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Chapter Text

To his credit as a gentleman of reason, Fitzwilliam Darcy had no familiarity with faerie stories--nor would he have believed their warnings had he read Cazotte or d'Aulnoy; to believe that wishing could change the world was so contrary to the empirical mind, Darcy would have discredited the idea at once. He therefore thought nothing of it when the astrologer visited Rosings Park the day after Easter. He bowed to her on the introduction and sat silent, abstracted in thought, as Anne de Bourgh questioned her on shared points of interest. The other Easter guests joined in the conversation with less enthusiasm. The response from Lady Catherine de Bourgh was restrained, but her remarks about the subject contained an air of ridicule. Astrology had been out of fashion for nearly fifty years. Yet every fashion has its season, and every season its partisans that blaze their own trail through general indifference. The astrologer's answers animated Georgiana until she leaned forward to the edge of the settee. Colonel Fitzwilliam took to his heels to pace the room.

Darcy soon realised his mistake. When his cousin broke in on his thought, he was ill-prepared to say anything in return.

Darcy blinked away a dissolving thought, when Colonel Fitzwilliam repeated: "Come, Darcy, will you join us?"

Darcy denied out of habit; then caught the change that had come over his sister. The colour was high in her cheeks. He had not been paying close attention to the drift in conversation, and therefore had no idea whether he was to agree to a country shooting party or hosting a ball at Pemberley. "I do not wish to disappoint my sister. If she desires my attendance, I will join you."

Georgiana lifted her chin just a hair too high to hide her reaction; she was surprised at Darcy's answer.

"Insupportable!" Lady Catherine de Bourgh interjected. "I will not have such nonsense under my roof." Lady Catherine's eye roved around the assembly for support. She expected to be obeyed; her most intimate dining companion demurred to her taste in nearly all respects—as long as she was in earshot.

Anne had her own surprise. "Oh, let's have an exhibition, mother. The Duchess of Derbyshire had such a pretty demonstration from our guest in March. Her fortunes were very diverting."

Lady Catherine narrowed her eyes. They darted between Anne and Georgiana. Darcy imagined the measuring up of her daughter with her planned daughter-in-law, how one seemed to draw strength from the energy of the other, and fancied that he saw her resolve waver and modulate.

"Oh, if we must," she assented.

"Thank you, mother."

"Send the footmen out of the room. I want no reports of this in the village."

"Now, everyone, rise," the astrologer said. "Form a circle around me. Sitting, as you please, near a table. We will be writing."

Everyone stood; guests pulled chaises and settees into a crude circle with every serving surface arranged felicitously for writing. Lady Catherine found this much too much. She swept out of the room and nearly collided with the footmen listening at the door; she set them on their heels and they were swallowed up by the long corridors of Rosings Park.

"Some people aren't ready for this; but I can sense you all have open hearts," the astrologer said.

The too-familiar confidence grated on Darcy. He grimaced.

And nothing more. He could think of no worse displeasure than to follow his aunt out of the salon in protest. He decided the evening shouldn't be entirely wasted; and he would make a study of their astrologer. So when her demonstration failed (as it must), he would have proofs to win against any debate.

* * *

Madame M— de V— styled herself as a diviner of hazy futures; yet took great pains to fit into the fashion of the ladies and gentlemen she courted for her living. She adjusted her bonnet, trimmed with a net of cascading lily-of-the-valley, and produced a porte-crayon and commanded that paper be brought. When the writing materials had been brought, and the footmen had disappeared again into the long gallery to attend Lady Catherine in the deepening gloom, the gathered ladies and gentleman reached for the cut quills.

Colonel Fitzwilliam jabbed the air with his quill. "Shouldn't you loan us your porte-crayon?"

A murmur rippled through the guests as everyone agreed that quills were in fact a poor instrument for anything so extraordinary, and that if they'd all had the tools of artists, they'd be greatly set up for success. Madame de V— settled her hands demurely in front of her, and let the commentary pass with a little remark: "The tool makes no difference, gentlemen."

Georgiana drummed her fingers next to the uppermost corner of her paper.

"Does it matter where we start?"

"No, my dear, you may begin on whatever part of the paper suits you."

"What do we write?" Anne bit at her thumbnail, then dropped her hand like a stone at her lapse.

"If you please—I shall make a presentation on it. I have in my hand ordinary paper from Miss de Bourgh's own private stock." Madame de V— caught Darcy's skeptical eye. "Examine it, if you like."

Darcy held the paper so it caught candlelight through its translucent wove. The watermark read J. Whatman Turkey Mill 18—. As fine a paper as could be found in England; and in all respects, as mundane as the quills, the ink pots, the gathered guests themselves.

"Now ladies and gentlemen, I want you to concentrate. Singularly concentrate. Hold the question in your mind, and feel it enter your heart. Then, when it has, capture exactly what rises within you. What do you want?"

"What connection could this possibly have to astrology," Colonel Fitzwilliam groused. "I see no stars in this Kentish rag."

"An astrologer must be open to all of the methods that reason has overturned," Madame de V— answered coolly. "If reason is the only instrument we use, how can it be that you still feel desire in your heart?"

"An offensive assertion," Darcy said hotly.

"Are you telling me that there is no desire in your heart, Mr. Darcy? Now, the rest of you gentlemen, and ladies, this one was taught to me by a gentleman returned from his Grand Tour in Florence—"

"Come, Darcy, if there are no stars, we can at least supply good sense to these proceedings."

Darcy let his gaze unfocus. Good sense. Is that what he longed for? He tugged at the thought until it tore out the whole of his attention. What had been so distracting at the beginning of this trifle?

He had been thinking of Wickham.

Good fortune had saved his family at Ramsgate. Darcy had arrived before the letter which stated his intention to visit had reached Mrs. Younge; and thought to take in a short excursion before he announced himself to the house. At the seaside walk, he had jumped from the carriage and felt the invigorating spray of the ocean. Couples strolled past him arm-in-arm; women and men in every combination, close in each others' confidences. He stood near the stone wall of a handsome little promenade. The slate-grey ocean was in high spirits, and so was he—until he spied Wickham and Georgiana in an intimate embrace at the terminus of the path. Darcy well-knew he had been just in time to separate Georgiana from Wickham before he could abscond with her. At one time, when they were still in each other's confidences as young men, Wickham had expressed a desire that was in accord with Darcy's own partiality. And so, Darcy thought, he had nothing to fear from Wickham. Even when Wickham had sunk into dissolution during their studies, should he become too profligate and took an eye to blackmail, they both risked the same exposure—or so Darcy had reasoned.

His mind circled the word reason and plunged him head-first into resentment. Reason could be counted on. Reason could be marshaled. Good fortune was a worthless instrument: a surveyor's compass whose face was cracked, so that any man peering into it for direction was just as likely to walk into the river Ravensbourne as he was to find true North. His friendship with Charles Bingley had given Darcy the antidote to Wickham. But Charles Bingley was a man in demand by ladies wherever he was introduced. And he seemed to have no inclination towards a man like Darcy. Surely now that he had control of his own affairs, Charles would take an estate this Michaelmas, and soon after, marry.

What good fortune could he hope for, if he could not produce a good man?

What was a good man?

Darcy worried the downy fluff of his quill with his fingers. The others around him had already begun to write.

A man must have a thorough knowledge of reason, history and natural philosophy. He must be sensible to the pleasures of singing, dancing, and good company. He must carry a conversation when called upon (for one could not always depend on a partner to do so) and lean into silence when otherwise called for (as one often needed solitude to think). His interests should be modern, yet show passing familiarity with the Ancients. Such a man should never be beholden to scientific fashion, or quirks of the law that ran against natural inclination. He must speak modern languages; and feel a keen sense of justice. He must not fear the gibbet or the gallows or the guillotine. And there should be something in his air and manner of address. An easy intimacy that could beguile a woman or a man. He should be possessed of uncommon courage.

A man who was desired.

Unbidden, Darcy felt an unfamiliar self-sympathy well up out of his heart. He put the quill to the paper and against his better judgment wrote:

I am in need of a good man. cf. Francis Bacon, who says the qualities of a good man are as follows: —language, duty, reason and a willingness to dance.

"I see the gentlemen have finished. Now, sign it."

"May I see yours?" Georgiana whispered to her brother.

"If you like," Darcy said. He feigned indifference while his heart pounded in his chest.

Georgiana bent over his paper.

"Good, good, good. The ladies will take care." Madame de V— directed the envelopes and wax be passed throughout the company. "Now, into an envelope, and seal them."

"When will you grant our innermost wishes," Anne de Bourgh asked. Her recollection had laboured her breathing.

Madame de V— laughed lightly, and then settled into a solemnical mood. "The motive force springs from inside you. What elevates your writing to the realm of magic is the fervency of your wish."

"I should have wished for more things, in that case," Colonel Fitzwilliam teased as he tested the seal on his letter, and came away with soft wax on his finger. "Ah, perhaps a retreat is the best course of action." The Colonel cast his letter into the fireplace, and then cocked an eyebrow at the rest of Lady de Bourgh's assembled guests, who were all examining the seals of their letters with uncertainty. "I encourage the rest of you to do the same. I may not be the champion of reason of our Mr. Darcy, but I know that tempting letters make for a brisk trade in town."

The guests stood as one and replaced the Colonel by the fire. Some held their letters to their heart, others cast theirs into the fire. Darcy remained seated. He was ideally placed to overhear what passed between the Colonel and Madame de V— "If any word of blackmail slips from this room, London society will become very unwelcome for you."

Alarmed, Darcy looked over to Georgiana, but she was already casting her letter and Darcy's into the fire. He searched for that dullness of spirit that had lingered over her since Ramsgate, but she seemed triumphantly alive in the reflected fire-light. Georgiana took Anne's elbow, and escorted her from the room.

As the guests passed out of the room into the long gallery where Lady Catherine waited, Madame de V— caught Darcy's arm. He reproached her as he pulled himself from her grip. He had proofs against the primacy of belief, when it was established beyond question that reason was the organizing principle that set the world in motion. Reason triumphed over all, even desire—as it must when the law conflicted so severely with the natural bent of his mind—as it always must—

"No, let's not fight," she said. She slipped a small folded paper into his hand. "You will be challenged, and I suspect you will need this later."

When the guests had disbanded for the night, Darcy took the stairs to his room with an uncommon swiftness. His heart was in his throat as he unfolded the slip. The small rectangle had two words written on it.

Return Home.

It was all nonsense. Why wouldn't this be, too?

* * *

Soft dreams terminated in a rough air of unease. As Darcy startled out of sleep, he saw it was still dark. His dream faded; the contents already moving out of reach. He recalled two footmen conversing in quiet tones in the doorway to a long gallery, whose walls were peopled by unrecognizable portraits. The men ducked their heads, and smiled, and shared an easy intimacy on a topic Darcy couldn't recall. As the dream dissipated, a passing valet jostled their bodies together. How electric it felt!

Darcy scarcely had allowed himself to remember, when the hair prickled on the back of his neck.

He was not alone in the room.

Moonlight fell from an open shutter, revealing the scene. A man sat at the writing desk. The chair had been turned so its interloper would have view of the bed. He was leaned forward, holding something in his hands. A match was struck, and deep shadows and colour sprang to life as the stranger lit a rushlight on the desk. Shadows played across as poorly made a scarlet regimental uniform as he had ever seen, with only one row of brass buttons and no lapels or epaulettes or gold braid or identifying colours of his militia unit, and a wide-brimmed felt hat.

"I'm terribly sorry to impose on you, given the hour, but I suspect there's something of a time differential between here and Chicago."

Darcy was on his feet in an instant. He snatched his robe from the settee at the end of his bed, tightening the belt over his night clothes. "Explain yourself, sir," Darcy said as his temper caught up to the present situation. "What causes you to be in my room, at this hour, in a state of undress?"

The stranger looked down at his clothes in astonishment. "I—I—I didn't think to change into the formal uniform." He rubbed a thumb across his eyebrow. "I don't suppose I could go back for my dress belt."

"Had you nobody but the sorriest tailor in London to dress you?" Darcy loomed over the stranger, who found no threat in his closeness, even as Darcy felt the effervescence he felt when in the middle of a close combat at the fencing club. His reproaches of the man's poor choice of dress were barely reasonable. He mastered himself.

The stranger opened his mouth, and Darcy pressed him to silence. Darcy laid hands on him; and the stranger chose in that moment to rise to his feet. It was then that Darcy realised that the stranger was as tall as he, broader than his cousin, and heavy for his frame. This was no militia man. The militias of Kent were much like the militias of Derbyshire: men who were recruited on the strength of their ability to withstand boredom; who saw no action and spent no time out of the halls and ballrooms of the gentry— except when they were forced to encamp in the fields while the counties squabbled over levying new taxes. This was a man who worked on his feet. A regular, perhaps, who spent his last penny purchasing his commission? Certainly, if they were to come to blows, Darcy might not be able to prevail over him without a sword in his hand. They were within an arm's length of each other. Closer than that.

"You summoned me?" The man had made his voice gentle, and nodded slightly as though to prompt Darcy to recall his equal share of blame in all this.

"What," Darcy said, distracted. "I certainly did not."

"If you would unhand me, I—"

Darcy's hands gripped his elbows, and their bodies felt closer still. "Tell me your name."

"Benton Fraser. Constable. Constable Benton Fraser, and if you would let me go, I'll show you the note."

Darcy let one hand drop; Constable Benton Fraser slipped a note from the breast pocket of his shoddy uniform. The Darcy family seal was pressed onto it in the red sealing wax they'd merrily poured onto their notes last night. How harmless it had seemed in the drawing room; how alarming it seemed now.

