Page 3 of Faceless

He opened it to find Fitzwilliam in the hall with his coat still on and his hat in his hand, saying something to Hodges that had produced a genuine smile on Hodges’ face, which took some doing.

“You were not expected until Thursday,” Darcy said.

Fitzwilliam turned. His colour was up from the cold, and the road was still in his eyes — that slightly too-alert air a long day in a carriage produced — but he looked well. Better than when he had last seen him in January.

“Thursday was always a rough approximation.” He handed his hat to Hodges. “Haverstock settled his debts two days early, and I found I had a choice between another evening of Mallory on the subject of his hunters or coming here.” He looked past Darcy into the study, at the spread of ledgers and the lamp burning over them. “I see I have interrupted something.”

“You have interrupted something I was glad of an excuse to leave.” Darcy stepped back from the doorway. “Come in. Are you hungry?”

“Extraordinarily.”

“Good. As it happens, Cook made apple pudding this afternoon.”

Fitzwilliam stopped on the threshold and turned to him, as if dealt an unexpectedly fine hand. “Apple pudding? And you were going to eat it without me?”

“You were not expected until Thursday.”

“A man of your resources, and you could not have sent word?”

“I did not know Cook was making it until this afternoon.”

“That,” Fitzwilliam said, already moving again, coat still on, hat still in his hand, “is the least convincing thing you have ever said to me, and you once told me that horse was perfectly safe.”

“He was perfectly safe.” Darcy stepped back to let him through. “It was not my fault you fell off.”

“I have a scar.”

“You have,” Darcy said, “a very small scar.”

Darcy spoke to Hodges and sent word to the stables, and by the time these things were done, the dining room was laid, the soup was on the table, and the fire — burning since mid-afternoon — had given the room the warmth that no amount of hurrying could produce, that arrived only when stone and plaster had absorbed enough heat to give it back.

Fitzwilliam ate as if restored to civilisation after a fortnight of regimental meals, and somewhere between the soup and the first course, he arrived at the subject he had clearly been meaning to raise since the hall.

“I want it noted,” he said, “that arranging an early leave from the regiment on a fortnight’s notice is not a simple undertaking. Colonel Barnes was not best pleased.”

“I am sorry for the inconvenience to Colonel Barnes.”

“You do not sound sorry.”

“I am sorry for the inconvenience to Colonel Barnes,” Darcy said again, in the same tone.

Fitzwilliam pointed his fork. “What is so urgent in Kent that we could not go at the usual time? We have been going at Easter for fifteen years, and Lady Catherine has never yet required us before the third week of April.”

“She has been relying on my counsel more these past two years.” Darcy reached for his wine. “There are matters that want settling — the home farm, the west tenancies, a dispute with a neighbouring landowner that she has been managing badly and will continue to manage badly unless someone sits down with her and the relevant documents. I thought it better to go early and do it well than arrive at the usual time and feel pressed.”

Fitzwilliam regarded him across the table. “Has Anne taken a sudden interest in estate management? Is that what is drawing you south so urgently?”

“Anne has nothing to do with it.”

“You are certain? Because I would hate for you to arrive at Rosings and find that a fortnight’s early arrival had given our aunt entirely the wrong impression about your intentions—”

“Richard.”

“—and I say this as a man who has been fending off Lady Catherine’s pointed enquiries about the state of your affections for the better part of a decade—”

“Richard.”

“—and who would very much like, before he dies, to enjoy a single Easter at Rosings without the sensation of being slowly roasted over a low flame—”