Page 44 of In Want of a Suspect

He arrived home to his mostly empty town house, his guilt and uncertainty nagging at him until he wondered if he ought to turn around and go back and tell Lizzie the whole story. But when he stepped into the hall past the foyer and spotted two letters on a tray, he stopped.

There was a letter from his father.

He broke into a cold sweat at the sight of his father’s handwriting. It would be weeks before his lie about working a Pemberley case with Lizzie would reach him, but he had the feeling that Tomlinson hadn’t been sending his father glowingreports of Darcy’s work for months now. What would he say?

He looked at the second letter and relaxed when he saw it was from Georgiana. All manner of upsets and frustrations were made more tolerable with his sister’s presence, and he missed her fiercely. He stepped into the study and sank into an armchair before a roaring fire, deciding he’d open Georgie’s letter first.

Pemberley, Derbyshire

Dear Fitz,

How are you? How is your work? How is Bingley? How is London? Oh, I miss London! And you, of course. How muchlongerdo you think Papa will be abroad? It’s endlessly boring here, and I can’t wait for the season to change and for summer to bring houseguests before I perish from monotony. Speaking of perishing, have you solved any more murders with Miss Bennet? Perhaps you will bring her here for a visit so I shall not wither away into nothing before my time.

Darcy laughed, hearing his sister’s animated voice in his head. Sometimes she had to be reminded to take a breath between questions, and she left barely a space between sentences, as if she couldn’t be bothered to lift her pen too far from paper for long.

Her letter continued on with updates from her time at their country estate, scant though they were. She’d reacquainted herself with their neighbors and spent most of her time callingon them and hosting teas, walking the grounds, and playing the pianoforte. Her one bright spot of happiness was that their father had relented that she was too old for a governess and had hired her a lady’s companion by the name of Mrs. Watts, who was “old but not elderly” and “very proper, but not a bore.”

Darcy made a mental note to write her a lengthy letter in return, and soon. Perhaps he’d confide in her—not about his troubles at work, Georgie mustn’t know about that. But perhaps about Lizzie and how she seemed to balk at allowing him near her parents. Caroline Bingley hadn’t been entirely wrong earlier that day, although it had been quite rude of her to point out how overzealous Mrs. Bennet could be. Perhaps that was it, and Lizzie was embarrassed by her mother’s less than subtle attempts to see them together. He imagined what Georgie would say about that:Who cares about her mother when it’s the daughter you fancy?

He couldn’t argue with that.

Unfortunately, any good humor that Georgie’s letter brought him immediately vanished upon opening his father’s letter. It was brief, hardly worth the cost of postage.

Fitzwilliam,

Tomlinson’s updates on your work have not been satisfactory. I expect more from you. Perhaps you have too many distractions at Pemberley? Your association with Miss Bennet appears to no longer be suitable. Renew your focus on your cases, and ceasewasting time with Longbourn affairs, or I shall be required to put you under my close personal supervision.

Your father,

Edward Darcy

His father’s final sentence gave Darcy pause. His father hadn’t said a word about when he’d return to London. Did that mean that he would return to London to oversee his work... or would he send for Darcy? The idea of leaving London, of leaving Lizzie, made his heart race and his fists clench, crumpling the letter. He wouldn’t leave his home. He loved his job, and despite what Tomlinson thought, he worked hard. What did that man have against him?

He had to find out. Somehow, in between his caseload and helping Lizzie find Leticia’s murderer and the Mullinses’ arsonist, he had to discover a way to endear himself to Tomlinson.

Darcy tossed the letter into the fire and was satisfied to watch as the flames licked at his father’s words. Then he shook himself out of his spiral of anxious thoughts and rang for dinner.

He had a lot of work to get through if he was to get caught up.

“You’re late,” Lizzie observed the next morning when he arrived at Longbourn & Sons, still bleary-eyed from a long night at his desk.

“Sorry,” Darcy said, not offering an explanation. He nodded a greeting to Charlotte in the lobby. “Is Mr. Mullins here?”

“Not yet, but he’s due any minute,” Lizzie said, already herding him toward her office. “Quickly, I want to be situated and sure of our strategy before he arrives.”

Normally, Darcy would have shared her desire to lay out an approach for interviewing a person of interest, but his mind was half on Tomlinson back at Pemberley & Associates. He’d managed to get through the entire backlog of paperwork he’d missed from taking time off the previous two days, but what punishment would Tomlinson have planned in the interim?

“Darcy, I need you to look relaxed,” Lizzie said.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Relaxed,” Lizzie repeated, pushing him toward a chair in the corner. “Like you’re simply dropping in to observe, but you don’t really care either way how the case goes.”

Darcy took a seat and tried to follow her instructions.

“I said relaxed, not like you’re sitting on tacks!”

“Sorry,” Darcy said. “It’s hard to appear relaxed when a woman is dead.”