Darcy glared at the physician until his gaze flinched away. "Mr. Roberts, you will utter your every doubt and hesitation. You will speak all thoughts that lead your reasoning. You will not assume your education grants you understandings I cannot understand. You have expertise and knowledge I lack. But I trust not your judgement."
The physician was pale, but he nodded.
"Your oath. Place your hand on my ring. Open yourself. Swear you will seek to have me understand the issues as correctly and thoroughly as you do."
"Th-that may be impossible."
"I do not ask you to promise that I will understand, just that you will seek, as a goal which you care for as much as my receiving the treatment you think best, that I understand."
Mr. Roberts's face froze.
"Now! Promise, or begone."
Mr. Roberts shivered. "I can seek your understanding. It will be strange to act so." He placed his hand upon Darcy's signet ring. The ring shaped the flow of potentia and then Mr. Roberts's will was bound as he intoned the oath, "I will seek to make you understand all matters as fully and completely as I do."
Darcy nodded. The use of an oath ring was as much a matter of theater to make clear to Mr. Roberts how serious he was as it was a matter of substance. In popular knowing, and not only that of commoners, but among the lower orders of gentlemen who never had occasion to depend upon such things, loyalty compulsions were all powerful. They could drive people into evil situations and be cause for terrible tragedies.
It was always possible for a compulsion to be subverted.
That was the first thing Darcy's father had taught him about the web of oaths the family could call upon. Betrayal became more difficult, and a retainer could not violate the will of his master without awareness. The attempt to subvert a compulsion often left traces which made it easier to discover betrayal. Incompetent betrayers sometimes could not subvert well written oaths.
Such men were useless in other matters as well. An oath was no better than the man who made it.
Mr. Roberts stepped away from Darcy once his oath was completed. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. "Well…" Mr. Roberts stammered. Darcy could see that he was used to being in control of his patients, and the usual script had been broken. "Sir, I am, and I always have been devoted to your interests."
"I am glad. I shall need your loyalty and honesty."
"What brings you to believe you have been ensorcelled? What memories are you recalling — I will reserve judgement until I have heard all you say. Mr. Bennet and Miss Elizabeth — they are very kind. They have neither the malice nor the capacity to do what you suggest. Please, sir, explain."
"Some tie. Always there! I do not know if the feelings or knowledge it gives me have any truth, but I am always aware of her as a person, as though we are connected despite the distance."
"A tie?" Mr. Roberts tilted his head. He showed less surprise than he should have. "It connects to Miss Elizabeth?"
"When she touched me — the damned hoyden slapped me when we met." Despite the insult to his person, he admired her for slapping him. He admired the fire in her whether she slapped him as a trick to place a working upon him or simply as an expression of hurt and anger.
"Hmmm." That damned doctor's noncommittal expression, the one which suggested the doctor was bored and had figured out everything (except doctors were always wrong) and he wished the gentleman who was too important to silence would stop talking.
"Explain your thoughts."
"I am yet gathering understanding. How does this bond make you feel?"
"It makes me feel… Before I felt wrong. There had been an ache in something that cannot feel, but which can be felt. The ache is no longer present. As if a gaping wound in my soul healed. The feeling is…beautiful. My memories, the fragments that bubble up from my dreams make me wish to trust this, and to believe that she…"
Mr. Roberts had a guilty expression, as he looked at the carved feet of Darcy's desk.
"You know something."
"I suspect… I discovered something within your pathways. A connection to something outside of you. But it was tied to the suppression of your memories, and when I snapped it, your memories returned immediately. I thought it not a good thing for the head of my family to have such a mysterious power connecting him to some unknown person."
"You told me nothing of this."
"You did not return for an additional examination, despite my strong request while you were in London."
"The deuce! It is not my place to serve you, but yours to serve me. I should have been told immediately that I'd been connected to an outsider. I would have protected myself better."
"It hardly seemed—" Mr. Roberts stopped speaking. He bowed his head, looking at Darcy's feet. "My Lord, I apologize, I will inform you of everything. It was a thoughtless mistake to not speak of it then."
"Damned physician. Like the men who could not cure my father." The hopping fire in his grate crackled like Darcy's anger, begging to consume and expand. "A deep working that still was present in me. She had already created the working. It existed beneath my defenses. That was why she could bring it back with a touch."
