parsonage and the occasional stray villager, he began to tease his cousin about his odd behavior. “Leave off, Richard!” Darcy warned curtly. Recognizing his tone, his cousin did his bidding. But if Richard was alive to the letter of the law, he was blithely indifferent to the spirit of it and had instead taken the tack of enumerating Elizabeth’s manifold charms, calling upon Darcy for his agreement at every point until he had been ready to do his cousin an injury.
“Yes, she is all very well,” Darcy agreed tersely from between clenched teeth, “but do you have a care, Richard. Her situation is open to me, and I warn you that she has very little in the way of expectation and exceedingly poor connections. You, my dear cousin, are much too expensive for her.” He had stopped then in his long strides toward Rosings and turned a fierce scowl upon his cousin. “And she is a gentleman’s daughter!”
Fitzwilliam had held up his hands in protest. “Of course, Fitz! Good Lord, you don’t think I’d trifle with a woman right under the parson’s roof, do you?” Darcy offered him only a piercing stare in reply and turned back to the path. “Well, you can have no objection to visiting!” his cousin declared, catching up with him. “Rosings is so deadly dull. It has been the same every year since we were boys. Now, finally, on its very doorstep, is a diversion charming and witty enough to make this interminable obligation pass more quickly.”
“I cannot spare the time to make calls, Richard. There are accounts to overlook, the estate manager to interview, and the farms to inspect. I could use your help!” Darcy said.
“And you shall have it, Fitz,” his cousin earnestly assured him, “but you won’t need me all the time. I’m a damned nuisance when I’ve nothing to do, which you well know! So, in the interest of avoiding coming to blows, I’ll toddle off and call at Hunsford when I’m not needed. Oh, I shall be careful!” he exclaimed at Darcy’s narrowed regard. “The model of discretion and decorum!”
And so, while Darcy had buried himself in his aunt’s affairs for the last four days in a determined effort to keep himself so busy that thoughts of Hunsford’s guest did not intrude, Richard had been enjoying her company — twice! Both times he had come by Rosings’s book room, which Darcy habitually commandeered for his yearly task, to ask if Darcy would care to accompany him to the parsonage. And both times Darcy had managed to look extremely busy and wave him off, only to watch jealously from the window as his cousin strode out of sight down the path leading to Hunsford…to Elizabeth. Then Darcy had returned to the table and the ledgers spread about on it and marked each minute until Richard returned. The blackguard cheerily hailed him from the doorway and informed him of the delightful time he had spent with
Even so, his intense curiosity about all things that concerned her almost caused him to betray himself. It was maddening to hear Richard’s bits and pieces dropped in conversations and not be free to pluck them up for closer examination. Just the previous evening, during their after-dinner brandy, his cousin had made reference to a book he had procured for her from their aunt’s library. “Indeed!” Darcy replied, his eager interest apparent enough to cause Richard to stop in his discourse. He burned to ask the title, how his cousin came to know she desired it, how she received it; but instead he turned back to his brandy and silently cursed his tongue. He knew she read, she embroidered, she wrote, she walked; he’d known all that since Hertfordshire. What he wanted to know was what she read. Had she resumed Milton? What did she think about it? What pleasures did she find in her needlework and her rambles? What concerns were on her heart that set her applying pen to paper? He wanted to hear her voice and enjoy her smile and lose himself in her eyes…
A rapid staccato on the steps behind the serving entrance door alerted Darcy to Fletcher’s imminent return. He straightened his posture as the valet entered, but with swift economy of movement, Fletcher soon had him leaning back in the chair again, a warm, damp towel softening his night’s stubble. His valet’s familiar ministrations…at least some things were not in turmoil!
“Mr. Darcy?” Fletcher’s questioning voice penetrated through the comforting warmth. “I was thinking that the blue might do — the new one from Weston’s, sir? And the cream nankeen breeches and waistcoat.” Darcy had had the same in mind himself. It was Easter, after all! He pushed the thought that he would be certain to encounter Elizabeth again to the edge of his conscience.
