Page 157 of A Debt Inherited

A man peered out. His gaze rose to Fitzwilliam in the saddle, moved to Villiers, then passed to the men at the gate. When it returned to Fitzwilliam, he opened the door wide.

Fitzwilliam dismounted. Villiers took the reins. Fitzwilliam’s gaze stayed upon the man at the door.

“Hill, sir,” the man said. “Mr Bennet waits in the study.”

Hill stepped aside. Fitzwilliam entered.

A candle burned upon the lower stair. Another stood guttering upon a side table, its wax fallen in a white fold. Somewhere above, a board gave beneath a cautious step, then held.

Fitzwilliam crossed the hall without looking up. Fear in a house had a sound. This one had discipline beneath it.

Bennet waited in the study doorway. He had not dressed for bed. Candlelight showed the cane in his hand, the grey set of his mouth, and nothing of panic.

“Colonel Fitzwilliam.”

“Captain Bennet.” Fitzwilliam stripped off his gloves. “I have read Kerr’s papers. Barbados. Cambridge and Stamford.”

“Then you know more than most.”

“Darcy sent word. Kerr supplied old grievances.” Fitzwilliam made one brief motion. “Spare me what does not bear upon Miss Bennet.”

Bennet did not offer him a chair. Fitzwilliam did not require one.

For one moment they stood in the candlelight, two men who had survived different wars and had no leisure to name the kinship. Bennet’s hand rested upon the cane as if it were no support at all, but a thing held ready. The study behind him bore marks of a night used without waste: map open, ink uncapped, a tray untouched, papers weighted where a draught might have disturbed them.

Longbourn had armed itself with order.

Bennet answered at once. “Mr Darcy came because I wrote to Edmund Darcy. The debt was his uncle’s. The daughter taken is mine.”

“What other information have you?”

“One of the parties involved is a Mr George Wickham.”

Wickham.

“I am well acquainted with that man.”

“Your cousin spoke of Mr Wickham’s history with your family,” Bennet said.

“He spoke freely, then.”

“I understand discretion. My daughter’s good name hangs upon it.”

“What else did my cousin say—or do?”

“Something odd.”

“Nothing is odd, sir.”

Bennet hesitated. “He requested a sack of gravel from the sweep.”

Fitzwilliam drew on his gloves, flexing his hands once to settle them.

A fool would have asked for a pistol. A frightened man would have asked for company.

Darcy had gone prepared to be taken.

“Who saw him leave?”