Page 5 of Undone

"You sound sceptical."

"Only slower to be persuaded than you have had the leisure to become." Fitzwilliam gave a slight shake of his head. "Do not mistake composure for certainty, Darcy. You have lived with these events for years. I have only tonight been shown the pattern they make. I do not dispute your reasoning. I ask only leave to examine it before I make it my own."

Darcy inclined his head. "I had not mistaken the one for the other. I am grateful enough for your steadiness tonight." His gaze drifted for an instant to the untouched glass upon the table before returning to his cousin. "I confess I had hoped that speaking the whole of it aloud might give it some clearer shape. Instead, it seems only larger than it did this morning. I remain as much in the dark as ever, save that I no longer stand there alone."

Fitzwilliam was quiet for a long moment before drawing a slow breath. "No, only less alone in your uncertainty."

Darcy gave a faint smile that vanished almost as soon as it appeared. "Which is more comfort than I had this morning."

Silence settled between them. At length Darcy spoke again, though his thoughts had plainly wandered elsewhere.

"Bingley has written twice these past weeks, pressing me to accompany him into Hertfordshire when he goes to take possession of the house he has lately engaged. He has set his heart upon my spending the first month or two there with him before I return to Derbyshire. Until this morning I had been considering how best to decline him."

Darcy said no more, and his cousin regarded him steadily, waiting with the patience of one who knew there was something yet unsaid.

"Now I find I have little inclination to return immediately to Pemberley, or indeed to remain there, particularly after what Mr. Grey has told me this morning. I believe I shall accompany Bingley after all. A few weeks' absence may afford me the distance to consider these matters with a cooler judgment... and perhaps spare Pemberley, for a time, whatever ill fortune seems lately to attend me there."

Fitzwilliam looked at him searchingly. He seemed about to reply, then thought better of it.

"When do you mean to go?" he said instead.

"Towards the end of next month, I imagine. Bingley hopes to be settled before Michaelmas."

"Will you return to Pemberley before then?"

"No."

"Good." Fitzwilliam inclined his head, as though the answer confirmed something he had already hoped for. "Accept Bingley's invitation, by all means, but remain in town a little while first. Spend some time with Georgiana. She has had little enough of your company these past months, and I think the sight of her brother will do her good."

Darcy's expression softened almost imperceptibly. His sister would indeed welcome his company. Whether she stood more in need of him than he did of her, he could not have said.

"Allow me until the week's end," Fitzwilliam continued. "I have one or two acquaintances at the Admiralty to whom I may write. They may discover whether theMeridian's captors were known upon that station, whether intelligence of her voyage had preceded her sailing, or whether some circumstance escaped notice in the first reports. It may come to nothing. Even so, it isa line of inquiry not yet exhausted, and I would rather pursue it than sit idle while an unseen enemy enjoys the advantage."

"Very well."

"Should they learn nothing, you shall go into Hertfordshire with an easier mind, knowing at least that every reasonable inquiry has been made. I shall write to you the moment I hear anything further."

Darcy inclined his head. When, some time later, he took his leave, he went directly to the London house where Georgiana and Mrs. Annesley presently resided, finding that, of all the company London might offer him, there was none he wished for so much as that of the sister who had known him before any of this had begun.

Three

White Club

17th August, 1811

Darcy

Mr. Sedgwick acknowledged Darcy with a perfectly civil inclination of the head before accepting a place at another card table, where half a dozen gentlemen presently made room for him with every appearance of cordiality. There had been nothing discourteous in the exchange. A month ago Darcy doubted he should have remarked it at all. Yet he found himself watching the gentleman's retreat with a degree of attention that would once have seemed absurd, for it was the third such small alteration he had observed that week.

Mr. Halloway, whose ambition to attach himself to Darcy's circle had never been particularly well concealed, had remembered another engagement at the precise moment Darcy approached him two evenings before. Just the day before, old Mr. Carruthers, whose acquaintance with the Darcy family reached back almost to Darcy's infancy, had begged leave to withdraw from a dinner Darcy had proposed, pleading an indisposition, which Darcy had accepted without hesitation until Fitzwilliam remarked, only that afternoon, that he had encountered the gentleman at White's the previous evening, where nothing in his appearance had suggested the least infirmity.

"You told me only this afternoon that you had no inclination for cards," Fitzwilliam, sitting across Darcy, observed, following his gaze across the room. "Yet you have scarcely looked away from that table these several minutes, and your port has gone untouched besides."

Darcy turned, managing something that scarcely deserved the name of a smile. "I find the company more instructive than the game."

His cousin returned his gaze to Darcy's face. "You think they avoid you."

"I think..." Darcy paused, unwilling to accuse honest men of conduct he could not prove. "I think they have become rather more occupied elsewhere whenever I appear. Each instance is too trifling to merit notice. Together..." He broke off and shook his head. "Mr. Grey has made me suspicious of things I ought perhaps never to have questioned."