Page 40 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"I heard."

"My father's arrangement assumes a paper he has worded, read out by a clerk. She will not sign it. She will not tell me what she means to swear instead. The deal does not account for that."

Darcy looked at the closed door. "And if she swears nothing at all?"

"Then the Crown has no witness to the folly. Every other count rests on Elizabeth and a child. The shooting is the one charge Braithwaite cannot call a family's grudge." Richard rubbed a hand over his face. "And my father's bargain covers a widow deceived by her man of business. If she means to swear anything more than that, it covers nothing. Not her name. Not Anne's."

"You think she means to confess something."

"I think she has been practicing words in the dark for a month, and she will not tell me what they are. I have never known my aunt to rehearse a compliment."

Darcy wore a look Richard had learned to recognize these past weeks. He was weighing every choice before him and disliking them all. "Your father will attempt to manage her testimony. Coaching. Approved phrases. The correct frame."

"Yes."

"She will not cooperate."

"No." Richard almost smiled. "Apoplexy or no, she is still our Aunt Catherine. She has never cooperated with anything in her life! She will not begin because a political animal in Grosvenor Square has written her lines."

"Then we protect her from two directions. Graves without. Your father within."

"Yes. And there is worse. If Graves learns what she means to say, she becomes his most valuable target. She cannot flee. She cannot defend herself. She cannot so much as call for help quickly. She is guarded by one corporal and a man who is good with horses."

"Gill will post more men. I write to him tonight."

"And my father?"

"Your father learns what Lady Catherine means to say when Lady Catherine tells him so herself. Not before. He cannot suppress what he does not know."

Richard looked at his cousin. Road dust, shadows under the eyes, weeks that had aged him faster than years. And the mouth set hard. A library-and-ledger man, fighting on two fronts. Richard had seen officers half as brave with twice the training. "You are becoming a schemer!" he said.

"I married Elizabeth Bennet. It is practically a requirement."

Richard laughed, short and rough. It loosened something in his chest. For a moment they were only the boys they had been twenty years ago.

Then they started down to write the letters and arrange the guards.

They met Elizabeth on the first landing, coming up behind a maid with Lady Catherine's tray.

"You are home!" Her whole face lit. She sent the maid on up with the tray. Then she looked from one of them to the other. "What has happened? Richard, you look as though you have seen a ghost."

Richard glanced at his cousin. A month ago Darcy would have said it was nothing and sent her down to tea.

"My aunt refuses my uncle's deposition," Darcy said. "She will swear her own words. She will not tell us what they are."

Elizabeth stood very still as her hand found the banister. "She will not say?"

"Not to Richard. Not to me."

"I have seen to her broth every day since we came home. Jane sings to her!" Her voice shook. "I have been trying so hard to pity her. She will not even let me do that."

"I will not ask you to be gracious," Darcy said.

"Good, for I cannot." She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. Then she lowered them. "But I shall go up, and I shall be civil. Tomorrow I may even mean it. Do not count upon that."

Elizabeth went up past them with her chin high. They heard her knock.

"Brandy," Darcy said.