"I am in need of a good man. See also Francis Bacon, who says the qualities of a good man are as follows: language, duty, reason and a willingness to dance. Signed, Fitzwilliam Darcy. Undated. Following in a second hand: such a man, if he exists, should dance with my brother at Pemberley. The addendum is unsigned, but I would imagine it was done by someone you trusted enough to show this note. A friend, or close confidant?"

Darcy touched the letter lightly, to prove to himself it was real. He was too amazed to be as disagreeable as he had intended to be, when he murmured: "My sister, Georgiana. She must have added this."

"Are you Fitzwilliam Darcy?"

Darcy nodded his assent. "I am."

"Do you," Fraser paused, cocked his head, and darted his gaze over Darcy's face, "need me?"

The danger of the situation roused Darcy from his half-sensible state. "No, sir, I do not. And I certainly do not dance, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. Who are you? A stranger who has insinuated himself into my bedroom and blackguarded me. By what means you entered this room, I shall discover when it is light. And you, I shall—" Darcy could not turn him over to any authority. He could not risk for one second the discovery of that letter—"I shall ask you to leave, immediately. Should you mention this encounter to anyone, I shall have you drummed out of your regiment. I do not believe for one moment that you are a constable of the law. If you were a constable, as you claim to be, you would realise that you have levied a serious crime against me."

Heat rose in Darcy's cheeks with the force of his speech; yet still Darcy did not move away from the supposed constable. To Darcy's consternation, his tirade had barely moved the interloper; they were as close together now as the two footmen in Darcy's faded dream, and had they been standing in a doorway, a valet pushing past them could tumble their bodies together closer than Darcy had ever dared to share with any man who wasn't parrying his blow, or wrestling in the field as young men do before age brings awareness to some of the undertow of unspoken feeling that some men seemed not to heed—and Darcy wondered: did the constable have any awareness of it now?

"Ah," Fraser said at last, and shrugged out of Darcy's grasp as though he weren't holding onto him with a fevered strength. "My mistake."

The constable folded the note back in on itself, and put it into Darcy's hands. Darcy's hand closed on the note, crushing it in the spasm of relief. He held it over the rushlight until the paper kindled and then threw it onto the hob grate. They both watched it burn down to ash.

"Did they give you any…papers? I confess, there is much I don't understand about this business. But I had the impression someone would give you the means to send me home?"

"I suppose you have done me a kindness, and delivered me of any blackmailers that might have found profit in that note, Constable," Darcy said acerbically.

"I didn't realise that dancing was a blackmailable offense," Fraser said with a chuckle, and then muttered, "Aside from some rather whimsical nudists who live near Lake Michigan. I must admit I'm unfamiliar with your laws. The Inuvik public library apparently didn't cover the full particulars of this jurisdiction. The oldest penal code on file dated to eighteen—ah, but that's hardly relevant, is it?"

"Are things so different where you live?" Darcy asked tentatively.

His companion did not answer him for a measure of time. "Yes, I think they must be. Though…I suppose no one has ever been pleased to see me first thing in the morning."

Darcy took in full measure of his implication; and all at once it rendered him strange: the constable's undress, his accent, his manner of speech all formed an impression that rebelled against his reason. He had wished for a man that he was sure did not exist in all of England. He was certainly not Parisian; nor sun-drenched enough for Tuscany.

What infernal realm had delivered this man to him?

"An astrologer visited us last night, a Madame M— de V—. Are you acquainted with her?"

"No. Is she important?"

Shadow danced across the constable's face, drawing the turn of his cheek.

Darcy looked at him with a critical eye; the rushlight did much to dismantle reason, and the antidote to that heightened affect was to pick out the asymmetries of his face. Which one accomplished by committing its features more strongly to memory. Darcy felt that even should the constable find himself in an acceptable state of dress, he would know him from Adam in a Piccadilly crowd.

"The astrologer gave me a note last night—meant, I think, for you. I certainly have no need for a memento, so I suppose you should take it."

Fraser received it with an earnest countenance. He read its inscription aloud. "Return Home. Ah. Yes. I think that's it." He smoothed down his hair and donned his peculiar hat. "Thank you kindly."

Constable Benton Fraser stepped away from him, and Darcy found space to breath more freely, until the man stepped back into his path and tried to catch his eyes. "It's just that it seems you were greatly alarmed by my arrival," he said, with a full freeness of honesty and goodwill that pierced Darcy to the quick. "Please think nothing of it. I didn't come here with a nefarious purpose. Whatever crime I've accused you of, that was not my intention. I won't take any more of your time."

Darcy's cleverness had raced in front of itself, and by the time it arrived all in the same place with the same thought—I should like to know this man better—he realised he was alone in the room. No door had been opened. No casement had been touched. The rushlight guttered out, and left Darcy very much in the dark.

* * *

In the candlelight of Rosings Park's library, Darcy pulled volume after volume from the shelves. Encyclopedias. Atlases. Indexes. Treatises on Reason. Not a single volume admitted a town by name Inuvik. Certainly, it could be a small locality—but to have a library open to lay constables, and carry books on the law, it would need to be something as grand as Chetham's library. Lake Michigan received only a handful of lines about the recent demarcation of an American territory. They were entirely mute on the subject of Chicago.

Could the constable be American? American sensibilities would explain some of the peculiarities of his undress, though the accent did not accord with any of the Americans Darcy had met in London social clubs. And there buried in another volume of the Britannica: Americans did not call their men constables with any regularity. Canada might prefer the appellation, but Darcy would never discover it; and the society lists were duller still; the only Constable was an artist of some small fame who had exhibited at the Royal Academy three years ago. Darcy slammed the Index shut.

He was out of his depth, and grasping for answers. Peering through a vague window into an entirely different world than the one he comfortably circulated within.

Frustrated, Darcy abandoned the books altogether. He fitted himself with a light linen dust coat and tacked one of the chestnut chargers that Lady Catherine kept for her hunting party. Dawn had not yet crept over the trees, and an Easter torpor hung over the whole of the grounds. The kitchen staff were not yet setting up for breakfast; and stable boys were still abed. He set off at a canter through the grounds; the path just barely illuminated by the early light.

He passed through dew-misted fields and the grand old passage through a copse whose canopy Darcy fancied looked like a church roof. He passed no one save the gameskeepers and their night wardens taking in their man traps.

Watching the calf-length iron jaws winched shut filled Darcy with a particular horror. Their jaws could snap closed on the poacher or the curiosity seeker with no discrimination. Trespass to take game was not a crime that merited disfigurement and he had banned them from Pemberley—but apparently his aunt had no such scruple about their use.

A new thought occurred to Darcy: did the constable truly wink into his room on a whim, as the astrologer would have him believe, or had he more likely come that way over unsafe ground? Could he have stumbled into one of these in the dark, and found himself trapped, or worse.

Darcy's hands tightened on the reins.

He called to the night warden nearest him, and asked for his report of the night activities. Had anyone come this way? Not likely, came the reply, for the night warden and the gameskeeper kept special watch during Easter. They had to hire on local lads—which came out of their own pay! Their own pay, can you believe that! They groused about wages, and the long hours, and their ladyship's idea of holiday cheer, and slung their man traps over their shoulders as they shuffled off toward the gameskeeper's cottage on the edge of the woods.

Darcy called out again, "A year's wages if any man brings me a trespasser by supper. He's a tall, disreputable-seeming fellow in the king's scarlet and a wide-brim felt hat. Do not injure him."

The wardens turned on their heels. They didn't need to be told twice.

The hunt was on.

* * *

Time passed slowly, as it must for any man aware of the offense he has given and the remedy he has planned. The day's activities likewise slowed to meet him. A dearth of kitchen staff kept guests hungry and waiting for an additional ten minutes at breakfast, and nearly half an hour at lunch. The day's shooting didn't go off; they couldn't find enough bagmen to attend the gentlemen in the field, nor could the gameskeepers be found to release the pheasants from their pens. Darcy's offer had reached even into the kitchen, and stolen every sure-footed man from the house. For his own part, Darcy offered no commentary on the general desertion of the Rosings Park staff when the guests grumbled their way through an impromptu poetry recitation.

When the poetry had finished, nothing else seemed to come together.

The guests found themselves trapped in the salon, measuring their current boredom to the gaiety of the previous night. The assembly intimated that Darcy was more forbidding and disagreeable than he had been during Madame de V—'s diversion, when some of his usual reserve had melted away. They supposed that the frivolity had done Darcy some good, even if the night's work had resulted in a heap of ash yet to be swept from the fireplace. Not that it mattered. No fire would be lit on such a warm evening. Mr. Darcy, on the other hand—

"No good can come from mocking deep feelings, nor from promising what cannot be true," Darcy responded severely. "Take for instance, our letters. Did we not pour our secrets onto the page when we wrote of our desires? They might have been ill-used if someone had recovered them."

"Cousin," Colonel Fitzwilliam said with some wonderment. "I think you mistake us; we found you agreeable yesterday, and thought that we might inspire you to some light conversation."

"And anyway, brother, I watched the letters burn," Georgiana affirmed. "No one could possibly have snatched them from the flames."

Anne rested a hand-fan against her heart. "No one here would have taken them to make sport or ill-use anyone's secrets against them."

"This house has made me doubt the report of my own eyes," Darcy muttered.

The assembly found a great shock in this. Darcy lacked even the most rudimentary excuse for his shortness of temper; and he had been making an effort, for Georgiana's sake. So he remained silent through supper.

When Lady Catherine announced the night's entertainment, Madame de V— had been shuffled off the schedule. She would not be returning again to Rosings Park, for as long as Lady Catherine had any say in the matter. Instead, they would have music, cards and conversation. Darcy quit himself of all three; he bowed to his sister and paid compliments to her skill on the pianoforte, but removed himself from the salon when the the guests proposed they should have a dance.

* * *

Fraser was not found by lunch. He was not found by supper. He was not found by the time Georgiana retired from the pianoforte. It was as though he were nowhere at all.

* * *

Georgiana found Darcy standing in dark of the long gallery, staring out at nothing. When she drew close to the canted window where he stood, she noticed that now and then, a circle of light from a flambeau would trundle into view, and Darcy would straighten and lean forward.

Light thrown from the candles barely reached this end of the gallery, and she couldn't see any nuance in his face, half-shadowed when he turned more fully toward the window sash.

"Don't you think Anne is good health?" Georgiana began, innocently enough. "She looked lightly improved in complexion since the day previous."

"Disagreeing with her mother has done more good for her than any of the apothecary's panaceas," Darcy said.

"We come here every Easter, dear brother, and you never seem to enjoy yourself. But this year, I think you've had even less enjoyment than that. I suppose you aren't thinking of the arrangement—"—between the two of them, they never called what Lady Catherine and their mother had planned for him and Anne an engagement—"when you choose to come here, are you, brother? You don't need Lady Catherine's approval, nor do you seek it. Why don't we leave tomorrow?"

Darcy turned toward her sharply, and then back to the window. He gripped the frame. "I cannot leave."

Alarm coursed through Georgiana, until she recognised what she saw and heard in the full force of her brother's power turned towards the window. Lovesickness.

"Have you ever wanted something that was impossible—?"Darcy stopped himself, and half-bowed. "Ah, a stupid question. Forgive me for asking."

"Let's not think of the unfortunate Mr. Wickham," Georgiana returned more lightly than she felt. "Today needn't end poorly," she said more for her brother's benefit than her own. "I've had much time to think on the subject, and I have come to believe very little is truly impossible—merely, unwise for reasons that reveal themselves with time."

"I met someone," Darcy said.

"Will you introduce me?"

"We only met this morning."

" —Is it one of the guests?" Georgiana frowned as she mentally reviewed the guests and did not find a suitable candidate amongst the lot of them. "I daresay not the staff, as I have not seen one whisker of them since midnight last."

Darcy gripped the frame of the window so tightly, she heard the wood creak. "I'm torn, Georgiana. I have seen something unbelievable, and yet reason tells me that there are answers for what I saw. Should I believe what's impossible…or what's probable?"

Georgiana thought on this. "I think you should trust your senses. They can lead us astray, if we don't have the full measure of things. But they don't deceive us."

Darcy hung his head. "In either case, he is gone and not likely to return."

It was not an altogether unexpected utterance; Georgiana had seen the note in her brother's familiar hand, and added her own wish that he could find happiness from it. She squeezed his arm, and tried to find the sorrow in his face.

"Please don't look at me like that," Darcy said. His tone was strained, though still touched with affection— a playfulness that her brother seemingly reserved only for her. Georgiana swore that she was looking at him in no such fashion, as there was not enough light for her in the gallery to even hazard the most piteous glance.

"Good," he replied.

She interlocked their arms, and stood with him at the window. Two flambeaux that had been crossing from the Cottage road into Tower Wood had stopped, met up with each other, and hadn't moved for some time.

"Brother," she narrowed her eyes, suspicion creeping on her at last, "are you responsible for turning all of the men out of the house?"

Darcy was reprieved from an answer, when a moment later a gameskeeper burst into the room from the southern door, breathing hard. "Sir," he cried. "We've found him! We've found your man. We found him!"

Darcy kissed her on the cheek brusquely, and extracted his arm from her. He took a few steps, then turned back and dropped a second bow for the evening. "Forgive me, I must go. If I'm not back before breakfast, make my excuses to Lady Catherine."

"A year's pay, that's what you promised! Split between me and my warden," the gameskeeper cried as he followed Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy out of the gallery, and truly Georgiana could not have hoped for a better outcome, even though she felt unsettled at the particulars. Her brother's silences troubled her. The questions he would not answer formed a pattern in her mind. Who answered the whole of her brother's call, if such a man had never been found in England? Georgiana let those thoughts drift into the background. Obviously, he had met someone and he was real enough. And that would be enough for Georgiana for now. Though, she supposed, she would now have to accomplish her own impossible feat: gaining her brother's assent to hold a ball at serious, sober, unwhimsical, unsociable, miraculously immeasurable Pemberley.

