Page 61 of A Debt Inherited

“I know a man who speaks of it as if it owes him money.”

“Then he is either very brave or very stupid.”

“Perhaps both.”

Griggs studied him a moment. “The present Mr Darcy is not your Edmund Darcy. Fitzwilliam Darcy, that one. Young, rich, proud, and connected enough to make curiosity expensive.”

Kerr crossed his arms. “And Bennet?”

Griggs drew a breath, the kind taken before treading on delicate ground. “Thomas Robert Bennet. Hertfordshire family, country gentry—oldish stock but little to their name. He was the one expelled from Cambridge after that elopement business—your own uncle’s affair, if I’ve the facts straight. But he didn’t vanish. He did what disgraced younger sons do when they have sense and no prospects—he took the King’s coat. Barbados, by what I found. Wounded. Honoured, if my man has it right.”

“Distinguished?” Kerr said.

“Aye.” Griggs leant back, the chair creaking under him. “Fallen, risen, and quiet in the countryside.”

Kerr looked up. “Men do not rise so cleanly from mere disgrace.”

“That, I cannot speak to,” Griggs said. “But Bennet lives.”

“Where?”

Griggs’s pipe had gone out. He tapped it against the side of the table, ash falling to the floor. “Hertfordshire. Near a market town, if my note is sound, though I would not trust the note farther than that.”

He looked up. “The house is called Longbourn.”

* * *

Upper Gower Street, September 1811

The nib caught at the paper. Ink had dried; it left only scratches. The candle guttered, light bending with every draught. Coins sat in small, uneven stacks—proofs of arithmetic that meant less each time he counted.

Something creaked above—timber, perhaps, or a step. He looked up, stilled, and listened. Only the clock. He dipped the pen again, and wrote the same sum twice. Neither was correct. The air smelt of smoke that was not his own fire.

He rose, crossed to the window, and lifted the curtain an inch. The street lay empty, lamplight slick on the stones, yet he felt the gaze linger. Roark’s words from the Forge played back in the stillness—flat, cold, exact: You’ve been useful, Kerr. Do not become inconvenient.

He heard them as though the man stood behind him, breathing through the glass. He let the curtain fall. The silence pressed close; even the clock seemed to wait.

The latch clicked. Mr Price’s discreet cough followed.

“Mr Wickham to see you, sir.”

Kerr set the pen down. “Show him in.”

Wickham entered smiling, rain glossing the shoulders of his coat. Behind him came another man—fair-haired, shorter, the sort who grinned by habit. His waistcoat strained at the buttons; his cravat had been tied twice and badly.

“This is Denny,” Wickham said. “A future officer. If his tailor and his purse can agree upon the same ambition.”

Kerr rose. “You’re travelling?”

Wickham helped himself to the decanter on the sideboard. “Derbyshire Militia. Denny here has the happy notion that one may purchase honour by the yard.” He turned to him. “Enlighten my friend, if you please.”

Denny shifted his hat from one hand to the other. “Simple enough, sir. A regiment always has vacancies if a man knows whom to ask. A little ready money, a little manner, and one may wear a coat that makes creditors bow before they curse.”

“Or a counting room,” Wickham added.

Kerr’s eyes went to the door. Mrs Price hovered there a moment, anxious. He nodded; she withdrew.

“You’ll excuse the hour,” Wickham said, pouring two glasses. “But dawn waits for us. The provinces call, Kerr—ladies with bright eyes, squire’s dinners, clean debts.”