Page 15 of Darcy's Legacy Tortoise
I felt for the horses—creatures used for our comfort, never free, driven to exhaustion. I stared at them, almost hearing their stuttered heartbeats and aching breaths, when my own heart jolted at a voice beside my ear.
“They have been pulling the moon across the sky since midnight. I think they have earned their fatigue.”
“I feel a certain kinship,” I mused, frozen in place. “Like I have been pulling an unforgivable weight.”
“I should have thought you were the sort of woman who sets down burdens rather than carrying them.”
“You should have thought wrong.” I did not turn. If I turned, he would be close, and I would have to look into his face, when I was not confident in my ability to do so. “Some burdens are not the kind one sets down, Mr. Darcy. They are the ones inherited.”
“Yes.” His voice shifted, dropped half a register into something less polished and more genuine. “I understand inherited weight rather well.”
I glanced at him then, because the honesty in his tone had ambushed me. He was not looking at the horses. He was looking at the plinth beneath them, at the fractured stone, at the place where the sculpture had been broken from its original setting and carried across the sea to sit in an English gallery and be admired by people who had no part in making it.
“Do you think they belong here?” I asked.
“No.” He said it without hesitation. “They were carved to be seen against an open sky, a hundred feet above the ground, in Athenian light. What we are looking at is a magnificent theft.”
“And yet you brought us to see them.”
“I brought you to see something extraordinary, even if it is in the wrong place.” He paused. “Things taken from where they belong can still be beautiful. They simply carry the knowledge of displacement, and that knowledge changes the way one looks at them.”
I did not know if we were still discussing marble. The gallery was quiet around us, the other visitors having moved to the processional frieze, and the horses strained against their broken plinth as though the next breath might free them. Darcy stood beside me, his hands clasped behind his back, standing with me, looking at something that moved him. No pretense, no performance. And the void left a place I had no defense against.
“I owe you an observation, Mr. Darcy.”
“That sounds perilous.” A corner of his mouth moved.
“I observed that you spoke to my sister about Mr. Bingley.”
“Yes, and?”
“Well, I might have misjudged you, and I suppose I must brush that particular speck from my pelisse.”
His lips moved into a grin. “Believe me, Miss Elizabeth, I have been keeping my valet busy.”
“And I commend you for seeing the goodness of my sister. How she did not deserve to be ignored and snubbed. You were there, weren’t you?”
He kept his hands behind his back as we moved to the next display—of what, I could not say, since my gaze was fixed on Darcy’s profile.
“I had the misfortune of witnessing it, but let us not discuss it for her sake.” He turned and looked directly at me, and whatever he saw—the uncertainty, the grudging acknowledgment, the complicated mess of feelings I was failing to hide—made him bold, perhaps. “Miss Elizabeth. I should like to believe that your opinion of my motives has improved.”
“Marginally, and I shall have you know that I do not upgrade my opinions lightly.”
“Then you are more like me than you believe.” He offered his arm, and stupid me, I took it, feeling its solidity and strength.
“We should rejoin Jane,” I quipped. “What kind of chaperone am I to lose sight of my charge?”
“The best kind, no doubt.” His tone was all seriousness, but I couldn’t be sure if he was teasing me or dismissing me.
I fell into step beside him, and we walked toward the entrance where Jane waited, calm and luminous. I let go of Darcy as if his arm were molten iron. He then offered his arm to Jane, and we returned to our proper places, Jane glancing at me with her usual concern.
The carriage ride was pleasant, for Jane and Darcy, who conversed freely about Bingley—how he had spent his Yuletide and the miserable months where Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst pushed him to attend balls and parties while he did not appear his usual cheerful self, and how worried Darcy was for his friend.It was thus settled that Bingley should request permission through Mr. Gardiner and that Darcy would step back.
I realized I had utterly misjudged him, blamed him for the separation, and it made my heart sick to think I had turned my pride into a campaign against the man who had bridged the gap between my sister and his friend.
He handed us down at Gracechurch Street with impeccable courtesy. He bowed to Jane and said, “I shall keep my word, Miss Bennet.” He bowed to me, and his hand held mine a breath longer than the descent required.
“I hope the horses were worth the visit, Miss Elizabeth.”