* * *

On the gameskeeper's word, the constable had been discovered in Tower Wood and the Honorable Mr. Darcy was now indebted by one hundred pounds to the two luckiest men in Westerham. This gameskeeper hadn't been with group that the honorable gentleman had charged to find the scoundrel, but he was well-enough informed about the search to catch their quarry. Owing to the disruption of the gameskeepers taking in traps this morning, it was unwise to ride through the woods in the dark—the gameskeeper pressed this point, and many others of less importance, while they quit the house. They had to take care to avoid the guests who were roaming the house in pairs, taking exercise in the darkened guest wing. In the grand foyer, they had a near-miss with Colonel Fitzwilliam and his conversation partner, but they'd kept to a discreet unlighted corner and passed without drawing any remarks from the pair. When they reached the safety of the warm night air in the portico the gameskeeper renewed his entreaty for the bounty—a year's wages!—to split between him and his partner.

The Honorable Mr. Darcy assured him that he would be paid as soon as the man was safely in Darcy's custody.

"No one ever said nothing about 'safely delivered'," the gameskeeper groused.

The alarm in Darcy mounted.

"I found the scoundrel from the King's Arms, didn't I? Now, my warden said it was a man wearing the king's colours. We both heard it direct from the head gameskeeper—so who's to say he's right and I'm wrong when—hey!"

Darcy had pivoted sharply towards the stable and the gameskeeper scrambled to keep pace. "Do you know why you were looking for this man?"

The gameskeeper scoffed at him. "Why does anyone from the house ask us to search hell and gone? He's a poacher, isn't he?"

"You fool," Darcy ejaculated. "You absolute fool."

Darcy's hands shook as he grabbed a saddle from the rack in the harness room. He tacked the nearest horse, a quarrelsome looking bay, and tucked a riding whip under his arm. The horse seemed unsettled by the whip, flicking its ears in displeasure, but let Darcy mount. The gameskeeper was no deft hand at horses; he was still in the harness room picking through the saddles when Darcy rode out.

The gameskeeper shot out of the stables behind him, shouting rude aspersions on Darcy and his whole familial line, until he slowed to a halt and bent over, winded.

* * *

The footpaths of Rosings Park meandered around Tower Wood in a dazzling tour of the countryside; Darcy was in no state to enjoy the pleasure of such indirect travel.

From the bay window in the Long Gallery, he had mentally tracked the torchlights as they had converged in the deep wood. Toward the easterly reaches, there was a clearing beyond any of the well-marked walking paths. Darcy knew the place. Or rather, he knew the place when sun glowed through the trees during the golden hour of the afternoon. The moon hadn't risen yet, and all the landscape was rendered in dark and frantic brushstrokes; fear lengthened the ground beneath him as he he took a wrong turn in the dark, and doubled his distance to the clearing in Tower Wood.

A poacher.

How far could that rumor have spread?

Now that it was night, anyone who hadn't made that alarming connection would do so anyway; and the night wardens that the gameskeepers hired on to patrol for them wouldn't have a single scruple about injuring a man they caught trespassing. A vision of Fraser beaten and tied to a tree while a group of footmen loitered about to be rewarded for their prize catch unspooled in Darcy's mind.

Soft torch light illuminated the underbrush directly ahead of him. Darcy slowed to a canter, and then lightly pulled on the reins to bring his horse to a stop.

He could make out two figures in the dim light. One was fetched up against a tree, and the other one stood beside him, with a flintlock rifle in hand. Neither of them appeared to be wearing the king's crimson or a wide-brimmed hat. The man with the rifle wore a Rosings Park-approved coat, and the other cowering against the tree was dressed in a over-large dark tweed that obscured his shape and blended in well enough to the night. Darcy felt a sick disappointment trickle into his stomach.

"Who goes there?" the man with the rifle cried. Darcy figured it was the gameskeeper's partner. "Cosgrove, is that you?"

Darcy urged his horse forward so that he and his mount were encompassed by the torchlight. The man squinted at him. He looked over Darcy head-to-toe, took in his coat and cravat, and seemed to be satisfied that Darcy was indeed a gentleman from the house. Darcy pointed his riding crop at the young man flattening himself against the tree in terror. "Who is he?"

"This lad's from the King's Arms," the warden gestured with the butt of the gun. "You may have passed through it on the way here, if you come from the north."

Darcy had in fact stopped there to change out his horses on the trip down; the coaching inn in Westerham always made for quick work on the road to and from Rosings Park. Darcy said as little as he could on this point; the young man couldn't have been more than fifteen years, and Darcy hadn't seen him in the coaching yard.

"Now me, I recognise him at once. He's Jack Stender's son, runs the Express from the inn. I've seen him pass through these woods before, morning and night, carrying letters for her gracious so-and-so, the Lady of the house."

He brought the horse close to the pair of men, and loomed over them. The horse whined and twitched its ears back, unhappy to be so close to strangers. Darcy was losing patience. Every second he wasted was one that Fraser could be in danger elsewhere. "Why did you detain this boy?"

"Tonight he's on foot. And when I get up to him, there's no letter, see? Instead, he's got rope and the Brown Bess I took off of him. He was fixing to take game from the hedgerows, sir."

"There is no game in the hedgerows," Darcy said shortly, keenly aware that this fact had kept them inside all day and away from their own shoot.

"I reckon you know your fowl, but there's always something about, governor," the warden said airily, not one to let such things as fact get in the way of a pretty story. "Now Cosgrove, he says, he's from the King's Arms, and worth a year's wages. I don't know about all that—I'm pretty sure you was looking for a soldier in the king's serge."

"Please," the young man entreated Darcy. "I was only going to take a pheasant for my family. Can't feed us all on the inn's wage."

"With enough rope to brace two dozen of them?" the warden scoffed.

Darcy turned a withering look on the young Stender, who chose not to repeat the lie.

"We'll have him before the magistrate by morning. He had gotten himself up in clothes from the old gameskeeper's cottage, and a Napoleon Bonaparte he'd pulled down over his face." The warden turned back towards the lad, and taunted him. "You came here in a disguise. It'll be the gallows for you."

"No." The young man paled. "Please, no."

"I'm sorry, lad," Darcy said. "This isn't my home. My opinion carries no weight here."

Darcy's apology struck the young man as though he'd backhanded him; and rather than cower further into the dark, it seemed he had no room for further horror in his body. This final threat galvanised something within him. He grabbed for the rifle, and knocked the butt of it into the warden's stomach.

"Get down from the horse!" the young man cried as he pointed the rifle at Darcy.

Darcy's hands tightened on the reins.

"Stay your hand!" Darcy cried out.

Ice prickled under his skin. Darcy knew that he had to act. He raised the whip, and snapped it against the young man's hands. The blow from the whip unsteadied the young man, but it failed to achieve its purpose. He re-aimed the rifle, and in an instant, a shot rang out from the flintlock. To Darcy's relief, the blow had rattled him enough that the shot went wide into the trees.

With a harrowing cry, the ill-tempered bay horse decided it had reached the limits of its bravery. It reared and tried to throw its rider, jerking the reins from Darcy's grasp. The downed warden scrambled to his feet, only to roll out from under the horse's hooves in a panic.

Darcy closed his eyes, and squeezed his knees into the flank of the bay horse. He had an instant before he was thrown; and whatever end would come to him from that. He didn't know this horse well enough to calm it; he had to take his chances on the ground. Assuming, of course, that the young Stender wouldn't immediately club him with the spent rifle. The riding crop dropped from his hands. Darcy kicked his feet out of the stirrups, pressed down on the withers on the horse with all of his strength, and swung his leg over. He pushed off against the side of his spooked mount, lathered with sweat, and for a moment, he was in the air. The ground rushed up at him. Darcy managed to regain his feet, but the dismount was unsteady, and Darcy's legs buckled. He rolled into the dirt at the side of the clearing.

The quarrelsome bay continued to rear and kick out. All three of the men around it scattered to avoid its crushing blows. The young Stender danced around the horse, attempting to shush and quiet it. The horse bit at the youth until he stopped trying to jump into the saddle. When it felt revenged enough on the trio of men who had made its night miserable, it fled into the night.

Darcy found his feet, and slowly rose. Stender came at Darcy with a fevered energy. The lad had discarded his rifle; he now had a single-shot flintlock pistol in his hand. Stender aimed at his heart. He was close enough that he wouldn't miss this time.

"Neither of you move, or I'll shoot him," he threatened.

"Shoot him!" the warden cried out. "That toff's nothing to me."

The hand that held the pistol was trembling. He cut his gaze over the warden. "Maybe I'll get you instead," he said even more roughly. "Then who'll take me to the gallows?!"

Truly there was no threat that the young man could have made to arrest the warden, who gave out a cry of to hell with this, and ducked into the stand of trees so the lad couldn't swing his arm around to shoot him. Darcy heard him crashing through the underbrush in the direction from which Darcy had come, perhaps to regroup with his partner; or perhaps simply to abandon Darcy to his fate.

"An innocent who brings a pistol and a rifle to take pheasant for his hungry family," Darcy said acerbically. "How gullible do you think I am!"

"Shut up," Stender yelled.

"Go on, lad. Find the horse. Take him and leave. I won't pursue you. All you've done is threaten me, and I don't much care that you've done it. I only care that your continued presence here means I'm dealing with trivialities instead of what I should be doing. Tell me, when you were blundering through the wood between the nearly three score men that must be out here with torches and rifles and dogs and traps, did you seen a man wearing the king's scarlet and a wide-brimmed hat?"

"There's a soldier in the woods?!" Stender appeared to be unraveling before him, flush with the danger of the moment. He sniffed. "Are you mocking me? Is my life trivial?"

Darcy tried to regain his composure. "Does my good opinion matter right now? The warden will return. Take your life in hand and flee."

"Soldiers in the woods. There was a solider in the woods. In red," Stender said softly, so softly that Darcy couldn't hear. "I'm caught. I'm caught."

In that instant, Stender was distracted. Darcy regretted losing his riding crop. He settled for bare fists. He lunged forward.

—"If they're sending me to hell, damned if I'm going first," Stender snapped, and fired.

Chapter Text

Darcy felt rather than saw someone tackle him at the instant that Stender fired. They dropped to the ground together, and Darcy struggled against the embrace—twisting and turning in his rescuer's arms in gratitude for saving his life. The struggle was no use; Darcy couldn't dislodge the live-saving grip. Crushed awkwardly as he was, he could see young Stender's eyes bulge in shock, but caught no glimpse of who had tackled him. A second or two, and he felt his rescuer's arms go slack, and the heavy brute consented to Darcy roughly shoving him off.

He felt a small breath tickle the shell of his ear. A sigh? A laugh?

"Was that your plan? To annoy him into shooting you? I fail to see the logic in that."

That voice.

Constable Benton Fraser was on his feet impossibly fast, and he held up a hand in front of him. "Son, you are unarmed. Lay down your pistol." The would-be poacher seemed like he'd seen the devil himself, threw down his flintlock and fled. He turned to Darcy and drew his eyes along him critically. "Are you all right?"

Darcy patted himself down. All extremities appeared to be in good condition. "Mercifully, yes," he answered.

"Oh, thank god," Fraser said, and Darcy felt the relief of it modulate into something more satirical. "The thought of you being seriously injured, in the hands of a doctor who hadn't yet discovered germ theory—"

"By god, where have you been?" Darcy began to pace. "Have you been leading these men on a merry chase?"

"Not as such, no. I've been…aware enough to…track you since you entered the woods." Fraser removed his hat. "I suppose, strictly speaking, I came from the doorway of the gameskeeper's cottage."

Darcy let the hesitations of the statement wash over him, as if the doorway of the gameskeeper's cottage explained anything except to pose a riddle; as if that explained how he had evaded three-score men beating the brush for their quarry for the better part of a day; as if Darcy had hoped for a rational answer, rather than whatever chaos Fraser seemed content to drag along in his wake.

But the fact remained—"You came back."

"I did," Fraser agreed, dropping his head to rub at his forehead. A small hope crept into Darcy's person. If Fraser had chosen to return of his own accord, then perhaps… Darcy stopped within two paces of Fraser.

Darcy searched Fraser's face for the signs of particular attachment than he had grown up knowing that one would bestow on the person they favored above all else. Looks, glances, jokes, the cant of one's head, the flash of a fan, smiles, small touches, the direct appeal of words of favor. A line of poetry, perhaps? What he found was Benton Fraser staring back at him, steady and unblinking, as still as a statue, wholly absorbed in the fixity of his person. Darcy found he did not know how to interpret that.

"I may have departed rather hastily, earlier," Fraser said quietly. "I won't make that mistake again."

Damned that Darcy felt such infacility with free, easy speech. He did not converse well with strangers, and Fraser was stranger to him than most. Darcy remonstrated himself for having taken no time during the day to compose his thoughts into a coherent speech on the subject of his sudden, but by no means unreasoned, feelings. All he had was that single thought he had marshaled in his bedroom, right before the constable had disappeared.

"I should like to know you better," Darcy said simply. Benton Fraser received his declaration by blinking rapidly, and almost imperceptibly swallowing.

"Oh," Fraser said. "Oh, good."

Darcy willed himself to arrest his pacing, and stand fast before his quarry. The night seemed to close around them. Fraser took a small half-step towards him and then paused, waiting for something. Darcy could not fathom what to do next. Why did it seem like he was the one who had been caught?

A scream rent the stillness between them; and they took off like one towards the source of the sound.

