Page 117 of A Debt Inherited

“Aye, sir.” Barty stepped forward. “Come along, lad. You have done your part. Sit and eat before you fall.”

The young man smiled weakly. “Thank you, sir. Mr Bennet sent another rider north to Pemberley, sir, in case you were not here.”

Barty drew him towards the servants’ hall, and the boy went without another word. Darcy turned back into the library, shut the door, and set the satchel upon his desk.

Two expresses sent at once: one to London, another to Pemberley. This Mr Bennet had paid dearly to make certain one of them found a Darcy.

The clasp had stiffened with dust. He opened it and drew out two letters: one recent, sealed in haste; the other older, yellowed at the folds and enclosed within a plain wrapper.

He broke the newer seal first.

To Mr Edmund Darcy

Darcy House

London

My dear Darcy,

A calamity has befallen my house, and I must call upon the obligation you once acknowledged between us. I cannot commit the particulars to paper. Come to Longbourn with all possible haste.

The bearer will wait for your answer.

T R Bennet

Fides servanda est

Darcy read the letter again.

No illness. No sum. No accusation. No explanation that might betray itself if the paper fell into another hand.

Only obligation.

But the name was wrong.

The letter had not been written to him, but to his uncle.

He laid Mr Bennet’s letter beside the candle and reached for the older paper. The wrapper bore Bennet’s name in a hand that might have been his uncle’s. Inside lay a letter already opened long ago and folded with a care that had preserved the creases.

My dear Bennet,

I write only to acknowledge a debt of honour. I would not have you suppose that silence or delegation arose from indifference. There are obligations a man must own, even when he cannot name them aloud.

May Providence keep you.

ED

Meministi, amice

Darcy held the page very still. If this was his uncle’s hand, then Edmund Darcy had written for Bennet alone.

The Latin did not require translation: Remember, my friend.

No clerk would have added it. No solicitor would have sanctioned it.

Darcy crossed to the cabinet where his uncle’s correspondence had remained since his father’s death. He drew out the folio marked E. Darcy: Private Papers, 1782–1786 and opened it upon the desk.

The papers lay in order. Receipts. Estate letters. Bank instructions. Notes from solicitors. He drew out two letters in his uncle’s hand and laid them beside the sheet from Longbourn. The likeness did not satisfy him until he found the one distinction his father had once shown him: the broken tail of the y, too slight for a stranger to note, too deliberate for family to mistake.