Page 45 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"So did Mrs. Jenkinson, and so would I, and so would Darcy. That was the whole art of it." He crouched beside her chair, so that his face was below hers. "And you are the one who saw it. You. Not the physician, not the clerk, not the Crown. You looked at your mother this morning and knew."

"She has fought for every word." Anne's pale eyes were very bright. "Every one, Richard. In the dark, alone, where nobody could hear her fail. And a stranger came up my stairs and took them away with a spoon."

He took her hand. It was cold, and very thin, and it gripped his hard.

From the bed came a sound. Thick. Furious. Unmistakable. "Anne."

They both turned. Lady Catherine's eyes were open. They were cloudy still, but they were her own.

"Mama?"

"Who..." A long, dragging breath. "Who gave me... that muck?"

Anne laughed, the sound half a sob. Richard let go of her hand and stood.

His aunt's gaze found him and fixed. "Richard."

"Aunt."

"Find him." Each word came slow, pushed through the fog. "And... hang him."

"I cannot promise the hanging," Richard said. "I will do my best with the rest."

He rode for London within the hour. The letter was in his coat, the brown bottle wrapped in a stocking in his saddlebag. The clerk from the Crown was left in the library with his pens and his paper. The deposition would have to wait a week. Lady Catherine called the clerk a fool twice before he was out of the room. Mrs. Jenkinson felt this was an excellent sign.

Thornton received him at nine that night in his shirtsleeves. He looked at the letter of introduction through his glass for a long time. Then he took the unsigned note from his breast pocket, where it had lived for three weeks. He laid the two side by side under the lamp. "The same nib," he said at last. "The Continental nib. The same crossing of the t. He has tried to make it a secretary's hand, and he has almost managed it." He sat back. "Almost is a very poor defense, Colonel."

Richard unwrapped the brown bottle and set it beside the letters. A paper label was pasted to the glass, its ink smudged by the ride. It bore an apothecary's mark and, under it, Fetter Lane.

Thornton bent to it. "Fetter Lane runs into Holborn, two minutes from Graves's door. A country physician buys his laudanum in the country, Colonel. This was made up in London."

"Is it enough?"

"For a warrant? With the bottle, and your aunt's household to swear to what was given her and on whose name?" Thornton reached for his coat. "It is more than enough! The magistrate at Bow Street dines late. We shall catch him at his pudding, and the apothecary at his breakfast."

The Earl of Matlock heard of it the next morning, from his son, in his own study. He read the forged letter twice. "He used my name," the Earl said. His voice was very quiet. "To poison my sister."

"Yes, sir."

"Under my name. Well enough to fool my sister's household." He laid the letter down with two fingers. "I take that personally."

"I rather thought you might."

His father looked up at him. For a moment Richard thought he saw something in the pale eyes that was not calculation. Then it was gone. "Go and fetch him, Richard," the Earl said. "And do not be gentle about it."

The apothecary in Fetter Lane remembered the order without being pressed. It was a large bottle, made up far stronger than he liked, for "a gentleman's household in the country." He had entered the quantity in his daybook and shaken his head over it. A young man in a clerk's black coat had collected it and paid in coin. The apothecary described Graves's clerk to the life, down to the ink stain on his cuff. Nobody at Chancery Lane had seen the clerk since noon.

They took Graves at seven that evening, at his lodgings above his offices in Chancery Lane. Two officers from Bow Street went up the stairs first. Richard went up behind them.

Graves was at his desk in his shirtsleeves, with a fire burning high in the grate. Two deed boxes stood open at his feet, and a heap of paper was already curling in the flames. He looked up when the door opened. He did not look surprised. "Colonel Fitzwilliam," he said. "I did wonder when."

"Stand away from the fire!"

Graves stood away from the fire. One of the officers went past him to the grate. He began pulling papers out with the tongs and beating out the edges with his hat.

"You will find nothing there of interest," Graves said. "Only old accounts."

"Then you will not mind if we read them."