* * *

A hillock had given way in the early-April rain, and had washed out the side of a once gently-sloping path into a ten foot drop. Only the crown of his head bobbing up and down as the would-be poacher scrabbled against the hard-pack dirt, trying to find his footing in the exposed roots, gave Fraser and Darcy a sign of life when they swept aside the underbrush. His body was fully over the edge in the grips of the abyss.

Fraser knelt, and extended his arm. "Give me your hand, son."

"It's only a ten-foot drop. If he pushes out, he'll hit water. He'll survive," Darcy said.

"Look," Fraser said, activating some kind of strange cylindrical device. A beam of light sprung out of it, and danced across a deadly metal surface. Below, on the bank of the diminished river, was a monstrously large man-trap, one that could catch a man up to his thigh. Darcy felt the sickness of it; he felt another tableaux spring up in his mind, of the would-be poacher tumbling down, pulling Fraser with him—and Darcy could bear no more of that image.

"Judging by the size of the jaws, and of course, depending on the angle in which he impacts, it'll snap shut over his femoral artery," Fraser said.

"Please, God, I don't want to die," Stender sobbed.

"You won't," Fraser moved his hand closer. "But you'll have to trust me. Fitzwilliam, grab his other hand."

Darcy did as instructed. He clasped his hands over young Stender's left arm, and Fraser grabbed his right. The dirt beneath their feet began to give.

"Now, find a foothold. Now, together, move—" And all three of them strained as they clawed Stender back from that abyss. Chunks of the remaining hill crumbled underneath them, raining down on the man-trap. A clod of dirt as large as a fist impacted against the trip mechanism, and the man-trap's jaws snapped shut on empty air. Darcy fancied that the reverberation rattled the back of his teeth.

"Don't drop him," Fraser warned.

"I have him," Darcy said. "I have him."

They heaved the young man up like he was a rigging line. Bit by bit, they hauled him back onto the hardpack dirt. Once all of young Stender was on solid ground, as one, all three of them scrambled back from the disintegrating hillside.

"My life flashed before my eyes," the young Stender said, closing his eyes. "I've been right prat from start to finish."

"I'm sure it's not as bad as that—"

"—I'm ready for it. You can take me to the gallows."

Fraser's head shot up with alarm. "Son, I think you're being a little too—"

"—The law can execute poachers in this part of the world," Darcy explained sotto voce to Fraser.

Fraser straightened and stood. When he turned back to Darcy, his gaze was flint and his jaw set.

"Far be it from me to question the circumstances that caused such cruelty to be enshrined in law…but the manifestations of nature should be free to all men and reserved exclusively to none, except by which limits have been determined to protect and sustain nature in her own stead." Fraser paused. "A man should not die for this, Fitzwilliam."

"I know it!" Darcy yelled as he wrestled with his own conscience. He felt the struggle and fear well up inside of him. Tradition without compassion could never be a reasoned basis for law. He knew this argument by heart—he had had it with the Colonel as recently as last week. "I know it. What would you have me do?"

"Save his life," Fraser said, as if it were the simplest desire a man could harbor.

* * *

When they had regained the footpath from the washed-out embankment, two of them were fairly caked in mud. In the faint moonlight, Fraser's dress reds appeared pristine. Fraser pulled out a small brass device, and shone his cylindrical device at it.

"According to our bearings, north should take us to the road, west to the gameskeeper's cottage, and south-southeast back to—I'm terribly sorry, what is this place?"

"Rosings Park," Darcy answered coolly, as though this were a normal question, and not one that betrayed anything of Fraser's extraordinary arrival in this place. Stender didn't seem to take any notice of it being odd. "How did you take your bearings so precisely?"

"Pocket compass," Fraser answered, tossing the device to Darcy. He caught it and turned it over in his hands. A small brass mechanism covered by a translucent, clouded material. The device resembled a pocket watch in its detail; yet, never had Darcy seen a surveyor's tools so small, nor so strangely made. He turned it over again and again. It felt nearly weightless in his hand.

"Oh, just get on with it. I'm ready," Stender said tiredly.

"You're in shock," Fraser said as a prelude to relating an anecdote about freezing temperatures and leafy vegetables. Darcy held out the compass, intending to return it, but Fraser waved him off. Darcy slipped it into his fob pocket; there would be time enough to inspect it closely, or insist on its return, later.

Darcy set himself to the task of ordering his own thoughts, working through everything that had happened from the time he departed the stables until their would-be poacher had run off at the constable's command to lay down his pistol.

"If I were to take you to the magistrate," Darcy said slowly, "I would have to drive hard to his estate, with both of you in tow, to reach there by first light. You, in my custody, and you, as a witness. I would say: your honor, I came upon a disagreement between two men in the woods. I saw no evidence of poaching. You had no traps or disguise that I observed. You were being threatened. If I restrict my story to just these facts, there's nothing criminal in that."

"He was trespassing," Fraser put in helpfully.

"You're trespassing," Darcy said coolly. "Do I need to explain you to the magistrate, too?"

"Oh." Fraser's eyes darted over to young Stender, who was vigorously shaking his head no. "Well. Yes, I see your point."

"Who could even believe this story in its full particulars?" Darcy continued. "There will be questions about your identity, and your uniform, and I suspect you would be detained when you couldn't explain yourself to his satisfaction, Constable.

"Most damning to the case: the gunshots were witnessed," Darcy said, scrubbing his hands over his face. "Which leads me to only one conclusion. We must not go to the magistrate. We must not put before him this wonder. We must instead do everything in our power to escape this trap I've laid."

Fraser looked around the woods. "Ah, yes. I see."

Stender tried to follow Fraser's lead, but Darcy could see the young man failing to understand the enormity of the situation that Darcy had created through his own foolish desire to see his constable found.

Stender tilted his head quizzically. "If you gentlemen are of a mind to let me go, I can just be on my way—"

"We must take care, son, or the men who are combing these woods will detain you," Fraser said, as though reaching into Darcy's thoughts and rendering them plain to everyone. "And then we'll be back to square one. You, sent to the magistrate for poaching. And me, possibly beside you for misrepresentation or fraud."

"You think that worm will return?" Stender laughed, though it rang false in Darcy's ears. "Not likely. You saw how fast he ran when I—"

Fraser cut in. "You haven't thought this through. There's no reason for the warden to conceal his discovery. Cowardice won't reflect poorly on him, when daylight brings evidence of gunshot in the trees. He'll say he feared for his life, and fled, and you will be branded an attempted murderer."

"That pistol weren't mine either," Stender put in weakly.

Darcy calmed himself at great cost to his composure. "If we are to save your life, in spite of your stupidity, we will have to act now."

A plan presented itself to him, and he expounded on it without giving much regard to the nervousness bubbling up through the cracks of his mind. They were to retrieve Darcy's mount, if possible, and if not, they were to return on foot. Pemberley livery was kept in a foot trunk in the stables for hasty departures; Fraser and the young Stender would don the livery, and thus disguised would accompany Darcy as a driver and footman. With luck, the trunk would be in the stable master's office. If their luck was bad, it may have already been removed to another location on the assumption of an early morning departure, as was often Darcy's whim when he visited Rosings Park. There were no other men to spare; they would have to prepare the carriage, tack the driving train, and be beyond the boundaries of the estate before the men returned to the stables and rubbed down the horses.

"If anyone stops us, I will say I've been urgently called to London."

"Is that where we're headed," the young Stender said with faint amazement. "I've never seen anything bigger than Chatham."

Darcy took in the young would-be poacher— "You must make your own plans to disappear as thoroughly as you can, so no reports of an escaped country poacher would mean anything to you. Do you understand, lad?"

The young Stender nodded in the affirmative.

"Good plan," Fraser said, with a mild surprise that Darcy found entirely irritating.

* * *

Darcy's plan, executed in its particulars, was far more elaborate than proposed. For they had to dodge the roving groups of footmen who had only thinned out a little in the advanced night hour, so great was the inducement he'd laid out to them. (And because the tight-lipped gameskeeper and his friend the warden had not let slip that they had or hadn't found the quarry. It was every man for himself, so to speak.) They spent the better part of the next hours covering the ground back to the stables it had taken them less than twenty to cross when they cared little for secrecy. Throughout their trip back, Darcy found new irritations to hold his attention. They would have to duck into shadows, or find cover under brush, and each time they went to ground, Darcy found Fraser's proximity—or lack thereof—equally irritating. He was too close, he was not close enough, he covered Darcy's body with his own, or left him too exposed. Fraser was steady; he was in his element and entirely focused on the elaborate game they were playing. For Darcy's part, nothing felt right. Though Fraser was unflappably cool, Darcy felt himself perilously wound up.

When they found themselves at the edge of the woods, a pair of voices rang out. All three of them instinctively crouched. In the deep shadow in the underbrush, Darcy felt Fraser's knee press against his, steadily, steadily, and felt the rise and fall of his breathing contrast sharply with his own.

Quietly, Fraser shifted the brush to get a better view. Darcy found his eyes could not see very far into the dimness of the night. But he knew by custom what he was looking at was their potential undoing: a level stretch of land totally naked of cover. The grand promenade to the stables was a long, flat expanse of cobbled pavement that dead-ended in a decorative square with a Saturnine fountain. Arrayed around it were the three sides of Lady Catherine's grand cour d'horses: the stables, the coach house, and the living quarters for the groomsmen who preferred not to sleep above hay bales. The two men's voices were close and getting closer. They were grousing about a hard day of interminable brush-beating, path-clearing and nothing to show for all of their damnable waiting.

"We'll need a diversion," Fraser whispered.

"This is a poor time to think of parlour games," Darcy snapped. He felt Fraser's hand land on his knee and give it a squeeze. Perhaps a warning to lower his voice? Darcy felt a spark in that point of contact between them.

Fraser cupped a hand against his ear, and bent his head down. "We have two men who have convened themselves between our cover, and the wide, level, uncovered stretch between the wood and the stables. They appear to be loitering, and in regards to their conversation, in no special hurry to move on. Parlour games might not be the worst idea in the circumstance."

Darcy arched an eyebrow at Fraser, who shouldn't have been able to see it through the dim light. Fraser slid his hand higher, onto Darcy's thigh. Possibly to steady himself. Darcy's mouth fell open as he took in a quiet breath. Fraser turned to him, and Darcy felt the weight of his body contact against his side.

"Are you suggesting—"

"Well, they don't sound like they're looking for a poacher, we could just—"

"Can't bloody hear anything," Stender groused. A moment later Stender appeared at Darcy's other shoulder, blissfully unaware of any undercurrent passing between Darcy and the constable; though the constable withdrew his hand as rapidly as possible, and a begrudging moment later, the rest of his weight. It occurred to Darcy just then that perhaps their physical closeness throughout their escapade hadn't been an accident. He could feel himself flush uselessly with desire.

"Maybe they'll move off on their own?" Stender asked into that pause.

Fraser cleared his throat. "Not likely, son."

"Why don't you order them off? He's in the militia, isn't he?" Stender turned to the constable. "You're in the militia, aren't you?"

"No," Fraser said, and refused to elaborate further; Stender finally seemed to get a close look at Fraser's uniform and pulled a face. "Perhaps, Fitzwilliam, you could order them elsewhere?"

"They're not my men," Darcy said as peevishly as he could muster in a whisper. "Have you seen the state of my riding coat? They'll want the whole story out of me, and I don't make the most credible conversation with strangers."

"We could simply wait for a diversion to arrive," Fraser offered.

"The last thing we need is more men joining up with our two footmen. With three, they could surround us."

Fraser held up a quelling hand. "Listen."

The night rushed in to fill them with all of the sounds that surrounded them. The chirrup of night-calling crickets swelled the atmosphere. In the distance, he could hear the cry of foxes. The footmen's conversation tickled the edge of his hearing with indistinct—though undeniable—patterns of questions and complaints. Try as he could, he heard nothing besides.

"You don't hear it? Do neither of you really hear it? Don't you hunt?"

"You can nab pheasants right off their nests without them kicking up a fuss," Stender muttered.

"The beaters spring them into flight to make some sport out of it," Darcy agreed. "All you need is a fast hand and a steady shot, Constable."

"Ah," Fraser said. "Well," he started again, and then fell off into silence. "I'm not sure how to put this, exactly."

"The truth as plainly as you can speak it is never unwise." Darcy repeated this well-worn aphorism without thought; as consideration ran through his mind, he realised that there were indeed a great many truths from tonight that would be unwise to speak.

"Your horse has been following us for nearly an hour, and I think if I explained the situation to him, he'd agree to help us."

"Can you speak to animals?" the young Stender asked urgently, but the constable had already vanished into the dark. He turned back to Darcy with some alarm. "Can he speak to animals?"

Darcy's voice failed him. Fully against his will, he felt himself back in the de Bourgh salon, writing the words welling up from a deep reservoir within his heart.

The qualities of a good man are as follows — language, duty, reason, and a willingness to dance.

I should have added qualifiers to that damnable note, Darcy thought.

Fraser returned. His cylindrical device bobbed in the darkness, casting a circle of light on the pathway in front of him. When he reached the hedge, its beam strayed upward to animate Fraser's face with a preternatural glow.

"We're in luck!" Fraser said, clapping Darcy heartily on the back. "Your horse has agreed to help."

* * *

They formed a flanking position around the footpath. Stender in the brush on one side, Fraser and Darcy concealed behind a wild hedge on the other. It had been decided that Fraser and Darcy should be together in case the plan failed, and they needed a second diversion. Darcy thought himself at the edge of reason to trust Stender not to break for it; but he had taken direction, and spent the last hour in perfect command of himself. So. He could, perhaps trust the lad not to run off into the night without the force of their immediate presence to stay him.

Darcy felt his own command slipping, but he could hardly bolt himself. In this present arrangement, Fraser and Darcy were once again in each other's company without any immediate chance of discovery. Darcy felt a bubble of anticipation work its way through his stomach. They crouched low together, but there was no excuse for them to crowd into each other's space.

