Page 140 of A Debt Inherited

“My father is quite erudite,” she said. “If he trusted you, he gave you something meant for me.”

“That was one impression I had of Mr Bennet.”

“Impression or experience?” she asked, then held her breath.

She could hear her heart beating as she waited for Mr Darcy to answer.

“You are quite correct,” he said, and for the first time there was warmth beneath the calm. “Your father said to me, as I stood in his study: ‘If you intend to help my daughter, sir, do it with sense, not with heroics. The latter are too dear in the keeping.’”

Her eyes stung. That cadence—dry, deliberate, edged with humour he used to mask concern—belonged to her father alone.

She pressed both hands to the wall. “He said that to you?”

“He did.”

A sound escaped her, half breath, half laugh. For one instant, the plaster no longer felt quite so absolute.

“Then you have truly seen him,” she whispered.

She heard a faint shift against the plaster. “I have.”

* * *

The Forge, Seven Dials, that evening

They found The Forge by its sign before they found its door.

Villiers had needed no introduction to Seven Dials. A coin had opened one mouth, a threat another, and between them the name had come loose. The board hung above a low entrance at the meeting of two narrow streets, blackened by smoke, weather, and the touch of too many hands. An anvil had been painted upon it in a crude white stroke, with a hammer above and the name beneath.

No song came from within. No laughter spilt into the street. The place did not invite custom; it admitted consequence.

Villiers looked up at the sign. “Subtle little thing.”

Harris stood to Fitzwilliam’s left, narrow, grey-eyed, and silent. Simms took the right, heavier in the shoulder, slower in nothing that mattered. Neither man’s eyes remained still.

Fitzwilliam measured the frontage. Solid door. Blackened windows too small for a man to exit.

“Villiers, the entrance,” he said. “No one leaves. Try not to kill anyone.”

Villiers stepped to the door. Harris eased open his coat. Simms flexed his right hand once, then let it fall near the weight at his side.

“In,” Fitzwilliam said.

The door flew inward. Villiers went through first, low and quick. Harris followed left, Simms right. In the space of a breath, Fitzwilliam stood alone in the lane. He looked once behind him, found the street empty enough, and stepped through the doorway.

Heat met him first, thick with gin and old smoke. A fire burned low in an iron grate at the far wall, absurd in July. Its red light touched pewter, scarred tables, knife handles, and faces that had turned towards violence and stopped short of it.

A broad man behind the nearest cask glared at Villiers. His hand vanished beneath the trestle.

Villiers sighed. One long arm crossed the boards and pinned the man’s wrist before it rose. “Leave it.”

The man’s jaw worked once. Villiers lifted his hand. The other man’s came up empty.

Fitzwilliam crossed no farther than the centre of the room. “Roark.”

No answer came.

A chair scraped near the hearth. Harris flipped his coat back, revealing knife hilts on his belt. He turned his head an inch. The sound ceased.