These Three Remain

face, “but you will remain in my thoughts and prayers, Brother, until then.” Reaching up, she quickly kissed his cheek and, with a look to him that spoke all her love, left him to his valet’s care.

“Fletcher, your shoulder, man!” Darcy gasped as soon as the door behind his sister had clicked shut.

“Sir!” His valet set something down and was at his side in a moment.

“I believe I am about to be sick.”

“Stand firm, sir!” Fletcher maneuvered him to the bed, where Darcy gratefully sank down, only to have a glass of some vile concoction thrust into his hands. “Drink this, Mr. Darcy! It will settle your stomach and go far toward clearing your head, sir.”

“Or put me out of my misery entirely.” Darcy looked into the glass with dubious distaste. “Where did you get it?”

“It is a recipe that even His Majesty the Prince has found effective.” Fletcher looked suddenly abashed. “Although, I hasten to add, there is no comparison implied, sir.”

Darcy managed to raise a brow. “I should hope not!” Sniffing it tentatively, he drew back with a grimace.

“It will help you sleep,” his valet added and then stifled a yawn.

Stop acting like a child and take your medicine, Darcy reproved himself. You deserve no such sympathy or relief as you have met with tonight! He gulped down the liquid, which was every bit as vile as he had suspected.

“There, sir.” Fletcher took the glass. Setting it down, he began peeling away Darcy’s coat and waistcoat, then unbuttoned his shirt. “Lie down, then.” Darcy let himself sink back onto the pillows and slowly brought his legs up onto the bed. Deftly removing his shoes, Fletcher set them with the rest of his clothing and returned to throw a blanket over his supine form.

“Thank you, Fletcher,” Darcy breathed out, his eyes closed. “I’ll ring for you when I am able.”

“Very good, sir.” His valet gathered up the discarded clothing and made for the door.

“Fletcher!”

“Yes, sir?”

“In my coat pocket.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Did you find something?”

“Yes, sir.” Fletcher’s even-voiced professionalism betrayed nothing concerning the nature of his discovery.

“When it is laundered, please have it sent to the Fox and Drake along with half a crown.”

“Very good, sir. Good night, sir.”

Darcy heard the door shut but little more as a blessedly deep, dreamless sleep claimed him for the first time in weeks.

The magnitude of the headache that greeted Darcy the next day was less than he had feared it would be, and even that would soon be soothed by the powders that Fletcher had carefully left beside his water glass sometime during the morning. Leaning on his elbow, he reached over from the bed, poured the medicine into the water, and watched as the early afternoon sun caught and reflected the particles as they drifted and dissolved on their way down the column of liquid. Drifting and dissolving…not unlike himself, he reflected. He drank it in one swallow and then sank back against the pillows, closing his eyes again. He had done all that his society and breeding expected and more. He had, after his sire’s death, set himself to be like him — the best man he could be in all his dealings, whether as landlord, master, brother, or friend. He held himself to scrupulous honesty in his business concerns and exercised unfailing caution in his social affairs. Yet in all the upright principles he imbibed and all their attendant expectations in whose precise fulfillment he took pride, he saw now that he was a mere observer of life, a creature of convention and propriety. Never had he allowed the world beyond his immediate family any claim upon him. In point of fact, he was bred and nurtured to that view. Like a chess master, he had ordered his life according to his own unbridled prejudices and the conceits of his class, congratulating himself on his adherence to them and dismissing all that did not conform to them as unworthy of his consideration…until Elizabeth.

Darcy’s heart turned over in his chest as her name brought home to him every knot of frustration and ache of longing he had ever had of her. Elizabeth, the contradiction of all his expectations. How could he ever have anticipated that on that one fateful night in a hedgerow village in Hertfordshire, amid the most undistinguished company he had ever been called upon to suffer, he would meet both his Nemesis and his Eve, that the dissolution of his carefully contrived existence was begun? Ending, he reminded himself with a groan, in a nest of political and social intrigue and the bottom of a brandy bottle in a strange public house. He flushed with embarrassment and disgust as he remembered his behavior of the evening before. Thank God, Dy had been there! Because of his friend’s peculiar eccentricities, he had succeeded only in making an ass of himself. It could have been very much worse, but that did not dilute the hot shame and repugnance he felt at his weaknesses displayed them.

He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. He must rise and face the day and reflect carefully upon what all that had happened revealed about his character. It was not a pleasant prospect. Already he knew himself to be much diminished in his own estimation. How, then, must he appear in the eyes of his beloved sister? Had his drunken display lost him her respect? Would his confessions of weakness today sink him even further in her regard? The possibility sent a stab of fear through his body. How was he to exert his care and guidance of his sister if he no longer commanded her respect, if every decision he issued was received not with confidence but with dubious hesitancy? For that matter, how confident did he remain in himself? Putting away that fearful thought, Darcy slowly pulled himself upright, pausing to test his equilibrium before swinging his legs over the edge of his bed. The resulting pain in his head was a dull one thanks to Fletcher’s powders and, possibly, that witch’s brew he’d downed. At least he had slept.

The clock on his mantel struck three, announcing the fact that the day was fast waning and his interview with Dy would soon be upon him. Darcy was more than curious about what Brougham would confide concerning his strange behavior and turn of personality over the years since university, but he also entertained a maddening uncertainty about what Dy had made of his drink induced confession of the previous evening; and, worse, what he might do with it. He drew up short at the thought. Exactly what had he confessed? Darcy strained to remember how the evening had played out after he and Dy had resumed their seats at the Fox and Drake.

“You had better tell me.” Dy had pinned him with a compassionate air containing not a trace of pity but rather the heartfelt regard of an old friend. Slowly, finally, Darcy opened his mouth, and what had been his most private concern seemed to rush out of him: his initial interest, his resistance and caution, and then his eventual fascination, desire, and love.

“ ‘Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self, Thy wish exactly to thy heart’s desire,’ ” Dy quoted absently to himself after Darcy had finished, then whistled under his breath. “Good heavens, Fitz, I know you well, my friend; and having said that, I must say that your Elizabeth must be an extraordinary young woman to have tied you into such excruciating knots!”

“She is not my Elizabeth, but you are correct” — he sighed — “she is an extraordinary young woman.”

“So you have said. Pardon me, but I take it from your opening salvo that, despite your manifold reservations and doubts, you did offer marriage.”

“Yes,” he stated. “After I had committed myself to forgetting her, we were thrown together in Kent. Her closest friend had wed my aunt’s parson several months before, and Elizabeth had come for a visit not knowing that I would be attending Lady Catherine during that same time. You can imagine my shock to find her there, neatly lodged on the edge of my aunt’s park and already quite Her Ladyship’s favorite.”

“Shock! I would say panic as well! You were in a hopeless position! In love against your better judgment, only recently committed to putting her out of your mind, and there she is!” Brougham shook his head. “And so easily to hand!”

There was a long silence then, but not an awkward one. Dy merely nodded his head in commiseration and then looked away, the tired lines of his face growing deeper as he seemed to withdraw into private contemplations. In time he rose and called to the serving girl for a pot of strong coffee and cups, then taking his seat, he turned