Fraser whistled low three times.

Darcy couldn't see anything at all. He felt a hand on the back of his neck gently redirect his line of sight towards a lightly grown-over space that ran parallel to the footpath.

"Any minute now," Fraser whispered. Darcy tensed.

Nothing.

And then a minute later: "You must be joking. No, there's nothing to resist."

Darcy recognised that tone as the voice that a man uses to speak to himself, and let his curiosity pass. A man should be afforded his own private thoughts.

Having accomplished its purpose, the hand had not been removed from the base of Darcy's neck. Darcy tensed again, and he felt Fraser's thumb find its way under his cravat to rub a circle into the muscle of his neck. Darcy felt the tightness in his throat, and loosened the tie just enough to expose it to the cool night air. He heard the faintest intake of breath beside him.

The sound of hoof beats arrived before the horse did; the quarrelsome bay surged through the underbrush and flashed by the hedge. Darcy and Fraser flattened themselves against the hedge.

"The Lady's hunter! We'll be done for if he's not in stable—"

"I'm not running after a damned—"

Darcy leaned beyond the hedge to catch a glimpse of the scene. The bay horse circled back around and bit at the the recalcitrant groom. "Ahh! The devil take you," the unfortunate groom yelped.

The horse kicked up a fearsome tumult. The grooms scattered and regrouped. They threw out their arms and tried to calm the horse enough to grab its reins, but it reared and whinnied whenever they got close. Darcy turned back to Fraser, who shook his head. The grooms were diverted surely enough, but not yet out of their path.

Fraser gestured at himself, and then made a wide circle with his hand. The motions meant nothing to Darcy, but a moment later, when Fraser popped out from behind the hedge, he understood it to mean that he was chancing discovery, and he would break with the bay horse if he needed to draw them further off.

Darcy fought down a powerful urge to drag him back to the safety of cover.

The grooms' backs were still to the hedges.

Fraser crossed and uncrossed his arms over his head, and gesticulated firmly towards the woods. The horse laid its ears back against its head and let out a powerful snort. It reared, cutting a fearsome figure against the torchlight, and then shot off again. If the groomsmen noticed that the bay hunter's gallop was slow enough to give them the false sense that they might catch it if they pursued it on foot, they didn't show it. They receded into the night.

"What do you know. The plan worked!" Fraser exclaimed. Darcy felt faint, but didn't allow himself to take a single unsteady step forward until he felt a wave of dizzy laughter recede.

"Stender, now!" Darcy cried when he'd regained himself, and they sprinted for the stables.

* * *

At the stables, Darcy dispatched the young Stender to fetch the carriage horses.

"Do you know how to tack a carriage?" Fraser asked surreptitiously as he trailed after the lad. The young Stender boasted he had worked the yard sometimes, so he knew how to change out and tack up a drive team into their carriage harnesses, how one could tell a carriage horse from a cart horse, and how any well-run stable marked which horses belonged to which guest. The rest of the conversation became obscure as they passed the indoor exercise yard into the corridor of stalls and horse boxes that lined the back quarter of the grand stable.

Darcy withdrew into the stable master's office. A lantern radiated feeble light through the room. Ledgers were open on the desk where the master kept record of all the horses provisioned here: Lady Catherine's, the guests, the rented teams. The office was, mercifully, unstationed. Its master must not have been far off, however; the oil inside the lantern was freshly filled. He'd have to search quickly.

If memory served, his groomsmen kept Pemberley livery in a leather travel trunk in the stable master's office—the trunk was Castilian, and itself worth a tidy sum. His father had brought it back from his Grand Tour of the continent when he was a young man about to enter the marriage market.

Darcy cleared his head.

Luck was with him. The trunk hadn't been moved. Nor was it locked. Inside, there were three uniforms neatly folded. He examined each one in turn, holding them up against him. The blood left his face as the folly of his plan was exposed to his sight: none of these would fit a man as tall or as broad as the constable, nor one as young and as slight as the young Stender. He threw them back into the trunk in disgust. Then, a moment later, folded the uniforms, and replaced them so as to leave no trace of his frantic rifling.

Frustrated, Darcy leaned against the cool stone wall of stables. The rusticated stone felt steady, even if it provided no comfort. His eyes were half-lidded with exhaustion.

"Fitzwilliam." The voice came as a whisper near his ear.

Darcy roused himself, and found the Constable was standing at the other end of the stable master's office. He suppressed an involuntary jolt that passed through his body as he took in his companion. Had the constable spoken, or was it only from his mind? Darcy knew that he should communicate the failure of his plan, but found himself struck afresh by the sheer disbelief he felt.

"I'm surprised you're still here," Darcy said.

"Mr. Stender assured me that he lead out the four by himself," Fraser started. "Oh, you mean, still here. With you." Fraser blinked. "Of course."

"I've been half-expecting you to evaporate into smoke, or—however you left my room this morning without touching my window casements."

"Ah. Well observed. I left through the doorway between your room and your dressing room. It seems any such boundary may allow me to come and go, though I haven't discovered what makes some boundaries permeable—" Fraser rapped on the sash of the stable master's doorway—"and others impassible. Notes of passage help, but are hardly—"

Darcy laughed, his head swimming from Fraser's matter-of-fact statement that he could vanish into thin air. He approached the constable, and hovered at the edge of the doorway.

"Are you real, Constable?"

Fraser took Darcy's hand, and placed it against his cheek. "What do you believe?"

"You feel real enough," Darcy admitted as he ran his thumb over the line of Fraser's cheek wonderingly. "Was the astrologer right? Did I cause you to spring into being?"

Fraser's lips quirked into a small half-smile, and he shook his head. "I don't believe so, no."

"I've been dreaming of doorways," Darcy murmured. "Two bodies in a doorway, and they tumble together. It's wonderful for a moment, but I don't know what happens next..."

"The timing is curious, don't you think? Maybe she helped a door open between our two lives—or maybe it was you." Fraser stopped himself.

Darcy felt like his whole body had become enervated, while his mind coasted through the easy shoals of unreason. "What do you want?" Darcy asked abruptly.

Fraser took a half-step forward. "I'd like to…that is, I want to…express myself to you in a way that won't endanger you."

"That is itself a dangerous desire," Darcy warned.

Fraser cleared his throat, and took his hat in hand. Fraser's eyes flicked to the stable doors, and around the nearby stalls. They were alone in the stables. "I believe you had a question for me. Something about dancing?"

To dance with another man in society was just not the done thing, even when the dances themselves often had gentlemen holding hands, or processing, or cutting a figure with each other. Anything more than that felt like a terrible exposure. But perhaps they could they dance here?

Darcy was fully of the intention to propose that; except, he had now interposed himself between Fraser and the doorframe, and it struck him that there was no need for an urgent circumstance to carelessly tumble them together. If Darcy wanted to feel Fraser's body pressed against his, he could.

In the shadow of the stable master's doorway, Darcy pressed forward, and lightly kissed Fraser on the lips.

"Forgive the presumption," Darcy said breathlessly, as they parted. "I would have regretted it if I didn't."

Fraser's hand came up to Darcy's head, and he yanked him back with great fervency. Darcy gasped, and felt the need in it; the desperateness of it; the pent up emotion that he suspected flowed even more deeply in Fraser than he had imagined. Fraser collided against him. Darcy'd never——he didn't know what to expect. He hadn't prepared for hunger.

Against him, he felt the insistent press of Fraser's ardor. Darcy was inflamed by the possibilities it presented: how their bodies could come together; how they might find further pleasure in each other. Fraser hitched up against him, almost by involuntary action, and Darcy gasped as sensation bloomed in the wake of it.

Fraser looked almost as startled as he felt; and Darcy returned the favor. He rolled his hips forward and Fraser's mouth went slack.

Fraser encircled him with his arms, and he could feel the rise and fall of Fraser's chest—how it finally moved in time with his own—all other thoughts fled. He was lost to the moment, and thought nothing more until the fevered edge of their desire had faded just enough to let them pull away again. Fraser's eyes scoured him, darkened with desire.

As a man of honor, duty had to come before desire. He still had a promise to fulfill.

Panting, Darcy murmured against Fraser's cheek: "We should see to the carriage."

* * *

"—Sir, you're mad if you think that we—"

"—Fitzwilliam, this plan won't work—"

The two said in unison when they saw the forbidding post-chaise that bore the Pemberley crest in the coach house. Stender had harnessed Darcy's four carriage horses competently enough, and they sedately shook their manes and as the argument proceeded. The post-chaise was equipped for country riding, meant to be guided by a postillion or a post-boy riding at the back. It would take half an hour to install the coachmen's seat for city-driving, which they set about doing, in hopes that it would somehow reduce the irreducible problem: neither of them knew how to drive this carriage. A carriage whose seat was high was in danger of tipping if driven by an inexperienced or too-aggressive hand. A four-in-hand team of horses mean five opinions about how a carriage should proceed—and Fraser and Stender had both only driven pairs of sedate ponies. They did not say it, but all were thinking it: cut away riverbanks could spell a washed-out path; if they tried to avoid the main road out of Rosings Park, they chanced an unknown number of man-traps that had failed to be collected by the gameskeepers.

And they had to do it all in the dark, if they meant to escape. Darcy knew it was impossible.

"I could ride one of the team, but I lack even the most rudimentary layout of this estate—"

"One of you lot must have a phaeton, let's tack one up and—"

"Maybe we could simply go by horseback—"

"Don't a gentleman such as yourself know these roads—?"

"Suffice to say, I did not arrive at Rosings Park in the usual manner, and I have no familiarity with its current conditions beyond what I saw from the brush—"

"I will drive," Darcy said to cut through the bickering, but it was already too late; voices were approaching. The men were returning to the stable. First, they would check the horses, and see to their feed, and then the coach house would be next. They would be discovered.

"We've not lost yet. Stender, stay in the shadow. They may not recognise you—" Darcy commanded. "If asked, you are my valet."

Stender froze in terror. The young man knew how thin the hope he offered was. The coachmen and the valets mingled freely here, and at the coaching inns, and knew each other as intimately as any two men might. To say nothing of the fact that he was dressed as a burglar, and covered near head-to-toe in dried mud.

Fraser assessed the entrances and exits. He called out his observations as he explored every avenue by which they might escape, or, more probably, be discovered.

Stender looked on the verge of tears.

If he could concoct a plausible story, Darcy knew his word could buy them a least an hour's respite. More than enough time to secure another means of escape. Darcy had always prided himself on speaking the truth; would truth be a virtue if it would condemn a life?

"I will not let any harm come to you," he promised the young man.

Darcy hadn't had the occasion to see many men experience an epiphany. One minute, Fraser was testing the strength of a blocked door at the back of the coach house; in the next, Fraser turned on his heels as fast as any dancer and bounded up to the post-chaise. "Stender, with me," Fraser barked. Stender complied in an instant, every line in his body marked with the language of a deer before it fled, even though Darcy doubted the young man knew what was about to be asked of him.

Fraser clambered up the post-chaise, and threw open its door. He turned back to the young man, and held out his hand.

"I need you to focus. Imagine a door that has no lock. It can open anywhere you are to anywhere someone else is. While this door has no lock, you still need a key—that key is your willingness to step into the unknown. Nothing can hold you back. Do you understand?"

The breath caught in Darcy's throat.

"Now, take my hand—"—Stender took Fraser's hand.

It couldn't end like this. Darcy was at the side of the post-chaise in another minute; and he cried out to Fraser: "Do you know my house?"

Fraser didn't break eye contact with the young man. "I do, yes."

"Come to Pemberley within a month," Darcy said urgently. "I want you to dance with me, Constable. Return to me."

Fraser caught Darcy with a sharpening gaze. He promised, "I'll be there," and then both the constable and Stender passed through the doorway of the post-chaise. Darcy thought he saw the instant the magic worked: a shift in perspective rendered the entire fabric of the world unreal; the door of the post-chaise seemed to open into an apartment in an alarming state of disrepair; a watchdog with a wild coat alerted to their presence and advanced to greet them. And then the world was Darcy's world again. The inside of the post-chaise was a dark but spacious dual-seated carriage, familiar but empty.

Darcy groped for the hand-hold, and swung himself up to the step. He entered the post-chaise and sat down, hard, on the forward-facing seat.

Chapter Text

The Honourable Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley, lately a guest of Rosings Park, was alone in his post-chaise when the coachmen found him, his mind empty of reason.

He must have presented a pitiable sight, for one of the coachmen was very solicitous in his questions about his state of dress, what brought him to the coach at this hour, who had harnessed the horses, was he eager to depart from Rosings Park, did he have a driver arranged, and should a trunk be packed for him. Darcy spoke the truth and stayed silent by equal measure. A valet couldn't be found, so the coachman himself saw Darcy back up to his room. What queer expression must have been on his face. What a sight he must have been!

When the coachman had departed, Darcy stripped off his riding coat, his waistcoat, his cravat, his breeches, his boots—anything that had been spattered by their rough travel through the woods. He crawled into bed, and thought of nothing but of what a stranger he must make of his own heart to endure the trial of the next month.

Darcy slept fitfully that night, and all throughout the following week.

In his dreams, their plan succeeded. Or failed. Or Stender was captured. Or Fraser was too. Every permutation that he could imagine, again and again and again.

When it succeeded, there was one amendment to the plan: Fraser rode with in him the carriage. And as tired as Darcy felt, in his dreams, he could feel renewed strength bubble up inside of him. Fraser met his gaze with his own unwavering one. He was sure they could find some pleasant diversion to busy themselves until Westerham, or Catford, or London, or St. James, or Pemberley, or to the end of the damn Earth itself if needs must.