"Mr. Darcy, I observed Miss Elizabeth closely, and I have known her father for many years. They have no malicious aims towards you."
"You are not a man who can judge the intentions of outsiders towards this family. No policy. They have greedy intentions, not malicious. Examine me again. Is this connection reestablished?"
Mr. Roberts had Darcy sit down. He then weaved his hands, having the gates in his fingers open, to connect and shape the delicate information seeking spell. Darcy felt the spell poke and prod his being. He allowed the tendrils of foreign magic to suffuse their way into his body and through the pathways of his being. However, he remained tense to expel them at an instant.
A vivid memory: Elizabeth's potentia pressing into him. Into where the weakened gates had made it pool up into aching, painful puddles. She absorbed his magic and hers had not felt foreign. She felt like another part of his own being.
That never really happened. Not that way. Darcy clung to that belief. It was some implanted memory, designed to control him.
Her blood uncle was a tradesman. Her father's holdings were tiny. She intended to control him.
Georgiana had said he was unwise.
"The flow is returned." Mr. Roberts's voice interrupted Darcy's thoughts. "Far thinner and weaker than before, but present."
Darcy had known that already.
"I was precipitate. It was a mistake to cut it. Not when I did not understand. This connection is rooted deeply in your being. Far deeper than I'd realized. If I…severed it again…I fear for your health. You said you felt…empty. This connection draws from your soul. This is no normal working, and—"
"The working must be entirely uprooted, however deep it is lodged."
"Mr. Darcy, that would be ill-advised. As a physician—"
"Damnation! I will not be controlled by a damned peasant girl pretending to be gentlewoman. She made me remember these things! They are not real!"
Mr. Roberts swallowed. "What do you remember?"
"If it were true, I would have a debt beyond any paying. We all would have. It is a lie. Or a—"
"A lie?" Mr. Roberts's face lost its paleness and he tilted his head in thought. With new animation he said, "I can discover for you if the memories you have are true. Perhaps I can bring them all back to you at once. If you know they are true memories—"
"A game. A trick. Even if the memories are real, the events could be lies."
"Why are you so frightened?"
"Because if I have done… No. You are not here to counsel me. You are not my reverend. You are not my father. You are not my advisor. You are a physician."
"Illnesses in the mind often require advice and counsel. Do you wish to know the memories?"
"Remove the connection. The whole working should be gone."
Mr. Roberts sat down in the red velvet armchair across from Darcy. He frowned for a long time. At last he pulled out his handkerchief again and wiped his forehead. "I cannot. The working goes too deep, but you can remove it yourself. If you explore and understand the working, you will be able to remove the foreign influence from your mind yourself. You must go deep into yourself and examine your own magical being and soul."
"How?" This was what he needed. A way to remove the guilt he did not deserve to feel.
"Meditation. An Oriental technique. I oft find it useful for my patients. You must empty your mind of everything — this is difficult and it may take much practice to become skilled enough at doing so. Then follow this flow, tie, connection, bond. You will see yourself where it leads. Once you fully see its whole nature, you will be able to tear it out with your will."
"What do you not wish to say?"
"I am quite willing to say it. I already have. This tie goes too deep in your soul. It is part of you, not a working constructed by a young woman to manipulate you. It is something different, something beyond what my science can understand. A mystery — perhaps one day understandable, but not as yet. When you perceive it fully, you will not wish to remove the connection..."
"I will not be controlled! I am myself! I am this me. Not that version of myself."
"Follow these instructions." Mr. Roberts conjured into his hand a small book. "Go to your warded rooms for safety as you do this. You will not be able to maintain your own protections as you meditate."
"You shall remain at Pemberley for me to ask for advice until I have succeeded." Darcy snarled, "I will not be controlled."
He felt good when he sat upon his chair in his inner rooms. He felt in control. The instructions were simple, focus upon the flow of magic — potentia — within your being. Feel it ebbing and flowing with the breath. When any thought came, let it fade away. Darcy felt right as he began to clear his mind.
The compulsion would be removed, and he would be only himself when it was done.
He would know what Elizabeth Bennet had truly done to him, and he would know how to revenge himself upon her.