Page 132 of A Debt Inherited

“Strange, is it not, Darcy,” he said, “how swiftly fortune shifts? This morning I carried a message, and now—well, here we are, you and I, upon the road together.”

Darcy kept his horse to a measured pace. At the first turn beyond Longbourn’s lower field, his hand slipped to the canvas bag. One small stone fell into the dust by the wheel-rut.

“How far?” he asked.

Wickham laughed. “So soon impatient? I wonder whether captivity will improve your manners.”

“I am not yet captive.”

Wickham glanced back. “No? Then you have a generous understanding of liberty.”

They passed between high hedges, then over a narrow rise where the road broke towards rougher ground. Darcy marked the turn, the low ash tree near the ditch, the broken rail beyond it. Another stone dropped where the lane narrowed.

Wickham’s gaze flickered once towards the bag. “You carry another man’s fortune very lightly.”

“It is not yours yet.”

“No. But it will be.” Wickham’s smile sharpened. “You came quickly enough. I confess, I had not expected quite so much devotion to a country gentleman’s daughter.”

Darcy looked past him to the road. “You have never understood why a gentleman acts.”

“I understand price.”

“Plainly.”

For a while, only hoofbeats and the creak of leather filled the lane. Wickham took a side track where the hedgerow thinned and the ground grew rutted from carts. Darcy let another stone fall at the entrance and saw, without turning his head, that Wickham had not noticed.

“Whose track is this?” Darcy asked.

“One that keeps us from company.”

“Yours?”

“Today.”

“And yesterday?”

Wickham did not answer.

They rode another quarter of a mile before a low building appeared beyond a stand of scrub and ash: an abandoned stable or cart-shed, its roof sunken at one end, its door hanging crooked from an iron strap. No smoke rose from it. No sound came from within. A single horse stood tethered in the shade beside the wall.

Wickham drew rein. “Our destination, sir. Modest, but sufficient.”

Darcy dismounted, keeping the canvas bag in his hand. The stones shifted inside it with a dull weight. Wickham looked at it and smiled.

“You see?” he said. “We understand one another after all.”

“No,” Darcy said. “We do not.”

The door opened before Wickham could answer. Kerr stood within, pale against the dimness behind him, his coat unbuttoned and his expression already hardening at the sight of Darcy.

“What is this?” Kerr said.

Wickham spread one hand. “Surety.”

Darcy looked past Kerr into the stale dark of the building. Somewhere within, a board gave a faint creak.

Miss Bennet.