“An attempted one.”

The fire gave a low crack. Bennet looked towards it, and for one moment the study dissolved into rain, candle smoke, and the white line of Julian’s knuckles round a glass.

“It ended badly,” Bennet said.

Darcy’s expression sharpened. “Stamford.”

“You know the name?”