Page 9 of In Want of a Suspect
“So you were at the scene of the fire last night,” Mr. Bennet said. It was not a question.
“Er... yes?”
“What a coincidence,” he remarked.
“It was! He wrote me with questions about permits, and I could have responded, but then it might have delayed the matter another day or two. I had the time, so...”
“Indeed,” Mr. Bennet said. “And I trust you didn’t walk all the way to the Mullinses’ storehouse alone?”
Lizzie winced. “Well, not exactly...”
Mr. Bennet fixed her with a pointed look. “Tell Mr. Darcy that if he’s going to accompany you on cases and get your mother’s hopes up, he ought to have the decency to at least walk you to the door afterward.”
And with that, Mr. Bennet returned to the dining room and his cold breakfast.
Three
In Which Darcy Encounters Trouble at Pemberley
DARCY WAS SEATED AThis desk, poring over a lengthy contract, when a stack of folders fell onto his desk with a thwack!
He startled, a half-formed protest rising to his lips when he looked up and saw Mr. Tomlinson, his superior, smirking down at him. “More briefs,” he said. “For the Cooper case.”
Darcy didn’t express frustration in the way that one might expect—there would be no sighs or grimaces, no muttered complaints. Instead, Darcy merely blinked, then neatly picked up the files that had been unceremoniously dumped upon his desk, straightened them, and set them aside.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, then flicked his gaze back to his work.
There was a small scoff from Tomlinson, but he didn’t move. He continued to stare down at Darcy with a mocking grin while Darcy seethed.
Privately, of course.
“Composure,” his father always told him, “makes the gentleman. If you cannot control yourself, then you’re no better than the common man.”
Darcy was good at composure. Some—all right, Bingley—would saytoogood. There was that whole matter of Lizzie thinking him prideful and cold at the beginning of their acquaintance. And well... he had a reputation among the ton as being unfeeling and coldly logical. He wasn’t exactly proud of this, but his strong, silent composure had come in handy too many times to count.
Darcy was especially glad now, for it allowed him to take Mr. Tomlinson’s abuses with a straight face. His supervisor would like nothing more than to find fault with Darcy’s work—any reason to file a bad report to his father, who was currently traveling the Continent.
“Was there something else I can help you with?” Darcy asked Mr. Tomlinson.
“The motion for the Crawley case,” Mr. Tomlinson said. “I need it now.”
Darcy did his very best not to look in the direction of Mr. Tomlinson’s office. The motion should be on his supervisor’s desk, exactly where Darcy had left it when he first arrived—beforeTomlinson, not that anyone was keeping score on that matter. “I delivered it to your office when I arrived. Sir.”
The slight pause before thesirrankled on Tomlinson—Darcy could tell by the way he scrunched his large nose justslightly. “It’s not there now. If I don’t have it in my hands in the next ten minutes, then you’ll be explaining your incompetence before our clientandthe magistrate!”
Darcy clenched his jaw. “Understood. Sir.”
Tomlinson stared at him a beat longer before striding away once more. Darcy waited until he rounded the corner out of sight before peeking into the leather satchel tucked beneath his desk. Inside was a packet of documents, and Darcy double-checked to ensure... yes.
The copy of the motion he’d delivered to Tomlinson was still there.
Once upon a time, Darcy would have said his ideal working environment was “ordered disarray” even if Lizzie claimed that there was no such thing. She didn’t like clutter, but Darcy had never had any trouble keeping track of any stray paper or document on his desk, and he resisted all attempts by anyone, including Lizzie, to organize his desk. It might look messy, but he knew where everything was. And when his father was around, no one had any issue with this.
But then the first missing contract had cost Pemberley their case in court.
As soon as Tomlinson returned from court, he’d marched over to Darcy’s desk and taken him to task before sweeping every file off his desk. “Clean this mess up!” he’d shouted. “You are a disgrace to the Pemberley name!”
If anyone was going to call him a disgrace to the Pemberley name, Darcy would have preferred it had been his father, notsome newly appointed barrister who barked orders like a sergeant. However, he’d been racked with miserable guilt at the prospect of facing their client. So rather than argue, he’d done what he was told.