Page 48 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"He wrote to you." His voice was not loud. It was worse than loud. "From his cell. Through whatever is left of that solicitor's gutter of a network. The night before the trial. He put that filth into your hands under this roof, and I was asleep over your head⁠—"

"Fitzwilliam. Look at me."

He looked at her.

"He wants us to react," she said. "Think. He has nothing left. Every man he spends is spent for good, and he spent one tonight on a letter. He wants me weeping and silent, or he wants you at the door of his jail doing something a defense barrister could feast on. He wants me afraid and you reckless." She took his hand and put it flat against her heart, where it could feel what her voice did not show. "We will give him neither."

His breathing came down slowly. "You are trembling," he said.

"I know. It began an hour ago and it will stop by morning. That is not the question. Attend to what matters." She picked up the letter and laid it on the table beside the case papers, where it belonged. "We cannot prove who wrote it. Any man in London might have. So Thornton shall have it at first light, and keep it, and we shall see who quotes it."

Fitzwilliam looked at the letter, and at her, and something in his face came apart, not into anger this time. "You are the bravest person I have ever known," he said.

"I know." Her voice cracked on it. She let it crack, because the compact held both ways. "Now help me sleep."

He put out the candle and drew her down beside him under the covers. Fitzwilliam put his arm across her waist and his mouth against her hair. Elizabeth drew his hand up and held it flat over the scar at the small of her back. She kept it there until the burning stopped.

"I told Richard a thing in October," he said into the dark. "I have not told you."

"Then you are in breach, sir! Tell me."

"I told him I am afraid I am not enough. That I will do every part of it right and it will not serve."

She put his hand back where it had been. "Good. Neither am I. We shall have to make do with each other."

He made a sound that was almost a laugh. She felt it more than heard it, in the chest against her back.

"You have done every part of it right," she said. "You built the Crown its case. You found me a roof, and you have not slept a whole night since October. If that does not serve, then nothing could have, and it is not your fault."

"That is not a comfort."

"It was not meant for one. It was meant for the truth." She turned in his arms to face him. She could not see him in the dark, so she found him with her hands. His cheek was rough under her palm. "Here is the comfort. Whatever the Lords decide, I come home with you. He cannot take that. Nobody can."

Fitzwilliam was quiet a long moment. Then he kissed her slowly. For once there was no hurry in him at all.

She kissed him back and settled against his chest, where she could hear his heart. It was going steadier now. So was hers.

She slept. Not easily, and not deeply, and twice the mist came to the borders of her dreams and found them guarded. But she slept.

When the morning came, gray and coal-smelling over the rooftops, she got up. She washed and put on the dark gray dress with the plain collar. Elizabeth had chosen it a month ago for exactly this day.

A lady who is unwell may be excused.

She meant to answer that in front of all England.

CHAPTER 16

Westminster Hall had been three weeks in the fitting. Galleries of raw timber climbed the ancient walls, draped in scarlet cloth to hide the carpenters' work. The morning light fell from the high windows onto three hundred peers in crimson and ermine, rustling, murmuring, settling themselves.

Darcy had attended Parliament before. He had never seen it like this. England did not try a peer twice in a generation, and all England knew it. Those who had begged, bought, or married their way to a ticket filled every seat not reserved for a lord. Directly behind him a stout gentleman was informing his wife that he had paid eleven guineas for their two seats.

"Then sit up," she whispered, "and look as though it were twenty."

"Steady," Richard murmured beside him.

"I am steady."

"You are crushing your hat."