* * *

This reticence is insupportable, Fitzwilliam, the Colonel observed at the beginning of the week, when his invitations to Darcy to walk, to shoot, to ride, to converse, to play cards, to listen to Georgiana practice on the pianoforte had all been rejected. Darcy stayed in his rooms most of the day, calling for more paper and ink when he depleted his own stock. Couriers rode to and from the house at noon and at midnight; and Darcy dispatched a volume of letters second only to a joint-stock company on the verge of bankruptcy.

One by one, Lady Catherine de Bourgh's other guests departed to London. Only the Pemberley contingent and the Colonel remained. When Darcy had made no move to quit Rosings Park by the second week of Eastertide, Colonel Fitzwilliam gentled his approach.

He spoke at length with Georgiana on the extraordinary conduct of her brother. And truly it was he who did all of the speaking; Georgiana proved every bit a Darcy as she shifted even his most discreet inquiries to safe ground. After an extended dinner in which not one word passed between any of the guests, save Lady Catherine's observations on the latest presentations at the queen's ball—who could in no respect measure up to Anne, were she to have attended—Georgiana took pity on them both, and suggested that the Colonel might be able to rouse her brother from his rhetorical mood with an excursion to the dappled clearing in Tower Wood.

It had been a favourite of Georgiana's since childhood; the Colonel knew it well.

He was surprised when he knocked on Darcy's door. He could hear the scrape of a chair, and the bounding pace of someone running to answer. Darcy cracked open the door—and then threw it open in a fit of passion so that he could examine the whole of the door sash. Darcy devoured the particulars as though he'd never seen such an extraordinary piece of architecture, and then peered at him with reddened eyes. He had not yet changed out of his dressing gown.

The Colonel expected a Please accept my apologies, I have other business to attend to as he had received for all his other invitations. Instead: Darcy had accepted his invitation to tour the little clearing before he'd even finished asking.

Even the most bookish man could be moved to take fresh air; and his cousin must have been just as eager as he was to see Tower Wood. That an astrologer had visited Rosings Park less than a fortnight ago had been completely forgotten; the wood was the only story anyone whispered about.

Darcy had seemed animated by the prospect of a ride, but fell again into his strange mood when the stable master told them that the Lady's bay hunter was still missing. The Colonel lead them out on a chestnut courser, and Darcy followed on a dappled pony with a curious lack of vigor.

It was a brisk day, and the birds chittered from the flowering wood. The weather wasn't expected to turn sour, so they had dressed lightly in riding coats and breeches with linen coats to protect them from the dust on the trails. They gained the clearing in a quarter of an hour of easy riding. The Colonel dismounted and walked the perimeter of the the clearing, careful not to disturb the unusual marks that scored the ground deeply near the trunk of a mature beech tree. He read the story of the tracks as Darcy stayed next to his pony, absently stroking its mane. When he came upon the deep excoriation of the bark on an alder and an ash, he returned to Darcy and forced himself to adopt a casual air that he didn't feel.

"Cousin, I am sorry if I've caused you any offense. If you'll permit me, I'd like to remedy my error."

Darcy startled. "You haven't lost my good opinion, cousin."

"You used to keep me in your confidences," the Colonel said mildly.

"I've been—" Darcy started, then fell silent on that point. "It hardly bears mentioning. Forgive me."

"Trouble never benefits from privacy. If you give it the space it desires, it will devour you."

Darcy inclined his head in assent.

Fitzwilliam pursed his lips and then forced himself to leave the serious tone behind. He would try another tack.

"Your anxiety will pass more easily if you share it with someone," he urged again, letting his satirical mood sit lightly on his face. "I know you haven't been speaking with your sister, or she wouldn't have sent me to the source of your trouble."

Darcy's fists clenched, and then with great presence of mind, Darcy composed himself. "You can't possibly know that."

"Can't I?" Fitzwilliam laughed, gesturing off-handedly at the trees. "Look around you, cousin!"

Darcy turned to take in the whole of the clearing, and Fitzwilliam stood at ease as his cousin failed to read the same story that he had seen. Not that he needed to read it.

"Your tread is as familiar to me as my own," Fitzwilliam said. "You came upon two men in the night in Tower Wood. Some… conversation transpires, and you, one of the most expert horsemen I know, lose control of your horse. You're forced to dismount before you're ready. I suspect the horse bolted after you were shot at." Fitzwilliam paced over the alder, and then to the ash, lingering in front of them only long enough to make his point. "Twice."

Fitzwilliam crouched down to scrutinise something far more extraordinary than gunshots: a set of tracks unlike anything he had seen before. Boots, larger than those his cousin wore; a tall, athletic man running so fast he might as well be flying over the broken ground. Where the tread stilled, deep horizontal marks and crosses pressed into the soft dirt.

"A third man approaches, and tackles you to the ground. Then, two of you take off running toward the washed out embankment. I expect that one of you was chasing the other, but the tracks can't tell me who broke first."

Fitzwilliam whistled and strode back over to his cousin. He took him by the shoulders. "What an extraordinary occurrence, cousin! How did you escape? Were the ruffians caught? Are you safe?"

Darcy hung his head. His shoulders rose and fell in Fitzwilliam's grip. At first it seemed like he would stay silent, but he found a steady voice inside him somewhere. "I suppose you've always bested me at hunting, but how is it that you read tragedy in the single best night of my life," he sighed.

"Cousin, what are you talking about?"

"Fitzwilliam, have you ever thought about marriage?" Darcy licked his lips. "I've thought about it a great deal these last few days—what it might mean for Pemberley if I never marry."

Fitzwilliam swore at great volume. "Are you telling me that all of this is because you're love-struck?"

Darcy closed his eyes and looked like a man in torment. "Love swallows every waking hour, if I allow it. My heart tells me it's not the end, but truly… I don't know if I'll ever see him again."

A great pause entered their conversation as Fitzwilliam considered his cousin and the confidence he had just offered. It did not shock him; he had known men who shared that inclination in his regiment. Fitzwilliam didn't consider himself a philosophic man, but even he saw no reason why a man should not follow his nature. No one could compel Darcy to think or feel anything against his. The surprise was that anyone could capture his cousin's heart…

What kind of man could accomplish that feat?

Fitzwilliam let himself drop the satirical edge, and asked gently: "Why would you be parted? Is he to marry?"

"I didn't think to ask," Darcy muttered. Fitzwilliam let Darcy twist out of his grip to turn back toward the pony. His voice dropped so low, Fitzwilliam had to join him next to the pony to get any further speech from him. Darcy drew a small watch from his fob pocket, and ran his thumbs over the brass. He sighed at it as though he had gazed upon a picture of his beloved. "I've been writing to him every night… he may not be receiving my messages."

Alarmed, Fitzwilliam caught Darcy's hand. If his cousin had been writing letters at volume to a lover who would not take his correspondence, his secret could be in the hands of any number of unscrupulous brokers in London. "Have you laid the matter out to him plainly?" he urged, hoping to perhaps instill some caution in his cousin.

"I hope to soon." Darcy tucked the strange object away again, so that Fitzwilliam couldn't gain any more knowledge from it. Darcy turned to him, and with an extraordinary lightness, said: "There's the matter of which doorways he can enter."

"Doorways," Fitzwilliam repeated flatly. "Everything you say amazes me. Are you quite well, cousin?"

"I am quite well." Darcy paused as he considered the question that had actually been put to him. "I have not taken leave of my senses."

"Good," Fitzwilliam said, his eyes narrowing. He knew that his cousin did not lie; if he wanted to be secretive, he simply let silence answer for him. Yet, Fitzwilliam felt no less troubled. He composed himself once again. He let the gentleness, the teasing, the worry fade. His cousin deserved the counsel he had to give, even if he seemed impervious to him. "You are acting in an extraordinary fashion, Darcy. I wish that you would be forthright with me."

"I do trust you, cousin. Implicity. I should hope that you extend that same confidence to me, even if things seem obscure to you right now."

"Your letters, Darcy. What if they're discovered?"

Darcy met Fitzwilliam with the quick, assured wit that he deployed whenever he was about to carry the whole debate. "They shouldn't be secret much longer."

The Colonel steadied himself against the pony.

"I've been making arrangements. We are to have a ball at Pemberley in a fortnight, and I should like it very well if you would agree to host it with me," Darcy said, imparting his most closely guarded secret. "Well?"

"I will agree on two conditions," Fitzwilliam said, clasping his arms behind his back, and pulling himself up into a military attitude. "Georgiana should stay on at Rosings Park until after the ball, and that if—anything—goes poorly, you will leave me to address it in the manner I think best."

Darcy's eyes sparkled as he at last seemed returned to the full measure of himself. "Invite any of your officers; I should like there to be some lively company. And maybe, if luck is on our side, I'll make your introduction to him."

* * *

Soon after Darcy returned from the dappled clearing, he sat down at the writing desk in the guest room. He had instructed a footman who was still on speaking terms with him to pick up a quire of Derbyshire paper in town. It was antique laid and had a rough admixture of fibers from poorly beaten rags. He tore the paper into strips, and then cut it with his penknife until it resembled the note the astrologer had slipped him.

He set pen to the small rectangle of paper.

Come to Pemberley in a fortnight. Suitable attire will be provided. Bring shoes that are tolerable for dancing.

The words came slowly, but when they had been fully arranged, Darcy wondered if he should add anything on the subject of his affection, his spirits, or his general lack of tranquility at the constable's absence. All three subjects felt like distasteful embellishment. He hesitated, and then remembered that his first—and only provably successful—missive had been signed. He added.

Yours, Fitzwilliam Darcy

Although it was altogether too warm for a fire, he wandered down to the salon, fussed with the kindling and stoked a fire until it blazed in its grate. He absently tapped the paper against his chin as he recalled the astrologer's instructions and his cousin's admonition to free themselves. He allowed himself to feel the flood of relief and the sincere desire that he had felt that night; it was only logical to repeat an experiment in as exact conditions as possible.

Darcy cast the letter into the fire and watched it burn down to ash.

Return to me, he whispered.

* * *

The wait for the ball was needlessly long, Colonel Fitzwilliam thought, and needlessly short. Darcy had fixed the date for Tuesday, May 22 and then flown out of Rosings Park to finish the preparations that couldn't be made at a distance. A fortnight was hardly enough time to march the fashionable into the deep country while Parliament still sat; but the wait had been, in other quarters, interminable.

"It's been eight years since the former Mr. Darcy received society at his home," it had been remarked upon to Colonel Fitzwilliam no less than a dozen times.

To his credit, Colonel Fitzwilliam feigned surprise tolerably well. "Has it been that long?" he would exclaim on no less than five occasions. This last one, to Mrs. Barlett at the au current G—'s tea shop in Berkeley Square. She had insinuated herself into all corners of St. James' calendar, and presented to Colonel Fitzwilliam the opportunity to make the numbered days before the ball count.

Mrs. Barlett and her assembled coterie shared the inevitable and keen interest on this point. "Pemberley is to have a ball? How extraordinary! What an unusual time of year. Pray, what occasion does Mr. Darcy celebrate?"

"That is a question which only Mr. Darcy can answer," the Colonel rejoined when asked, and he was asked as he circulated through the wheel of London society with the singular purpose of peopling Darcy's ball. With Mrs. Barlett's approval, he attended teas, suppers, card-parties and water-parties in dizzying succession to arrange for the gentlemen and ladies of his acquaintance to accompany him to Pemberley. It was an extraordinary occurrence for such an invitation to appear, delivered in such haste and with such little fanfare.

The Colonel's invitation piqued the interest of more than a few adventurous spirits. More still demurred; many ladies had settled in to the London season after Easter to make sport in the salons and assembly halls of Mayfair.

Colonel Fitzwilliam reserved his true judgment of the matter for himself alone.

His cousin wrote to him daily from the road back to Pemberley, and then from the house itself. He got the story from Darcy in fragments. Even in his his state of preoccupation, his cousin knew discretion; Darcy withheld names in their letters, calling the secret guest of honor only the constable.

Darcy had known the constable for only a day and a night. He appeared in his room on the morning after Madame de V— had sat with them in Rosings Park; Darcy mistook him for a blackmailer and slanderer and threw him out of the house with an uncharacteristic anger; and acting in such a rash manner had caused him to instantly regret the decision. Darcy prided himself to hear arguments from friends before acting in friendship; that he should do the same with strangers before deciding to be enemies was, in Darcy's eyes, an insupportable lapse.

—What arguments the constable could have marshaled in his favor, Colonel Fitzwilliam did not hazard to guess—

The letters kept on, but shied away from further detail. Fitzwilliam knew he would not have the rest of the story until his cousin was ready to share it. When he was not keeping up with Mrs. Barlett's exacting social pace, he turned over the problem in his mind. Though he knew his cousin to be clear-eyed about the motivations of others, Darcy was much too quick to blame himself for his botched first encounter with his constable. But Fitzwilliam remembered that it was he who put the notion of blackmail into everyone's mind that night, where previously his friends had seen the astrologer's demonstration as a game, or for his cousin, no doubt, a debate between frivolous and reasoned principles. His cousin wasn't agreeable; but he was not suspicious by nature.

And while he understand the absolute need for discretion for the matters of the heart between men, he questioned the wisdom of ambushing a man just risen from sleep with a question as impudent as the one he had put forward.

Fitzwilliam was too discreet to write his suspicions to Darcy.

However it was the constable had come by that knowledge of his cousin's inclination, he knew the possibility remained: the constable might have been setting a trap.

