Page 4 of Undone

"You are not, sir, ordinarily, and that is precisely what troubles me." Grey's gaze was steady, and kind, and entirely without the comfort Darcy might once have wished from it. "A gentleman of your consequence and your character does not become the subject of such talk by accident, nor by any fault of his own that I have ever observed in you. Someone has taken considerable trouble to make you so, and I would not do my duty by your father's memory if I did not tell you plainly that I believe it."

Darcy resumed his seat but did not immediately speak. Five business losses. Other misfortunes besides, none of which Grey had any cause to know. And now a phrase had attached itselfto his name, passed from one gentleman to another until it had become common enough to reach Grey's ears before it reached his own. He turned the thought over and found no place in it where reason might comfortably rest.

"Is there any hope of recovering the cargo?"

Grey shook his head.

"Very little, I fear. Had His Majesty's Navy intercepted the Pirates ship before she reached a friendly port, there might have been some prospect of recovery. As matters stand, she is almost certainly gone."

Darcy lowered his eyes to the papers upon the desk. He had known the answer before he asked the question. There was something peculiarly human, nevertheless, in seeking hope from another man's lips when one had already abandoned it in one's own mind.

"If you wished it pursued further..." Grey hesitated, as though debating whether to say more. "Your cousin, the Colonel, may have acquaintances within the Admiralty who could learn whether the vessel has since been sighted, or whether any intelligence has been gathered concerning her movements. I cannot promise it would avail us much, but it is perhaps the only course remaining."

Darcy inclined his head thoughtfully. Grey's chambers had been his first destination upon reaching London. His cousin's house would be his next.

"You have done all that could reasonably be done, Mr. Grey, and more besides." He rose, offering his hand which the older man shook. "There is nothing further to be gained by lamenting what cannot now be undone."

"I wish I might tell you otherwise, sir." Grey walked with him to the door, his hand lingering upon the latch as though reluctant to let him go without some further reassurance hecould not honestly give. "Take care of yourself, Mr. Darcy. Whatever this is, it has shown no sign of tiring."

Darcy thanked him and stepped out into the ordinary bustle of the street, where clerks and merchants went about their business with no notion of the particular burden he carried among them. He found himself envying their ignorance more than he had ever envied any man his fortune.

His carriage still waited where he had left it. He paused with one hand upon the door before climbing inside, the August air doing little to quiet a mind grown too accustomed to bearing such news alone.

As the carriage turned toward his cousin's house, he allowed himself, for the length of a single unguarded breath, to wonder whether a man might be undone so slowly that no single blow ever seemed enough to account for it.

Two

London

10th August, 1811

Darcy

"Five investment losses! That is a great deal to have carried alone." Colonel Fitzwilliam set down the glass of port he had scarcely touched, all the easy humour that had greeted Darcy's arrival driven away by the better part of an hour's plain telling. "You will recall I have not been wholly ignorant of matters such as this. You told me yourself of the Ainsworth affair last spring, and of the wool contract before it. I own I did not like the sound of either at the time."

"You did not like it, and yet neither of us named it as I have finally allowed myself to name it tonight."

Darcy had found his cousin absent when he called that afternoon and had remained to await his return. The waiting had done nothing to quiet his thoughts. It had only given him longer to turn them over, until certainty settled where doubt had once been. When at last his cousin returned and he began to speak, the words came with rather less restraint than he ordinarily permitted himself.

His own glass remained untouched upon the table between them. He found the relief of speaking the words aloud considerably less than he had hoped.

"For two years I persuaded myself that misfortune explained every loss as well as deliberate design. Instead, I found that explanation grew harder to accept with every fresh instancerather than easier. Grey named it plainly enough this morning. I confess I had already half reached the same conclusion myself. I wanted only another man's voice to say it before I trusted my own."

"You shall have mine, then, and gladly, though I fear it will do little to comfort you." Fitzwilliam uncrossed his legs with deliberate care. When he spoke again, the easy familiarity of the evening had given place to the measured consideration of an officer accustomed to weighing uncertain intelligence.

"There was a remark made at my club in July. I thought nothing of it then. A gentleman lately returned from the Peninsula spoke of a merchant who had declined an investment, saying he had no wish to invite the sort of ill luck that seemed lately to attend your name." He shook his head slightly. "I remember thinking it a poor jest, and nothing more."

He turned back to Darcy.

"I did not connect it with Ainsworth. I did not connect it with anything. Hearing you now... I cannot persuade myself it was merely idle talk. Neither, however, can I persuade myself, upon one evening's conversation, that we have seen the whole of the matter."

Darcy pressed his fingers briefly to his brow, weariness settling upon him in a manner the afternoon's waiting had done nothing to relieve. "I have considered every name I can produce, every disappointed tenant, every man who has ever thought himself injured by me, and none will answer for it."

"Then who can?"

Darcy was silent for a moment before shaking his head. "That is precisely the difficulty. This is not the work of a man nursing some single grievance, Fitzwilliam. It is too patient for that, too exact. Since my father's death five years ago, there has been one injury after another, each so ordered that it might pass forchance. I cannot account for a single soul in England who would purchase such satisfaction at so great an expenditure of time."

"Nor can I." Fitzwilliam's countenance was graver than Darcy had seen it since the darkest days of the previous summer. "I know no more than you who stands behind it, nor why, nor how long such a scheme has been at work, if indeed it is a scheme."