Page 143 of A Debt Inherited

“And Wickham?”

“Wickham opened another door.”

“To what?”

“Consequence without earning it.” Roark’s scarred mouth tightened. “Cheap miracles. Wickham deals in them.”

Fitzwilliam thought of Ramsgate: Wickham smiling with ruin already packed in his trunk, Kerr standing beside him with a face too controlled for innocence.

“Kerr followed him?”

“Kerr fell under his spell, if one may call vanity a spell.”

“Why?”

Roark’s good eye sharpened. “Because Kerr is a Scottish gentleman, bred close enough to rank to resent every inch denied him.”

Fitzwilliam did not move.

Roark saw the stillness and smiled without warmth. “There. That word found something.”

“Continue.”

“He had the education, the accent when he chose it, the manners when he remembered to use them, and the injury of a man born close enough to rank to smell the table linen but not sit at the table. Such men do not forgive exclusion.”

Darcy’s express came back to him: I do not know whether he directs this matter, lends men to it, or only furnished Kerr with means.

Roark had named Wickham as debt and Kerr as loss.

Bennet meant nothing to Roark.

“You did not set this in motion,” Fitzwilliam said.

Roark’s good eye held his. “No.”

“You did not lend men to it.”

“No.”

“Nor furnish Wickham with a cart, a room, or a road.”

Roark scoffed once. “If I had, Colonel, Wickham would not have carried the demand himself.”

PART FIVE

Fidelity

Fundamentum autem est iustitiae fides

—Cicero, De Officiis

Chapter 51

The Forge, Seven Dials, later that evening

Fitzwilliam let the words settle. The room went on pretending not to listen. Cups lifted, dice clicked once, and no man looked too long in their direction.

He drew on his glove. “You are very composed for a man with a gentleman’s daughter between his trade and a magistrate.”