* * *

Colonel Fitzwilliam quit London with two officers and a single lady in attendance, and a score of other scouts he'd sent ahead of him. His party traveled in haste and arrived at Pemberley just after nightfall on the eve of the ball. Mrs. Reynolds greeted them warmly on the steps leading up to the portico. He embraced her as one might a dear aunt, and allowed her to escort his officers to their shared room, and the lady—who protested that she didn't need special consideration—into the Velvet Bedroom off of the central corridor for the bedrooms of the master and mistress of the house.

Other close family guests had already arrived and been settled into rooms in the guest wing, and from the foyer, he could hear lively conversation drift from the Saloon, where long tables were being set for serving and smaller ones for whist.

Fitzwilliam found Darcy lingering in an alcove in the foyer.

They embraced, retreated to the library, and sealed the room against eavesdroppers. He had some intimation of what the conversation would be when Darcy pulled him over to a corner of the room, near the spiral metal staircase, underneath the overhanging second story of books.

Fitzwilliam took in how well his cousin looked. His despondency had passed, and he seemed animated and at ease now that he was back in his element. He didn't find that confidences flowed easily between them in person, so Fitzwilliam let the particulars of London, the coach ride, and his companions ease them into the confidence that he was most eager to share.

"Has anyone yet to arrive?" Fitzwilliam asked rather too lightly, and his cousin in his usual placidity chose to ignore the implications of his remark.

"The Bingleys, the Talbots and the Vernons have all arrived this morning," Darcy said. "They've been given rooms that suit their habits. I've been told that the Vernons are quartered as far away from the Bingleys as could be allowed, without sleeping anyone in the billiard room." Darcy paused. "Your party is quite interesting, cousin. The officers I know, but I don't believe I've been introduced to the lady in your party."

"I would have introduced you, if you hadn't been of a more agreeable frame of mind," Fitzwilliam teased. "The lady is Charlotte Wilson. I met her through the acquaintance of the industrious Mrs. Barlett. Miss Wilson runs an adventuress club in Bromley, and has no interests in the marriage mart. I thought you would be interested to make her acquaintance, as she would make a wonderfully understanding dance partner."

"Ah," Darcy said, clasping his hands behind his back.

"A curious thing, cousin. Mrs. Reynolds announced that Miss Wilson was to be put into the Velvet Bedroom, the bedroom for the presumed lady of the house, despite no introduction to its master," Fitzwilliam said. "But I have some suspicion that you asked for a single lady—any single lady—to be placed there."

Darcy flattened his expression and nodded once. "Before you judge me for taking leave of my senses, I ask that you wait to hear the rest of my circumstances."

Darcy cleared his throat, and Fitzwilliam was astonished to see a faint warmth creep across his cousin's face. He spoken then of the night after the astrologer had come to Rosings Park, on the day that nothing went off. He related then how he had pressed the whole household into finding the constable on the grounds. How he met the constable again in the dappled clearing of Tower Wood. The story was more extraordinary than the one that Fitzwilliam had read into the tracks; and seemed to terminate with a rough save on the washed-out embankment.

"I have been thinking of that night without rest," Darcy said evenly.

"Has he returned?" Fitzwilliam questioned. Darcy shook his head almost imperceptibly. No, then. "Do you honestly expect him to attend the ball?"

Darcy's head didn't waver, as he cut his eyes over to his cousin.

"I don't know what to expect." Darcy said. He paused. "I've been meditating on this subject a great deal. I've come to think that is rather the point of the exercise. I can't rely on reason, or science, or flatter myself with cleverness enough to penetrate this mystery. When I have needed him, he has appeared."

"Once is hardly a reliable pattern," Fitzwilliam countered, but without much conviction. How often did a man need to save another's life to create such a bond of trust? He trusted the officers of his regiment implicitly, though none of them had seen action yet. "Yet do not presume that I have overlooked your omission. You have been avoiding one topic in particular. Why hasn't your constable reappeared since that night? I'd hardly say you were without need in that long week after Easter."

Darcy looked like he'd prepared for this. "He is not from the same mortal condition that binds us to our lives."

"Is he a devil or a faerie prince?" Fitzwilliam returned, with the air of self-amusement. When he caught Darcy's expression, he immediately stiffened. "Oh. You're serious."

"Perfectly serious," Darcy said, and finished the tale in the coach house. The most amazing utterances, one after another, about how the constable and their young poacher had vanished in plain sight into the post-chaise. Where the constable should be returning from, Darcy did not know.

"Devil," Fitzwilliam answered after some thought. "He induced you to commit a series of crimes in order to save the life of a young poacher."

"You misunderstand the project of virtue, cousin. My actions would be construed as criminal if you put them before a magistrate," Darcy said. "Yet saving the life of a boy—whose life would have been unquestionably mine to save if our circumstances had placed us in Derbyshire and not Kent—is a greater virtue that must transcend the limitation of our current understanding."

Fitzwilliam smiled. "I didn't think you'd have turned the problem of love into something philosophic." Fitzwilliam crossed his arms and leaned toward his cousin. "I'll grant you that the law is an imperfect instrument and cuts too deep into man's essential happiness, if we'll speak no more on that subject and constrain ourselves instead to your circumstances."

Darcy assented. "I accept your terms."

Darcy then started a fire, and they settled down in deep armchairs in a more congenial arrangement.

"On second consideration: faerie," Fitzwilliam said, watching the fire crack through a log and send embers dancing into the air. "He appears at will, but only when you invite him. He crosses thresholds with ease, his law is his own, and seems to have bewitched you." Fitzwilliam asked: "Do you believe he'll come?"

"I believe he will," Darcy said airily. "We share a mutual interest in dancing."

Fitzwilliam let the silence lengthen between them. It was an easy silence, and he knew his cousin was not mad at him. He had the whole story now, and it was scarcely to be believed. He thought again of his suspicions. Surely a devil or a faerie would have no need to entrap his cousin in such a bizarre fashion. Surely there was still a logical explanation that his cousin was overlooking, one that he would have to have from the constable himself.

* * *

By the night of the ball, Darcy marveled once again at his cousin's social acumen. The great hall overflowed with officers and a welcome assembly of ladies. The whole of Lambton and Kympton's society had turned out; and the most energetic company from London had made good on their promise to attend. Derbyshire country assemblies were hardly sedate affairs, but everyone was in especially high spirits. At last Pemberley had thrown open its doors! Her style was decidedly Restoration: baroque, but not tastelessly so, and at all times concerned with the impression of balance. The local set roamed the long gallery and remarked on how fine the family seemed, and what portraits or busts or tables had been added in the last decade. The leaded Rococo motifs that lined the gallery walls were decidedly out of fashion; but the chandeliers lit the room so pleasantly, that the guests strolled the hallway and complimented the gilt-work whose gold held and reflected the twinkling candlelight as though they might be earthbound stars. The locals found themselves well-satisfied with the splendor of the place.

Darcy received the compliments with his usual reservation, though he felt inwardly pleased whenever a guest stopped to remark on the portrait of Georgiana, and desired very much that—should the evening's entertainment prove charming—she should be here to receive the praise herself next time Pemberley welcomed society into her halls.

Officers with more money than sense played Loo in the salon, throwing their markers into the pot with a rather freer hand than Darcy found tolerable.

The London society found themselves overflowing with conversation and the occasional flutter of a hand fan as they assembled in the the Great Hall. Hardly anyone had the patience for the ensemble to set up for the dance.

Darcy oversaw the guests with an uncommon vigor. He didn't know where the constable might appear, so he made it seem as natural as possible for him to be seen everywhere; to circulate through every room; to greet every guest; to accompany his cousin for every introduction that he made between gentlemen and the ladies with whom they might like to dance.

"Have you spotted him?" the Colonel asked Darcy, as the flow of new guests began to dwindle.

Darcy replied in the negative.

"It's still early yet," said the Colonel found himself saying, despite himself.

As the night wore on, and his conduct began to draw remarks, Darcy allowed himself to settle into his usual habit of affable unsociability. He sought out his friends and found them in the antechamber of the grand staircase. He felt very little enthusiasm for the company, but he perceived that any form of waiting would feel much like any other.

* * *

Charles Bingley and his two sisters were in attendance. Caroline Bingley and Mrs. Hurst were dressed in ostrich feather bandeaus and Venetian silks cut from their stuffy petticoats into slim gowns with paned bodices, belted waists and sleeves tied over blond lace; as if they alone were determined to bring courtly fashion in line with the tastes of the day. Mr. Bingley, like Mr. Darcy, favored the austere turn fashion was taking for men; they both shied away from embellishment, and their tailcoats were dark wool with a single line of brass buttons set on either side of wide lapels. Mr. Bingley was widely regarded to be handsome and tolerably put together, and tonight's assembly was of similar opinion. He had soon acquainted himself with all of the people who stood in the Great Hall: he was lively and unreserved, and found himself partnered for every dance before a single bar had even been played.

Darcy hailed his friends, and allowed himself to get caught up in the flow of their conversation, which whirled around the assembled ladies: who had made a good showing of themselves, who was insupportably dressed, and who might find themselves completely without partner as tonight's society unevenly favored the gentlemen.

Charles glowed upon his renewal of Mr. Darcy's acquaintance, for he had made something of a recluse of himself to arrange the night's entertainment. He made some little conversation with Mr. Darcy, but his friend's attention was understandably elsewhere. Charles suspected that his friend was searching for someone in particular, but he couldn't think of who that could be.

* * *

The dancing began when the night was already quite advanced, but the guests soon dropped their quarrels as the ensemble obliged them with pretty airs on the flute and oboe and violin, and gentlemen and ladies lined up to dance reels. At someone's urging, the musicians amused themselves with A Dance for the Fairy Prince; the tune was old-fashioned, and the dancers decided to try quadrilles. None were very practiced; the dance was too out of style. When the four sets of dancers arrived at the bar where the four gentlemen should process to the center; there was a misunderstanding of the step, a sudden gallop to dead-center, and gentlemen found themselves in a decided heap on the dance floor. The gentlemen recovered admirably, and set off again to master the square that had so amused their grandparents. At the end of the reel, the gathered dancers found themselves in stitches and declared the night's entertainment to be vastly superior to their usual society; in the way all old things become distasteful, then quaint, then ironically fashionable again.

Charles held his opinion about how quickly the night wore away; for even though Pemberley would undoubtedly close the ball earlier than his taste would allow, he was sensitive to the fact that positive reports might encourage his friend to hold another.

He begged off one of his dance partners—not that she wasn't exceedingly pleasant, but she kept staring off whenever he began talking—and excused his rudeness by sitting out for the rest of the night. He found his way back to Darcy, who'd been tacitly chaperoned by at least one person of his party at all times, and most often Caroline, who was digressing on the subject of libraries when he rejoined their group.

Darcy's replies were sparse; but he seemed to be getting more tense, and more sullen as Caroline pontificated on the subject of general knowledge encyclopedieas. From Charles, she had reports that Darcy's collection was extensive; but she had discursed on the subject in too general terms. Charles scarcely understood the nuances himself, but knew that Darcy's particular interest in books ran towards the controversial and the declaimed. He of course preferred to see his friends and loved ones comfortably settled; if he could facilitate a match, he would have slipped her a recommendation for Rees's Cyclopædia. But he neither encouraged nor discouraged her; for Darcy treated his sister much like the bored Miss Aylesworth had Charles during their reel, and Caroline seemed to disdain anything easy—her enjoyment was in the sport of taking his rare smile. Electing to displease no one, Charles took a position of complete neutrality on the encyclopedia question and remarked instead on how well the ball had come together.

Caroline rushed to agree. "Pemberley is a most amiable setting for a dance. How I regret that Georgiana isn't here with us. Please send her my regards. I would beg the indulgence to see her when she returns to Pemberley."

Darcy half-bowed. "You will be able to convey those regards in person. Georgiana will return by noon tomorrow."

"Oh, how thoughtful. We shall have to share an aria. She is much improved on the pianoforte," Caroline said with a calculating affectation. She pursed her lips and Charles imagined that she saw her opening. "It's thoughtful of you to send for her to celebrate with us; for surely this ball must occasion some milestone?" Caroline continued, her mind turning to the question that had been humming through the entire assembly. "We know our Mr. Darcy to only embark on the most considered entertainment. Surely, we are all waiting on some felicitous announcement?"

"Oh yes, the most considered entertainment," Charles agreed, airily glossing over the question as though it hadn't been asked. As his friend hadn't announced any deeper intention for his sudden burst of sociability, he knew the answer to be a private matter. "Though not impeccable; we should have had a harpist, shouldn't we—?"

Thus diverted, Charles congratulated himself on the small victory of drawing one of those self-same smiles in his direction from Darcy. It was his fondest wish that his friend would not altogether regret his decision to host a ball.

And then suddenly, Darcy's head snapped to the direction of the grand staircase. Charles followed his gaze, and watched a well put-together man descend the stairs; his coat was impeccably tailored, but he seemed ill at ease in society. His movements were unaccountably stiff. Charles received the distinct impression that the descending figure's gaze, which took in the whole of the great hall, was one of quiet astonishment. One of the local gentlemen, Charles decided, perhaps visiting Pemberley for the first time and generally unaccustomed to such a raucous gathering.

All at once, the tension seemed to go out of his friend, and his good humor returned. The line of dancing couples broke apart at the end of their reel, and Darcy absently joined in polite applause.

"Who is that gentleman who's just come down from the gallery?" Charles asked.

Darcy said: "If he doesn't lose his way on the staircase, I'll make your introduction." There was secret amusement in the joke, and Charles marveled that Darcy would be so much changed.

"He cuts a strange figure," Caroline observed. "I should think he'd never worn a tailcoat in his life. His collar is decidedly too high, and puts his best feature to little advantage."

Darcy's eyes strayed back to Charles, and Charles found himself seized with a singular thought. He was never one to let any of his whims pass without pursuing them, and he talked of taking an estate himself. It was his ambition to purchase one, but a purchase meant years of delay and the horrible possibility of dealing with the Chancery court.

