Prologue

PROLOGUE

Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam pushed open the door to his elder brother's bedchamber. Saye's dog, Florizel, growled from his cushion at the side of the room, but Fitzwilliam ignored him in favour of shaking the man-shaped lump beneath the coverlets.

"Go 'way," the lump mumbled.

"I have an idea for what we ought to do with Darcy."

Saye told him to take his ideas and insert them directly into the place the sun never shone. Fitzwilliam replied by attempting to yank off the coverlets—an unsuccessful manoeuvre, as his brother anticipated him and held on with superhuman strength.

"Leave me alone," Saye ordered, his eyes still squeezed tightly shut. "There is no use. Darcy will propose to Anne and live miserably ever after."

"Anne?"

Saye at last appeared to accept that his wakefulness was required, and so opened his eyes and pushed himself to a seated position. Florizel took this as the signal to leap up beside him. "Our cousin."

"Yes, I know who Anne is. He cannot be serious."

"Did you at least bring me coffee?"

"Am I your valet?" Fitzwilliam sank onto the edge of his brother's bed. "Of course I did not bring you coffee."

Saye sighed heavily and rubbed his hands over his face. "I wish you would have. We had the Cognac out last night, and Madeira, and who knows what else, and I assure you that I feel it."

"Took that much to get him talking?"

"Took that much for me to endure it," Saye replied. "He is acting like a schoolgirl about Miss Bennet rejecting him. Too tedious by half. He intends to be in Kent before the week is out."

Fitzwilliam cursed.

"I tried to persuade him to go and court his lady—make another attempt—but he said it was no use. She said something to him like…" Saye paused, seeming to search his memory. "I think something like, if the world was flooded in piss and Darcy lived in a tree, she still would not marry him."

"In those very words, no doubt."

"He says he must surrender to his fate." Reaching beneath his blankets, Saye scratched himself in an area his brother chose not to contemplate.

"But why Anne? He could propose to someone else. I could name you at least ten ladies who would accept him today."

"Because Anne is a certainty. He told me he could never again risk the rejection he suffered at Miss Bennet's hand. Is she a shrew? Maybe he is better off."

"She is not a shrew," Fitzwilliam replied. "She is, in fact, perfectly delightful."

"Delightful or not, if half of what Darcy told me is true, she can give as good as she gets." Saye scratched again, relating what he could recall of Miss Bennet's choicest remarks by way of Darcy's lovelorn account of events. He concluded with, "I think I might be a bit in love with her myself."

Fitzwilliam heard it all with no little amazement, and replied with a low whistle. "All of that and still he loves her?"

"He says he was angry at first but soon saw the justice of her words." Saye shrugged and began to close his eyes again. "Seems a hopeless business. Perhaps we ought not to interfere."

Fitzwilliam leant over and poked him. "Not so hasty. I have an idea. It is rather a drastic one, but I think it is the only hope. How hard did you try to persuade him to go to her?"

"With every power I had in hand. I even offered to pay him. He is a tender little sod—I should hate to see him left to the torment of our cousin and aunt."

"And what did he say to that notion?"

"The details are hazy, of course, but I believe he has decided he is not worthy of her, that he has allowed selfishness and pride to rule the better part of his character, and that the best thing he can do for her is let her go on to marry another."

"Which is completely untrue," Fitzwilliam replied. "I must say, Miss Bennet is exceedingly imprudent. Darcy is the second eligible offer of marriage she has refused."

"This is the poor girl we speak of, yes? The one with relations in service and twelve unmarried sisters?"

"Relations in trade and four sisters, but yes."

"So marrying Darcy would be to the advantage of her entire family, even if he did act like a prideful fatwit. Ah, Jones! You darling man!"

The last had been directed at Saye's valet, who had arrived with coffee and the small twists of powders that his master required most mornings.

"Forgive me, Colonel, I did not realise you were here. Shall I fetch you some coffee as well?"

"No, thank you."

