Page 154 of A Debt Inherited

“No,” she said. “But I am without protection here.”

Something touched the plaster—her hand, perhaps, or her shoulder.

“A gentleman’s daughter need not be harmed to be injured,” she said. “She need only be missed.”

Darcy closed his eyes.

He had known it. Every gentleman knew it, though gentlemen seldom paid the cost. Rumour required little proof when a woman supplied the suffering.

“My sisters,” she said, her voice strained. “What will happen to my sisters?”

“Miss Bennet—”

“Jane will bear it first,” she said. “She will bear it most sweetly, which is to say she will bear it most cruelly. Every smile offered to her will ask where I was. Every kindness will pity her for belonging to me.”

He said nothing.

“Mary will find a lesson in it because she must have one. Kitty will hear whispers where there are none. And Lydia—”

Her breath caught there, scarcely more than a break in the plaster.

“Lydia will laugh too loudly. She will not know they do not laugh with her.”

Darcy’s hands closed against the rope.

“Miss Bennet—”

“No. Pray allow me the sum of it. Mr Kerr speaks of debts. Mr Wickham speaks of money. It seems I am to learn how much a woman’s absence may purchase.”

The words struck him with a force no blow of Wickham’s had carried.

“If any consequence attaches to your name because I am here,” he said, “I will answer it.”

The silence changed.

“Answer it?” she said.

Darcy bent his head towards the wall. “Yes.”

“Do not pity me, Mr Darcy.”

The words came at once, low and exact.

“I was not—”

“You were,” she said, her tone hardening. “I will not have it.”

Darcy drew one breath through his teeth and set his wrist again against the rope.

“Then I shall not offer it.”

The chair gave beneath him. He stilled it.

Pity had no use here. Honour did, if it could free her.

Darcy bent his head nearer the wall. “Miss Bennet, if that door opens and escape is possible, you must go.”

A pause followed.