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Richard continued, speaking directly to Elizabeth. “You have heard it said that my cousin withheld a living from Mr. Wickham. You have heard it said that he did so out of spite, and that Mr. Wickham was reduced thereby to poverty. I was not present when the living was refused, but I was present at the settling of the accounts, and I tell you, upon my honour, that Darcy paid that man three thousand pounds in lieu of it, in cash, on a day when Wickham had written to him to say he meant to study the law. Within the twelvemonth it was gone, and not on law-books. It was gone at Newmarket, at the card-tables, and in such a quantity of tailors and women that I will not go into the particulars before a lady. Then he applied for the living again, after the incumbent had died, and when he was refused the second time he wrote to my cousin in terms I should not care to repeat.”

He saw her mouth move, but she did not speak.

“There is more,” he urged. “There is a matter concerning a lady’s safety that is not mine to tell, and that your gentleman would not tell you if you held a pistol to his head, because the lady is the most precious thing he has. It is enough for you to know that the man you were pleased to call his victim is not a man my cousin dislikes. He is a man my cousin has spent six years trying to keep out of a good many houses, at his own cost and without a word of thanks. I think that is the last I shall say on the subject.”

He turned his shoulder upon her and addressed his cousin. The Colonel’s voice, which had been courteous, dropped a full octave and lost every ounce of drawing-room. “And now you. I stood outside that door and heard you tell her what you were willing to endure. Did it ever once occur to you that a woman does not owe a man her hand because he has suffered handsomely on her account? You walked in here like a quartermaster presenting an invoice. You told her what you had given up, what it had cost, what your aunt would say, how very much beneath you she was, and you stood on that rug as if you had paid for her in advance and she was making difficulties about delivery. Blast it, Darcy. I have seen subalterns court a milliner with better grace.”

“I told her the truth,” said Darcy, hoarsely.

Richard let out a small, humourless chuckle. “You told her a truth, and it is not the same thing, not by a mile. Darcy, a man may say a hundred true things and murder a woman with every one.”

Darcy looked offended. “I have never in my life been spoken to in such terms.” His voice was hoarse, and raspy, and he sounded, above all, hurt.

“That is exactly the trouble,” said the Colonel soberly, “and I should have done it years ago.”

It was Elizabeth who broke it. She had not moved from the table, and Richard glanced at her, and saw that she was looking not at himself but at Darcy, and that her face had changed. The anger was still there. It would not go in a quarter of an hour, and he did not suppose that it ought. But a kind of puzzled attention had come over it, as over the face of a person who has opened a book upon a familiar page and found it printed in another hand.

She had never, he understood, heard anyone say such things to Darcy. Perhaps no one had. He thought of the long, silent, gilded corridor down which his cousin had been walking since the age of twenty-three, with no one to meet him at the other end who dared to tell him he was wrong. And he thought that this young woman had stood in it tonight and told him, in a voice that shook, and that she had done it alone.

“I think,” said Elizabeth. She stopped, and began again. “I think I should be glad, gentlemen, if you would both leave. I do not say that I am not obliged to you, Colonel. I do not know what I am. But I am very tired, and I have a great deal to think of, and I cannot think of it with either of you in the room.”

“Of course.” The Colonel bowed, and went at once, as one does when ordered by a superior. He took up his hat from the chair where, absurdly, he had apparently put it down, and stood by the door.

Darcy did not follow. Instead, he stood where he was, on the carpet, with his hat in one hand and the other knotted at his side, and for a moment Richard feared the worst, a last blow, a last word, some gesture of stubborn pride to rival his own. He had a fleeting, wholly irrelevant memory of Darcy at twelve, standing in the stable yard at Pemberley with a split lip, refusing to say who had done it.

“Miss Bennet,” Darcy started.

She waited, and he took a breath. After a moment, his jaw seemed to work, but the words came out like something dragged up from a well. “I did not…” he said. “That is. I would not have.” And then, with a flash of the old fury at his own failure, “Damn it.” He shut his mouth, and the eyes he lifted to her were not proud now, nor yet humble, but something harder and more naked than either. He bowed quickly and said, “Good night,” said Darcy. “I am… Good night.”

That was the worst apology the Colonel had ever heard, and quite possibly the most honest. She inclined her head, very slightly, and he saw her lips part as if she would answer it, and close again.

Richard knew time was of the essence, and he took his cousin by the elbow and drew him through the door. Behind them, as they gained the passage, Richard glanced back. She had crossed to the door and stood with one hand flat upon the panel, as if to keep it shut against some force on the other side of it, though no one tried to open it.

She was not weeping. Rather, Elizabeth was looking at nothing, at the grain of the wood, with the expression of a woman who has had everything she knew shifted two inches to the left, and who has not yet begun to count the cost. Then the door closed, and he heard the key turn.

CHAPTER 3

Darcy hit the garden wall on the way out of the lane. He did not decide to. His arm went, as it had gone in a tavern yard in Trumpington Street when he was nineteen, and the heel of his fist met the rough Kentish stone with a crack that he felt in his teeth before he felt it anywhere else. The pain was very clean and ran up his forearm and sat behind his eye, and for the space of a breath it was the only thing in the world he felt, and he was almost grateful.

“That was the hand you write with,” said the Colonel, behind him, frowning.

Darcy lashed out. “I know what hand it was.” He stood with his forehead nearly against the wall and his split knuckles open at his side, and waited for his breath to come back. It did not come easily. There was something in his chest like a stone in a boot, a hard, small, hot thing that turned over with every step, and he could not put a name to it; he only knew that if he stopped walking it would catch up to him, and that he did not wish to be present when it did.

He began to walk. Richard fell in beside him. They went a hundred yards in silence. The lane was black between its hedges, the air wet and sharp with the smell of turned earth, and somewhere over the fields an owl was working. Darcy kept his eyes on the road. He had a great wish to be violent, to enter a boxing ring, and the only candidate to hand was his cousin, who had done him the one service in his life that he would never be able to forgive.

“I will be in the saddle by six,” said Darcy brusquely. “I will write to Aunt Catherine from town. You may make what excuses you like. Tell her I had a letter.”

Richard scoffed. “Tell her what you like. I am not your secretary.”

“Then do not trouble yourself,” Darcy replied, the harshness from his voice beginning to wear thin.

“I shall trouble myself exactly as much as I choose, since I appear to be the only man in this county who has any use for his eyes.” The Colonel reached into his coat, and Darcy heard the soft chink of metal before he saw the flask. “Here. Take it. Don’t argue.”

The flask contained brandy, and it was good. Darcy took a swig, and the drink went down like a lit fuse. Darcy shut his eyes and let it, and when he opened them again the Colonel had taken the flask back and was drinking from it himself, with the grim unhurried thoroughness of a man who has been drinking in bad company for fifteen years.

“Now,” said Richard. “I am going to tell you what happened in that room, and you are going to hold your tongue.” He exhaled loudly, and placed a hand over his eyes, and then said, “You are a very great fool, Fitz.”

Darcy nodded, his head looking at the ground. “You have said so.”