Darcy looked over at her and smiled. She couldn’t help but return the smile.
Turning back to the horse, he hesitated, wondering just how much to tell her. The memory of the auction excited his senses but the exhilarating images dimmed as Darcy also remembered the cloying closeness of Faith Harrington that long-ago afternoon. She had been hanging on his arm all day, the sweet smell of too much champagne on her breath as she screamed encouragement into his ear every time the blue lighted numbers on the electronic auction board went up and up…
Over Darcy’s objections, Harv had insisted his sister accompany them to England. Darcy, however, had been concerned that a trip abroard with him would simply fuel the tabloid reports of their impending engagement; reports, which seemed to be more and more frequent. He often wondered, in spite of her declaration of innocence, if Faith wasn’t the source of the reports. She often allowed her fantasies to get the better of her and he didn’t want to add to them. But, as was often the case with Harv, he had acquiesed and so she had joined them.
Shaking off the unpleasant thoughts he said, “I wanted that horse very badly.” Darcy resumed his narrative, suddenly remembering that Eliza was still there, “primarily to improve the bloodlines of my stable.” He shook his head ruefully. “The only question was whether or not I could really afford him.”
There had been an Arab princeling in a box opposite Darcy’s, the third or fourth son of the royal house of some oil-rich Gulf dynasty. With no appreciable chance of ever attaining his country’s throne, and with unlimited money to spend, the handsome young prince had become a notorious international playboy and womanizer, and a renowned horseman as well. That particular afternoon, surrounded by a bevy of pale English film actresses and his huge retinue of bulky bodyguards and simpering retainers in well-cut suits, the flamboyant prince had been Darcy’s only serious competitor for the black horse.
The bid had escalated well past the million-pound mark—Darcy’s absolute upper limit—when, thankfully, the youthful potentate had suddenly lost interest in the proceedings and dropped out.
“In the end,” Darcy told Eliza without elaborating, “I won the bid and the horse was mine, but for far more than I had planned on spending. I immediately had Lord Nelson transported down to a friend’s country place in Hampshire, about fifty miles out of London, to be stabled there until I could arrange to have him flown back to the States.
“That night,” Darcy continued, “my friends rather unwisely decided that a victory celebration was in order. I’m afraid there was a great deal of drinking and general carousing…”
His voice trailed off again as he prudently edited his story, leaving out the details of the drunken evening that had ensued in the echoing drawing room of the vast Edwardian manor house his friends the Cliftons had rented for the summer. Also leaving out the fact that the evening had ended very late as he tottered up the stairs, with Faith still hanging on his arm.
Throughout his halting preamble Eliza had been closely watching Darcy, certain from his long pauses and hesitant delivery that he was modifying the story for her benefit as he went, but uncertain what any of it had to do with Jane Austen, or her letters.
Now he caught her quizzical expression and flushed with embarrassment.
“Well, I suppose you’re wondering what all of this rambling about a horse auction and a country house has to do with the Jane Austen letters?” he asked, as though he’d been reading her mind.
Eliza grinned and pointed her chin westward. “The sun
The small joke seemed to relax Darcy slightly. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I warned you that I’d never discussed this with anyone before. I had no idea it was going to be so difficult.”
“I get the impression that you’re trying to be selective in what you’re telling me,” Eliza replied, trying to put him more at ease. “Maybe if you just told me everything that happened and left out all the long, reflective pauses.”
Darcy nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s just that some of what took place is a bit personal in nature.”
Eliza solemnly raised her right hand. “I promise not to tell another soul,” she said.
“Okay,” he agreed. “The only point of the story so far is that three years ago I went to England to buy a very expensive horse and ended up with him at a friend’s country place in Hampshire.”
Eliza nodded. “Fair enough.”
“One more thing I should explain before I go ahead,” he said. “Some of what I’m about to tell you—things I didn’t know as they were happening—was related to me afterwards…” Darcy hesitated, choosing his words carefully, “…by someone else who was there.”
Eliza nodded her understanding.
Darcy gazed off into the distance again. “Though it had been a very late night, I awoke before dawn the morning following the auction,” he began.
He closed his eyes, remembering how he had slowly come awake in the big, ornately carved and canopied bed in one of the many guest rooms of the friend’s country house and found Faith sprawled unattractively in a tangle of sheets beside him.
Shakily getting out of the bed, Darcy had gone to a window and looked out over the gray, fog-shrouded Hampshire countryside.
“I had a splitting headache,” he told Eliza. “I wanted to be outside in the cold morning air…”
He looked back at the bed; he had been afraid Faith’s traveling with him would send her the wrong message and now too much drink and his own arrogance had created what would surely become an untenable situation. In another time he would have been considered a cad, taking advantage of a woman who had had too much to drink, using her. He was heartily ashamed of himself and feared that he would pay the consequences of his impetuous and stupid actions many times over. His eyes returned to the window and the mist-covered meadow beyond the grounds of the house; at that moment he wanted nothing more than to be away from her.
Darcy paused, deciding that there was no reason to tell this stranger how seeing Faith in his bed made him cringe, adding only, “I wanted to get out and ride Lord Nelson, to feel him underneath me, to see what he could do.” Darcy smiled. “I also think I needed to convince myself that I hadn’t made a very expensive mistake. After all, I’d never before spent two million dollars on a single animal.
“So,” he continued, “I got dressed in some proper English riding clothes, went down to the stables, woke up one of the grooms and had him saddle Lord Nelson.”
“Wow!” Eliza breathed. “Two million dollars’ worth of horse! And you just got up with a hangover and decided to take him out for a little prebreakfast gallop.”
“It was an incredibly stupid thing to do,” Darcy admitted. “The sun wasn’t even up yet and I was completely unfamiliar with the surrounding countryside.”
Darcy began to speak freely then, describing to Eliza the momentary feel of the horse’s warm breath on the back of his hand as he took the reins from the sleepy groom, the emptiness of the silent, gray English landscape as he had vaulted up into the saddle and started across a stubbled field in the direction of the gradually lightening sky.
Then suddenly, as he spoke, he was back in that meadow on that gray English morning, urging the willing horse forward, feeling the cold, damp wind in his face.
And, just as the great animal’s muscles had seemed to loosen and stretch with the sheer joy and freedom of the run on that long-ago day, so the story that Fitzwilliam Darcy had kept to himself for three long years began to spill from his lips in an unstoppable torrent of words.
Enthralled and mystified by the intensity of his narrative, Eliza listened in silence, not daring to interrupt, lest she break the spell.
Chapter 17
Riding farther and farther from the house, lost completely in the speed of the run and the nearly mystical agility of Lord Nelson, Darcy was unsure how much time had passed as he rode. But at some point he noticed that the sky was rapidly brightening ahead of them and the heavy veils of mist were slowly beginning to part.