"Perhaps you'll ride out with me to find an estate to let," Charles said with great feeling. "It would be pleasant to hold balls and parties in the country, and let someone else shoulder the hosting, wouldn't you say?"

A smile danced over Darcy's face, and he quite agreed on that point.

"What say we head to a real-estate agent once you've cleared up your business at Pemberley?"

"Let us speak about it tomorrow morning," Darcy said warmly. "Let me make no promises I can't keep."

* * *

Abrupt as they were, Darcy made his excuses and parted company with the Bingleys. He was only two room lengths from the grand staircase. He felt closer than that when the constable had descended the staircase fully dressed in the attire he'd fetched in from London. As he navigated around the dancers in the hall, Darcy had lost him in the crowd. Being the host had some small disadvantage: he was obliged to acknowledge every couple who arrested him; and to give countenance to their praise for the ball, the refreshment, the genial air that had come over Pemberley, and many other trivial matters besides. He executed his duty with every courtesy that was due his guests, and bowed to each one to beg their pardon that he couldn't tarry.

When he arrived at the staircase, nearly a quarter of an hour had passed; his constable had melted into the shadows, or the convivial mass of spectators who circulated from the Saloon, to the grand hall, and back through the foyer.

Darcy mounted the staircase, and scanned for any sign of him in the crowd.

He narrowed his eyes at his desire to blend the constable in with his guests; he had exceeded his own expectations in this regard.

The men were all dressed in dark blues, stormy greys or black tailcoats in a sporting riding cut; and their breeches were all turned to show off their thighs and calves to their best advantage; and from height, one gentleman looked very much like another without their wild taste in hats to distinguish them. The soldiers in their regimental reds and golden braid had all clustered into the Saloon or billiards room to make sport with each other, with the exception of his cousin, whose claret tailcoat with its brown cuffs and lapels marked him in a casual but distinct air.

Darcy resolved that if he were to engage in such sartorial fancies again, he would pick something in that damnable scarlet.

* * *

Anxious as he was to make the acquaintance of the night's guest of honor, Colonel Fitzwilliam had kept a close eye on Darcy all night. He thought that he would have to invent an excuse to separate Darcy from his constable. As he'd had no description of what his person looked like aside from the vaguest descriptors, Colonel Fitzwilliam thought he had little hope of waylaying him before an introduction had been affected by his cousin.

Nevertheless, the Colonel had kept a close eye on any gentlemen that fit the bill: as tall as Darcy; as broad as himself; uncommonly agile from the extremely physical work of thief-taking.

It was with some surprise that the Colonel had discovered the constable only when he was descending the grand staircase from the first floor. He had managed to enter the house without once passing through the gauntlet of footmen that the Colonel had stationed in the foyer and throughout the ground floor to gently catch and direct new arrivals directly to him. It could be no one but him; his manner was indeed as strange as Darcy implied. Though he had been dressed in tailcoat and breeches of a fashionable gentleman, his face was bare of the sideburns, and his hair was held in a wind-swept slicked back coiffure. His cravat was tied in a strange bow too modern to have settled on a name; he was wearing Hessian boots whose tassels had been removed, and their tops lowered to fit seamlessly with his breeches. Colonel Fitzwilliam doubted that he could have originated such a startlingly fresh fashion.

He had to be quick about this, if desired answers to his questions; he crossed the room, putting in a few requests to couples to direct their felicitations about the ball towards his cousin; and met the constable at the base of the stairs which he manned as though he were a guard stationed at a post. The brass buttons and large lapels that recalled epaulettes were affection for the civilians; but to the constable, it lent him a vaguely military air.

"We haven't been introduced." The Colonel bowed a little more formally than he had done throughout the rest of the night. "I am the master of ceremonies for tonight's ball. I'm surprised that I only caught you now."

The constable returned the bow, and then scrutinized him. "Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I'm pleased to make your acquaintance— I'm sorry if it's terribly rude to ask, but do you happen to be related to Fitzwilliam Darcy?"

"Colonel Fitzwilliam," the Colonel said, as though that would decide the question. When the constable remained in a posture of anticipation, he clarified: "Yes, he is my cousin."

Constable Fraser extended his hand, and warmly shook the Colonel's.

"I don't suppose that you've seen him—"

"—Come, constable, I'd like to speak on a matter of some confidence. Let's find a little privacy."

The Colonel turned and led them into a small alcove under the stairs that partially obscured them from anyone in the grand hall.

"I hope you'll excuse the frankness of my questions, but I think some candor is required. Are you faerie or devil, constable?"

Constable Fraser dropped his head and rubbed at his brow. "I am a man, Colonel."

"Your behavior is quite extraordinary—"

"Thank you."

"It's not a compliment."

Fraser's expression flattened into one of decided neutrality; the kindness of his countenance was replaced by a searching thoughtfulness. With alacrity, he said: "Your cousin doesn't know you're talking me, does he?"

Colonel Fitzwilliam's speech failed him. The logic of how the constable had crossed that gap was beyond him; but assented to it: it was the truth. Darcy knew nothing of the Colonel's suspicions.

"I came here to dance with your cousin. Anything beyond that is between him and me. Excuse me."

Constable Fraser took to his heels, and strode out into the great hall, scanning the crowd for Darcy. Colonel Fitzwilliam hurried to catch up with him, as irritation welled into him; he was not used to being dismissed by someone who had no concern for his good name, or the consideration of society. Gentlemen waiting to dance scattered before the Colonel's thunderous expression, and the way cleared between him and the constable. As the Colonel caught up to him, and reached out to arrest his progress, Fraser turned to face him again, placid and patient.

"Do you deny the reports I've had of you?" said Colonel Fitzwilliam hotly. "My cousin thinks you defy the very logic of nature. I think that by some design, you mean to entrap him."

Fraser's eyebrows shot up, and his face flushed; Colonel Fitzwilliam, quite in shock, felt a moment of answering unsettlement in himself. He followed Fraser's gaze over his shoulder and spied his cousin on the grand staircase. As discreetly as he could, the Colonel raised his cane to catch Darcy's attention. Darcy spotted the motion, though had not yet comprehended the meaning behind it.

Fitzwilliam turned back to his conversation partner. The constable's confidence had been replaced by one of uncertainty—as nervous as any young officer before their first ball. Fraser blinked rapidly, and mastered himself. He didn't meet Fitzwilliam's gaze. Instead, he leaned forward, until only the Colonel could hear him, and said in a low voice:

"I can't prove a negative. Nor can I prove that I am what I say I am. I can only offer you my word that I will protect your cousin. He is safe from any harm that is within my power to stop, for as long as he wishes it."

The Colonel could find no rebuttal before Darcy joined them with a rather contemplative look, as though he might have overheard, or guessed, the tenor of their conversation from their equal startlement.

"That was a fast acquaintance," said Darcy with some warmth. "Good. I should like the two of you to be friends. We'll be supping together with the Bingleys and Georgiana tomorrow."

The Colonel and Fraser separately wore the same frozen guilt at Darcy's misapprehension. They glanced at each other, chagrined. The Colonel silently appealed to him to correct the matter, and Fraser lightly shrugged in return.

"Supper, yes. That sounds wonderful—" Fraser said.

"I'm sure you're right, cousin—" Fitzwilliam said.

"Fitzwilliam," Fraser said, and both of them turned to him. "Darcy. Fitzwilliam. That is to say, Fitzwilliam Darcy, if you could be so kind to as to join me in a dance?"

The Colonel watched an affection he'd never seen before bloom on his cousin's face. It stole over and obliterated any trace of severeness or disagreeableness that Fitzwilliam had had many occasions to witness. So transformed was he, he almost looked a different man. His cousin: but poured into a softer mold, whose path toward love would have been uncomplicated by an open countenance and an easy rapport. Constable Fraser could not look away; to think that these two men could have such a hold on each other—!

They roused themselves from their mutual contemplation and took their leave of the Colonel. He watched them cut away from the dance floor of the great hall—which would not admit two men to dance with each other even if it should suit the host's inclinations—and the Colonel surprised himself with the sudden unfairness he felt that they could not share their felicity with their guests.

Darcy led them toward a private closet that the family sometimes used to change in and out of fancy dress. The room had not been used in the past eight years, and no one in the current assembly had thought to seek it out for themselves. As they disappeared behind the privacy of the closed door, the Colonel instructed one of the footmen to take up a discreet position outside and admit no one; and should anyone inquire for Mr. Darcy, to send them to the Colonel instead.

The misfortune of having created such a disagreeable first impression with the constable sat with the Colonel, but he supposed that if they had equal guilt in the matter, they would have to have an equal share in its repair.

* * *

Darcy leaned against the door. He could only faintly hear the ensemble through the solid wall, and the chatter of the guests was a world away from them. Afforded equal privacy, Darcy felt some of the unease drop from his body. Fraser paced the room, empty of furniture save a row of trunks and racks against one wall, and wall sconces with lit candles. The Rococo wall motifs had been recently cleaned and dusted, and the cream-and-yellow walls and relief-carved alabaster ceiling created as cheery a vault as the great hall outside.

Fraser stepped into the center of the parquet floor. He looked nothing like the man assembled from the fragments of Darcy's dreams. The black waistcoat and tailcoat flattered his figure, and revealed a trim waist and powerful chest. The faintest red line limned the ruffles of his cravat and drew Darcy's eyes up to Fraser's face. The high neck and collar did not flatter the shape of his jaw; nevertheless, even disruptions to the harmony of the whole did not cool Darcy's regard.

"I think something's wrong with this collar," Fraser said, loosening his cravat. "All anyone has done is stare at it. I may have miscalculated the knot—"

Darcy felt a smile play across his face—and he said plainly: "I have never seen such a tie on a man of fashion."

Fraser deflated. "It's a Byron knot," he said. "I'll explain later."

Darcy allowed that the cravat would be a mystery for another night; he scarcely cared about it at the present. The constable's willingness to remake himself as a gentleman of fashion had caused a great fondness to arise in him. Although Fraser did not look like a gentleman straightforwardly suited to Darcy's milieu, the places where the costume did not fit sketched the outline of a person who defied everything that Darcy knew. The difference laid beyond mere fashion; Darcy felt like he was back in the coach house of Rosings Park, peering into that slice of another world.

The constable held out his hand with a decided movement. Something electric moved inside of him, and he let himself be drawn into the center of the room.

"May I have the honor of this dance?" Fraser asked, his eyes dark and focused.

Darcy took Fraser's hand and allowed himself to be pulled close. Fraser held their arms together, paired, and slid the other around his back. Darcy moved to embrace Fraser in a similar fashion; but Fraser corrected him, and Darcy slid his free hand to the back of Fraser's shoulder.

The steps were not complicated; any man who'd received proper dancing instruction could have done it by the time he'd seen fit to turn out in society. Yet Darcy had hardly recognized the charm of the box step before—until he was doing it within less than an arm span of his partner. A sprightly step here and there reminded him of the waltz step of country dances, but the way Fraser held his body lightly rendered everything remarkable. Singular focus eluded him when he was at all times aware of the minute shifts in Fraser's hand on his back.

"Is this the custom in—?" Darcy paused. "One question has vexed me since we met. America or Canada?" Darcy asked. "From which do you hail?"

"Canada," Fraser responded promptly. "Though for reasons that don't need explaining at this juncture—" and then Fraser, of course, did explain, and Darcy found the charm in a well-worn story that concealed everything about what he must have felt to have torn himself away from his home to pursue justice in a strange land.

"That is to say, yes, we dance like this in Canada," Fraser said warmly.

Darcy and Fraser walked the steps that Fraser demonstrated until he had some facility with their cadence. They had no music to dance to—or so Darcy thought, until Fraser produced a small black device with strange depressions on its face. Fraser set it on one of the racks, and depressed an area marked with a white triangle.

Thin music sprang to life. It was more subdued than any of the accompaniment the dances had had that night; and it set a slow pace. He thought that it would be too sedate for dancing; that his mind would constantly outrace the tempo; but when Fraser had him back in his arms, Darcy was flummoxed by how his attention split: hands and feet and the awareness of distance that had not yet been breached.

It was revelatory.

When the music reached its crescendo, if they had been close before, Fraser pulled him into firm contact with his chest and dipped him—Darcy felt himself flush.

Fraser wet his lips. "Acceptable?" he asked, seeing the color rise in Darcy's face.

It took a minute to find his voice. "Acceptable," Darcy replied roughly.

Fraser rolled him to right him from the dip, and finished with a flourish. He dropped his hands, snapped his feet together, and executed a tight bow.

The closeness in which they danced shocked him, but Darcy was more quickly finding anecdotes to Fraser's incongruities. For: he danced with him as close as they had been in the stable, but dropped his head in shyness when the dance was finished.

Darcy let one of his hands slip over Fraser's collar to lightly trace his cheek. Fraser took in a breath, but did not look up.

"Benton," Darcy said.

That did the trick.

Fraser met his gaze.

"We don't really know each other, do we?" Benton Fraser whispered, his eyes slightly glassy. The high feelings had colored his cheeks. Something stirred in Darcy; an echoing well of deep feeling. "We have these moments, but there's so much that you don't know yet."

"How else do you propose we know each other, except by an accumulation of moments like these?" Darcy said. "I should think we could come to know each other very well. If that accords with your desires."

Fraser's chest rose and fell.

"And if we happened to pass through a door that has no lock quite by accident, I suppose that as long as I am with you—and supposing that you understand the way back—I am in no great hurry to be anywhere tonight, except with you."

Darcy kissed him lightly in fellow feeling and felt the echoing need rise in Fraser as it had before. He felt his awareness slow; he and Fraser and the tempo of their bodies became the only measure of time he needed to keep.