Jones bowed and left the room, and Fitzwilliam continued. "If she could be made to reconsider, it would be vastly different for her. Darcy is eager to please her. He tells me he will no longer disdain those around him. He is determined to become a truly amiable gentleman."

Saye took a tentative sip of the coffee. "I would wager anything she does not despise him as much as she thinks she does."

"Why?"

"There are two kinds of hatred—cold and hot. Cold hate comes from indifference, and if she were indifferent, nothing he said would have signified." He took another sip. "She would have shown him the door, and there would have been the end of it. But she fought back."

"Anyone who insults someone's family in such a way is sure to rouse ire."

"Not like that."

"Surely like that," Fitzwilliam insisted.

"If someone you disliked insulted me, or our father, or the earldom, would you have such an argument?" Saye asked. "Or would you tell them to go and hang in chains?"

He had a point. Fitzwilliam never did see the purpose of wasting breath on useless lobcocks. "Depending on what they said of you," he observed with a smirk, "I might well agree."

"That you might," his brother concurred with a chuckle. "In any case, there is nothing you, or I, can do for any of this now?—"

"I disagree."

Saye groaned. "I suppose we might make some last attempt to cajole him into?—"

Fitzwilliam shook his head. "Darcy will not be easily moved. We have tried consolation, we have tried reason, we have tried persuasion. You have even attempted to pay him."

"What else can be done?"

"Nothing will rouse Darcy so fiercely as defending what is his own, even if what is his own is a woman who insists she will not be his own."

Saye took a moment and several sips of coffee to understand him. "Ah, another man. Do you know of some other suitor?"

"I know someone who was on friendly terms with the lady who might appear to be a suitor with serious intentions."

"Who?"

"Me, idiot."

"You want to marry her too?"

"I do not—but I am not averse to pretending I should like to for a good cause."

Saye yawned. "Darcy will run you through if he discovers you are playing a trick on him."

"Then we shall have to ensure he never finds out."

"And what of the lady? Will she not have her expectations? I am violently opposed to being your second against some country father."

"I have already warned her off," Fitzwilliam informed him. "I told her in Kent that I am too poor to marry cheaply."

"Even so." Saye shook his head. "It will not do for two reasons. One is that Darcy also knows you are too poor to marry cheaply. Two, I do not think you are clever enough to play it convincingly."

"I most certainly am. Darcy and I have a lifetime of competing against one another. Do you forget the time we came to blows over a biscuit? I was bleeding in three places by the time he was finished with me."

"And now you will come to blows over Miss Bennet's biscuit." Saye smirked at his own joke. "And when he reminds you that you must marry a woman of good fortune? What will you say to that?"

"A death in the family, and I inherited something."

"Your family is his family," Saye replied reasonably.

"Not on our mother's side. Our mother might have any number of aunts or cousins Darcy knows nothing about."

Saye nodded slowly, the first indication Fitzwilliam had that the scheme might work.

"But I still say you might raise hopes in the lady. If you are persuasive enough for Darcy, then she may believe you have tossed aside practical considerations for her."

"I did think of that," Fitzwilliam admitted, "but there is nothing for it. It will be a fine line to walk, persuading Darcy without raising her hopes, but I believe it can be done."

Saye absently rifled through Florizel's fur while he pondered that.

Fitzwilliam interrupted his musings, knowing just how to raise his brother's interest. "Two hundred pounds says I can make Darcy go to Hertfordshire to woo his lady by pretending that I intend to do the same."

"Two hundred pounds! Faith! You think I care more for Darcy's concerns than I actually do. Fifty pounds if you can successfully provoke him into action."

"Fifty pounds if I get him to Hertfordshire, and another fifty if he proposes again…and one hundred more if she agrees to marry him."

Saye whistled. "You are playing high, soldier, but I shall see you, then. Perhaps we shall find a few others to join in the fun."

"Not too many—Darcy is likely to baulk if he feels himself a source of tattle."

"He will never know about it." Saye finally rose from his bed. "Ring for Jones," he ordered. "We do not have a moment to lose."