Page 138 of Honor Requires

Elizabeth.

His thoughts, for so long narrowed to the dimensions of retribution and strategy, widened suddenly at the mere prospect of seeing her. Not in a ballroom, where every word was calculated and every glance observed. Not in the park, where chance and habit disguised what they were to one another. But in the more ordinary grace of a call, where conversation might be more intimate, where her voice might be heard without interruption, where he might look upon her and, for a brief hour at least, forget the machinery of vengeance waiting just beyond the edge of his life.

He had not intended it to matter so much. He ought, perhaps, to have resisted it. Instead, he found himself reaching for the bell pull.

The door opened before he had fully turned, and Lucien entered with the ease of one long accustomed to finding him in just such moments of decision. He took in the room at a glance—the disturbed air of recent conversation, the absence of Hargrave, the look upon Darcy’s face—and smiled faintly.

“So,” he said, “our industrious friend has been and gone.”

Darcy nodded. “He thanked me for Gardiner.”

Lucien’s brows lifted. “How civil of him.”

“His shipment will arrive, so he believes. The ships have already sailed.”

Lucien’s expression sharpened with interest. “Then the colonel has indeed moved quickly.”

“Yes.” There was a brief silence, though it was not empty. Lucien saw more than most men, and where Darcy might have wished to conceal his thoughts, concealment was of little use here.

“You are going out,” Lucien said.

Darcy looked once more at the clock. “I am.”

“To Matlock House?”

“Yes.”

Lucien came nearer and, with a simplicity that might once have embarrassed them both, laid a hand upon Darcy’s shoulder. The gesture was not theatrical. It carried no solemnity beyond what affection and long trial had already given it. “Then go.”

Darcy met his gaze.

Lucien’s expression softened. “Love heals all wounds, my friend. Or if it does not heal them entirely, it teaches a man he is still worth mending.” He gave the slightest pressure to Darcy’s shoulder before letting his hand fall away. “Go seek your happiness.” The words, spoken without ornament and without irony, struck more deeply than many finer phrases might have done.

Darcy did not trust himself to answer at once.

For years—through imprisonment, through darkness, through the long and bitter labor of becoming someone the world would not question—he had carried within him a single fixed star. Justice. Reclamation. The righting of what had been wrongfully taken. Every action had moved beneath its influence. Every choice had bent toward it. Even his return to England, his name, his house, his very face had been shaped in service to that end.

Now, as he stood in the warmth of Ashcombe House with his gloves in his hand and Elizabeth waiting somewhere across the square, another feeling rose with such force that it seemed to sweep all the rest before it.

Hope. It had been years since he had allowed himself to feel it plainly. Once, in Ramsgate, it had come to him as naturally as breath. His aspirations, while in her company, centered on a life defined by contentment rather than magnificence. Walks, books, music, mornings unremarkable except for the fact of being shared. A future that required no disguise and no triumph, only constancy and love.

He had thought that future destroyed. Now, suddenly, impossibly, it did not seem beyond reach. The sensation of it was like returning light. Rather than a dramatic epiphany, it presented as a subtle but significant resurgence of a cherished sentiment that had been absent. His whole body answered it. The heaviness that had so often lived in him seemed to loosen; the sharp vigilance, the perpetual inward bracing, diminished under the sheer eagerness of what lay ahead.

At this moment, he cared nothing for vengeance. The wrongs done him remained as grave as ever, but with Elizabeth once more within his reach, love held greater power over him than anger.

He drew in a breath and felt it fill him wholly. “I am going,” he said.

Lucien smiled. “Yes. I believe you are.”

Darcy gave a brief, almost disbelieving huff of laughter, then turned and left the room with a swiftness that would have surprised anyone who knew only Count Vendicarsi. His steps carried him through the hall, down the front steps, and out into the clear afternoon with an energy that belonged not to the man he had fashioned for society, but to the younger man who had once looked upon Elizabeth Bennet and believed the world might be kind.

That hope flooded him now, bright and ungovernable. He did not resist it. He crossed the square toward Matlock House with his heart beating not for justice, nor revenge, nor even restoration, but for her.

Hargrave did not often permit disorder to persist long enough to become a problem.

He had built too much, risked too much, and maneuvered too carefully among men of influence and consequence to allow one weak point to unravel what he had secured. For a time, Wickham had served his purpose well enough. He had been pliable where it mattered, ambitious without being disciplined, and vain enough to believe himself in command of circumstances that had, in truth, been arranged for him.

That illusion, however, had begun to fracture.