Page 52 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
“Broken?” Darcy turned on him.
“It’s different,” said Richard. He rubbed his forehead. “No, maybe it’s not different, that’s the problem, not nearly different enough. From shooting something when you’re hunting? From stringing up a deer and slicing it open to let the blood flow free? Maybe it’s so very, very much the same, and that is why it breaks you?”
“I’m thirty years old, Richard. I think it’s about high time I killed a man,” Darcy muttered. It wasn’t such a strange thing, in the end. Lots of men had duels or shot thieves who set upon their carriages on the highways or… there were any number of ways a man could be forced to do it, and Darcy wasn’t opposed. This was his duty. “I don’t need to be weaker than you.”
“That’s the thing, it’s not like you’re thinking,” the colonel muttered. “You want it back once it’s gone, that’s all I’m saying. Just… let me plan it.”
“But how is it that I have done nothing in all this? I could not get her to speak, and you did. Why is that?”
“I think it’s because of who I am. She does not think of me as the sort of man who takes any kind of action. She knew if she told you that you would react, but me?”
“I need to do something.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Richard, what preparations?”
“We’ll need a number of supplies ready and on hand for disposal and cleanup. We’ll need to be sure he’s alone. We’ll need to find a time when we can confront him undisturbed. You’ll wish to speak to him beforehand?”
“I can see to this,” said Darcy.
Richard sighed.
“Let me dosomething, Richard,” Darcy muttered.
ELIZABETH WOKE BECAUSEsomeone was in her room. She wanted to sit straight up, but some animal instinct stopped her from doing so, made her go quite still, frozen. She opened one eye to watch as a shadowy figure stood over Willie’s cradle.
Her heart beat wildly.
And then she recognized him. Then she did sit up. Her voice was a harsh whisper. “You wouldn’t allow me to come and speak to your in your bedchamber, and then you sneak in here in the middle of the night?”
“Apologies,” came his voice. It was thick, as if he might have been crying.
She got up out of the bed, throwing on an outer garment, and pushed him out into the sitting room. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head at her, just kept shaking it. He wandered off, moving like a man who was fighting his way through strong winds. Eventually, he collapsed on a couch.
It was dark in the sitting room, and she considered lighting a candle or a lamp, but then she didn’t do it. She went across the room and sat down next to the dark, hulking shadow of him. She touched him, just a hand on his body—but on histhigh, of all places, too intimate. What was shedoing?
“I’m a failure as a man, Elizabeth,” he said gruffly.
“I’m sure that’s not true.” She patted him. She didn’t know what he was talking about. She was simply trying to be reassuring.
“My sister…” He shuddered. “I’ve let a monster into my sister’s life, and he has done unspeakable things to her. It’s my own fault. I knew—or I suspected, anyway—but I let myself be talked out of it, and I let it be hidden from me.”
“Let it be hidden?” said Elizabeth.
“Well, I had some notion of it. They did keep it from me, though, I think. But it’s difficult to say what happened. Everyone there is under his spell to some degree. None of them could think that it was a behavior that should be hidden or else he couldn’t keep doing it out in the open like he does.”
Elizabeth was very, very confused.
He covered her hand with his own. “He’s the vicar there. He’s doing inappropriate things with young women, my sister included, and—”
“Oh, God, Fitzwilliam!” Her heart squeezed. She turned her hand to take his and clenched his fingers as tightly as she could.
He let out a little noise. “I have let it go on—”
“No, no,” she said. “Such things are always secret. And of course you didn’t want it to be true. Of course you didn’t think on it as much as you could have. I think you must stop blaming yourself entirely. You know now, and that is the important thing.”