“It is Easter, sir,” the valet said when he did not respond.
“So it is. The blue it shall be, then.” Darcy smiled to himself as he found a comfortable position and lifted his chin for the razor but then stayed his valet’s hand in sudden caution. “You will take care this morning, Fletcher!”
“Of course, Mr. Darcy. If you will remain still!”
Lady Catherine’s traditional Easter breakfast
“Fitzwilliam!” Lady Catherine set a stern eye upon him. “I have an excellent digestion, equal to any in the kingdom, a fact in which I pride myself and encourage in young people; but if you will not cease fidgeting, I will be put off my breakfast entirely.”
“My apologies, Ma’am.” Fitzwilliam flushed and cast a beseeching glance at Darcy.
“I also understand that you arose this morning much earlier than is your wont,” she continued. “Why is that, I wonder. I have never heard that you were a religious man, Fitzwilliam. Your mother’s letters have long lamented your absence from the family pew. It cannot be that you have taken leave of your senses and become an ‘enthusiast,’ I trust! We shall have none of that nonsense in our family!”
“My dear aunt —” Richard began to protest.
“Then you can have no cause for impatience. Collins will wait! What else has he to do?” Having no answer, Richard lapsed into studied stillness until, being able to bear the inactivity no longer, he reached for another slice of toast and heaped it with an unconscionable amount of jam. With a look at his cousin that dared him to say anything, he thrust it into his mouth and began chewing on it as vigorously as possible without arousing his relative’s ire once more. Darcy bit down on his lip, struck with unease and anger as Lady Catherine proceeded to declaim upon her next subject. It had been wise, after all then, that he had decided against Georgiana accompanying him to Kent. Regardless of his own reservations concerning her new interest in religion, he would not chance his sister’s recovery to their aunt’s crushing opinions. He stared at her as she continued her discoursing, wondering if he’d ever truly seen her before, and silently vowed never to allow Lady Catherine to bully his sister about that which had brought her back to herself and back to him.
The closer the hands of the Ormolu clock crept toward the hour appointed for departure to Hunsford Church, the more needful it became to Darcy for some manner of activity to stave off his mounting impatience. Unable to countenance any longer the confinement of his aunt’s table and conversation, he rose abruptly from his chair. To the astonishment of his relatives, he excused himself and, forestalling Richard from accompanying him with a frown, left the morning room for the air of Rosings’s garden. Once beyond the doors, he stopped, filled his lungs with the sharp morning air, and then turned his attention to the garden and his own disordered emotions. The crunch of the white graveled path beneath his boots was the only sound that accompanied his thoughtful meander through the geometrical beds and hedges that Lady Catherine deemed correct in a polite garden. No suggestion of wildness, neither the veriest hint of the natural was tolerated here, only the mathematical order of sharp angles and precise beds. A formal, logical garden, Darcy mused, as he put as much distance between himself and Rosings Hall as the garden could afford. Would that the geometry of the garden might seep into his bones, discipline his unruly thoughts and emotions, and return them to the figures in which they had run before he’d ever heard of Netherfield. He slowed his stride; the path went no farther but divided right or left to circle the garden’s perimeter. With a sigh, he turned back to face the manor house and the truth.
He was wild to see her; there was no denying the truth of it. But it was also true that he feared to see her. The memory of that moment in the parsonage, when her presence and his desire’s imaginings had caused him to doubt his reason, had been a continual torment and tease. The scene had intruded on his every thought and accompanied his every action. One moment, the remembered delight would be such that he would give much to be caught up so again, and the next, when the reality of the situation reasserted itself, he swore that he would give anything not to be. Darcy clenched his fists. This mad swinging of his thoughts and desires was becoming intolerable! His resolve had melted in the candescence of her eyes. His self-physic of duty and busyness had been an utter failure.
