Page 26 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"I will come back."

"You had better. I have plans for you that require your presence."

He smiled. She did not, quite. But when he kissed her goodnight she held his face in both hands. In the same glance, she gave him his orders and his reasons.

They left at dawn the following morning, in the coach, and Richard slept from Netherfield to Barnet. They were in Gracechurch Street by noon.

Gardiner had been at work for two days already. "Graves keeps offices in Chancery Lane," he said, standing at his desk over an open ledger. "A small practice. Property disputes, debt collection, the occasional criminal matter for clients who pay for discretion. Not prominent. Not brilliant. But by every account I can gather, entirely without scruple. He does not break the law himself. He finds other men to break it for him, and he makes certain the trail ends at their doors and not his."

"A man who hires other hands to do his work," Richard said. "We know the breed."

"Here is his trail all the same." Gardiner laid a sheet of foolscap on the table. Dates and amounts, in his careful merchant's hand. "Carriages, lodgings, a private messenger, every date matching Wickham's movements. The firms gave me the figures directly. They are businesses. Businesses keep accounts."

"Mrs. Gardiner suggested this?" Darcy said.

"My wife has a sharper mind for evidence than most barristers I have met." Gardiner took up a letter. "And this came by the militia post. From Captain Gill. Graves called at Mrs. Darter's shop in Meryton four days ago."

Darcy read it. Gill's hand was neat and spare. Graves had walked into the modiste's shop, named himself as representing Lord Braithwaite's legal interests, and observed that testifying against a peer could have consequences for a small business. He had been polite. He had been specific. The cost of a new lease. The difficulty of keeping custom when one's name appeared in court proceedings. The way neighbors talked.

Mrs. Darter had ordered him out of her shop in language that Gill's source declined to put in a letter to a gentleman.

She is frightened, though, Gill added. She told my sergeant she sleeps poorly and starts at every knock. She is ashamed of being frightened.

"I will go to her," Richard said. "Meryton is half a day's ride. Two days, if I am to do it properly."

"She knows you. She trusts you. That is worth more than anything I could send instead."

"And before I go, my father." Richard's face was frank and uncomfortable, his usual manner with subjects he found distasteful. "The Earl must be told. If we go to trial without him, we risk him working against us from inside the Lords. A quiet word here. A favor called in there."

"Then we bring him in," Darcy said. "And we make it plain that the prosecution proceeds with his blessing or without it."

Richard nearly smiled. "You have learned to play politics. I will write to him tonight."

That afternoon they carried the evidence to Mr. Thornton, the prosecution's lead, near Lincoln's Inn. He had the unhurried authority of a man who had seen worse. He studied the unsigned note through a glass and said, "The hand is distinctive. Graves writes with a Continental nib. Obtain me a sample of his correspondence and the match will be straightforward."

"Can you protect this evidence?"

Thornton looked at him over the glass. "Mr. Darcy. I have tried cases against men who attempted to burn my offices, bribe my clerks, and, on one memorable occasion, release a bag of rats into my filing room. I have a safe. I have a watchman. I have a very thorough inventory. Your evidence is secure."

That night the Gardiners' parlor fire burned to coals.

Richard watched Darcy across it with the attention of a man who had known him since boyhood. "You look like hell, Darcy."

"I have not slept well."

"That is not what I mean."

Darcy rubbed his face with both hands, and when he dropped them, he let the composure go with them. "I am afraid," he said. "Not of Graves. Not of the trial. I am afraid that I am not enough. That I will do every single thing correctly and it will not suffice. That Elizabeth will stand in that courtroom facing the man who burned her, and I will be in the gallery, unable to reach her." He stopped. "I have never said that aloud."

Richard did not flinch. "Good. Say it aloud more often. The men who never admit they are afraid are the ones who break."

"I am not breaking."

"No. You are bending. There is a difference, and you had best learn it before the trial, because Elizabeth already knows it, and she will need you to know it too."

The Earl of Matlock's townhouse was built of Portland stone with tall, narrow windows, its front steps swept bare of autumn leaves. Darcy had been coming here since boyhood. He had never once felt welcome.

The Earl received them in the first-floor study, dark oak, heavy furniture, the fire built too high. He had passed two winters with the diplomatic service in St. Petersburg and never forgiven the cold.