Page 61 of Honor Requires

Two footmen stepped forward at once and opened the doors with practiced exactness. Darcy descended first, then turned to allow Lucien to follow. He remained where he was, taking in the façade with a gaze at once critical and satisfied.

Ashcombe House.

The name had been chosen with care. It carried import for him alone, and that was sufficient. To the world, it was merely a dignified title for a Mayfair residence recently restored to consequence. To Darcy, it was one more thread binding old blood, buried fortune, and the new identity he had fashioned for himself into something coherent enough to stand.

The front door opened before they reached it.

A tall, solemn gentleman of perhaps fifty bowed with grave precision. His coat was black, his linen immaculate, his bearing that of a man who had once served in a better household than the one that had cast him off.

“My lord. Mr. Dantès. Welcome to Ashcombe House.”

“Thank you, Mr. Gibbs,” Darcy said.

The butler stepped aside to admit them. “Mrs. Gibbs has seen that everything is in readiness. Your trunks have already arrived, and Mr. Stone arrived not half an hour ago.”

Darcy gave a small nod. “Very good.”

Mr. Gibbs had been among the first of the staff engaged. Darcy had liked him immediately—not for submissiveness, but for steadiness. The man had once served in an excellent house and had been turned out without reference when silver went missing. Only later had it emerged that the mistress of the household, burdened with debts she had concealed from her husband, had been secretly selling plate and smaller valuables to satisfy her creditors. The truth, once known, had not restored what had been taken from the staff. Mr. Gibbs and his wife had borne the disgrace of another’s dishonor, and the injury had not been repaired.

Darcy had hired them both on the strength of that injustice as much as their competence. Mrs. Gibbs, now housekeeper of Ashcombe House, possessed practical intelligence and calm authority that already made itself felt throughout the establishment. The others servants had been chosen much the same way. A footman dismissed upon false suspicion. A cook blamed for economies dictated by an extravagant lady above stairs. A maid discharged because she knew too much of her mistress’s conduct. Each had been wronged in some fashion. Each had learned how little protection honesty afforded when set against wealth and convenience.

As a result, they served with a loyalty not born of sentiment, but of gratitude sharpened by experience. Darcy valued that far more than easy devotion.

Mr. Gibbs relieved Lucien of his gloves while a maid appeared soundlessly to carry away Darcy’s hat. The hall, warmly lit despite the dimness of the day, opened before them in rich and ordered symmetry. The walls had been painted in a deep, muted stone color relieved by darker wood paneling below, and the carpeting underfoot was thick enough to soften every step.

Lucien looked about with open approval. “A bachelor’s kingdom,” he murmured. “There is not a flowered silk in sight.”

Darcy’s mouth curved faintly. “I had no wish to feel I had wandered into some dowager’s drawing room.”

“Nor have you,” Lucien said. “It is masculine without severity. A useful distinction.”

That, too, had been intentional. The floor plan reminded Darcy strongly of Darcy House, though on a somewhat reduced scale. There was the same balanced arrangement of public rooms below stairs, the same proportion in the hall, the same sense that comfort and consequence had been meant to exist together. Where Darcy House had long borne the touch of family—of inherited taste weakened by generations of occupation—Ashcombe House was unmistakably the domain of a man alone. The colors were warm, though somewhat dark: deep green, oxblood, bronze, walnut, charcoal blue. The furnishings were handsome rather than delicate, the objects selected for quality and effect rather than sentiment. For all its masculine character, it did not feel cold.

Darcy passed from the hall into the front drawing room, then into a smaller morning parlor, a library, and at last the back parlor whose windows faced the opposite street. In each room he paused just long enough to note whether the proportions held, whether the light fell as expected, whether the furniture sat naturally within the space. He asked no unnecessary questions, and none were offered. Mr. Gibbs understood him well enough already to distinguish satisfaction from inspection.

He had not engaged a valet.

Lucien had raised the point more than once during their weeks at the hotel, observing with some amusement that a continental count of consequence was expected to possess at least one man wholly devoted to the brushing of coats and management of cravats. Darcy had resisted. There were practical reasons, some of which he would have stated if pressed: a valet saw too much, too soon; a valet required confidence before confidence had been earned. Beneath those considerations lay something more private. The thought of surrendering so much of his daily person to another man's attendance sat strangely with him now. A valet was not like a typical servant, either.

Brisby's absence was part of it as well. The man had served him for years. Darcy did not imagine he could find another of such unswerving loyalty in the matter of a moment. He did not think often, if he could help it, of his faithful servant who had once known his habits better than he knew them himself. There were too many unanswered questions bound up in such thoughts. Better, for now, to manage his own dressing and defer the matter until it became unavoidable.

The back parlor pleased him most. It was not the grandest room in the house, but it possessed the best view. A fire had already been lit there, and the dark green walls caught the light in such a way that the whole room seemed close and rich without becoming oppressive. Books had been placed upon the side tables, and a decanter waited upon a tray near the hearth. The curtains stood open.

Darcy moved toward the window.

From there, one looked not upon his own side of the street, but across and a little down, where the doors of two houses stood in sober and distinguished proximity.

Darcy House. And Matlock House. He stood perfectly still.

For an instant, not longer, the sight of them seemed to narrow the years between what had been and what now was. He had imagined this view before the purchase was complete, had weighed its usefulness in terms of observation and opportunity, had accounted for every practical advantage it offered. The reality of it struck more deeply than he had intended. Darcy House remained outwardly unchanged. Its stone was the same, its steps the same, its door just as he remembered. Matlock House, too, stood with all the assurance of long-established rank.

He told himself he was only observing.

As he watched, the door of Matlock House opened. A young woman emerged. She held a little boy by either hand, one to each side, while behind her came a footman and a nursemaid carrying parcels and cloaks enough to suggest an afternoon excursion. The children moved with the irrepressible energy of their age, half skipping, half tugging, but the lady kept them in order with an ease that spoke of habit rather than effort.

Darcy’s hand tightened upon the window frame. She crossed the street. Not toward Ashcombe House itself, but past it, and as she did, her face turned just enough that the line of her cheek, the carriage of her head, the motion of her step struck him with such force that his breath failed him.

Elizabeth. The name surged through him before reason could intervene. It was absurd. Impossible.