Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Heartbreak. There was a time—a time not so very long ago—when Fitzwilliam Darcy might have scorned it, deriding it as the stuff of bad novels. But now? Devil take it if the thought of wasting away on a settee, or getting nonsensically drunk, did not appeal to him enormously. From his desk, he glanced longingly at the overstuffed velvet chaise longue near the window. It was a relic from his father's time, and Darcy smiled faintly as he remembered how his mother would recline there, likely with some dreadful novel in hand, while his father sat at this very same desk, writing letters or reading reports from his steward.

Enough of this silliness! He was not some mooncalf. The plans were laid, and soon Miss Elizabeth Bennet would be forgot in favour of nuptial—well, not nuptial bliss. Nuptial contentment? Nuptial equanimity? He sighed. Mutual nuptial apathy was the best he could imagine.

The financial rewards of marrying Anne were many. And Lady Catherine would be happy, possibly Lord Matlock too—certainly happier than either would have been with the announcement that their nephew was marrying a Miss Bennet of Longbourn.

He pressed his hand to his heart and closed his eyes. Would that he could summon the resentment he had first felt after her rejection! It had been so much more enlivening than this despair he presently endured.

The sound of heavy-booted footsteps coming down the hall distracted him from his saturnine reverie. Colonel Fitzwilliam had arrived, appearing to be in high spirits. Darcy straightened himself; his cousins had already heard a great deal about his disappointment and were no doubt tired of the whole affair. No need to show them he was just as dejected as ever.

"There you are." Fitzwilliam settled comfortably into one of the chairs across from Darcy's desk. "Thought I might see you at Boodle's."

Darcy rose and went around his desk to sit in the chair beside his cousin's. "Why? Something happening there?"

"Card game. Reportedly, they have been there all night, and the stakes are grown rather dear. Pinkerton is likely to lose the very shirt off his back."

Darcy shook his head and offered a drink, which his cousin refused.

"I cannot stay long, Darcy, but I have some news that I simply could not wait to acquaint you with. And if you should feel inclined to offer any advice, or help along the way"—he tipped an imaginary cap—"I should be much obliged."

"Anything I can do, of course. What is it?"

"You will recall my mother's aunt, Lady Peyton?"

"Um…no. I cannot say I do." Darcy crossed his legs and made himself more comfortable. Fitzwilliam, it seemed, was in the mood for an epic telling of his tale.

"She was the widow of Sir Henry Peyton of Salt Hill in Middlesex. I cannot even tell you how old she was, but the rumours say that she danced with the first King George at her coming out."

"Positively ancient, then."

"In February, she died," Fitzwilliam continued. He had apparently decided to accept that drink after all, but being a frequent habitué of the house, he retrieved it himself. "She died in full control of her faculties, fortune, and estate—and childless."

"A wealthy, childless aunt?" Darcy raised his eyebrows. "No doubt an untold quantity of previously unknown heirs have presented themselves?"

"No entail," Fitzwilliam said, returning to his chair and swirling his drink around. "The lady could dispose of the property according to her own pleasures, and it seems my mother was the last person on earth who truly cared for the old dear. Visited her regularly and assisted where she could, which none of Mother's other cousins ever did."

"Dare I imagine that she is to be rewarded handsomely for this kindness?"

"Yes, she is. My mother is to receive Lady Peyton's estate. The fortune is to be divided, but the house and lands are now under the control of Matlock."

"Excellent news!" Darcy exclaimed.

Fitzwilliam raised one hand to stay him, still beaming happily. "I have not got to the truly excellent part yet."

"Which is?"

Fitzwilliam's eyes twinkled above a broad smile. "She is giving it to me."

"The house?"

"The house, the land—all of it."

Pleasure ignited in Darcy's chest. His cousin's prospects had long weighed on him, particularly as Fitzwilliam had seemed increasingly intent on throwing himself in the line of French fire. Now, hopefully, he would stay in England, tend to his house, perhaps even marry. A smile, his first true smile in weeks, spread across Darcy's face. Unable to speak, he merely reached across the divide between them and clapped his cousin's shoulder.

Rising from his chair, Darcy went to the sideboard to fill his own glass. He brought the decanter back and added more to the small portion his cousin had served himself. "We must toast your change of fortune."

"Very well, but not too much. Saye tells me he will begin instructing me on the ways of estate management?—"

"Saye? What does he know?"

"Nothing at all. But I must permit him to think himself the wise elder brother in case I ever do require his assistance."

"Wise indeed." Darcy raised his glass. "To land ownership! May your fields drain nicely, your crops flourish, and a lady of the house be found forthwith!"

Fitzwilliam drained his glass, chuckling at the last. "Ah yes, a lady of the house. Scarcely were the words ‘I am giving you Salt Hill' away from my mother's lips before she began urging me to take a wife."

Darcy grinned. Lady Matlock's desire to see both of her sons settled was not hidden. "I am sure you have any number of lovely young possibilities now. Miss Roberts seemed rather taken with you at the party at Warwick House."

"A charming girl, but too young by half. I think she is just seventeen, and I should prefer a wife not counted among the ranks of Georgiana's friends."

"They do seem to get younger, do they not? What of Lady Phyllida Holmes? She is two and twenty, and as clever as she is pretty."

"Mm," said Fitzwilliam dismissively. "I confess my eye has been drawn to another. I believed she was out of reach, but now…"

"Lady Harriet Thorpe?"

He shook his head. "No, not Lady Harriet, but the lady does have similar dark hair and eyes."

The first niggling of a suspicion entered Darcy's mind but was summarily dismissed. "Who is she?"

"Miss Elizabeth Bennet."

Darcy congratulated himself on the fact that, although it felt as if lightning had struck him, he did not respond as violently as he might have wished to. An ill-timed sip made him cough and sputter, but that was all. Removing his handkerchief from his breast pocket, he dabbed at his lips, allowing time for the recovery of his composure. Nevertheless, his voice sounded strained and anxious when he said, "Surely not?"

"I know what you are thinking." Fitzwilliam held his hands up to ward off Darcy's protest. "How could I wish to marry a woman who had spoken so cruelly to my own cousin? But I think with time, the two of you could easily lay down your arms."

Darcy wondered whether he had fallen asleep and was dreaming. Was there some demon on his chest, the mara of old Norse mythology, causing these dreadful notions to be spewed at him? "Lay down our arms! H-how can you even consider?—"

"I know, I know! There are other considerations, such as your own strictures against the lady. I have considered them, I assure you. The undistinguished family. No fortune of her own. Not a prudent match in any way altogether. But Darcy, I like her, and given the removal of my prior limitations, I daresay I could be in a fair way towards falling in love with her."

Had Fitzwilliam gone mad? Yes, they had always competed against one another for things . Two men close in age, raised as brothers, would either be dearest friends or famous enemies; he and Fitzwilliam had taken their turns at both. But this was not some contest to see who could throw a rock the farthest, or anything so inconsequential. This was the woman he loved .

Feebly, not even knowing what he was saying, he blurted, "But…but she is…she has gone back to Longbourn. Hertfordshire. Her family, they do not come to town." As if that was the greatest objection to this!

"It does present some difficulty, to be sure," Fitzwilliam said agreeably. "That is why I hoped perhaps you might be a fine fellow and arrange something with Bingley at his place there. We shall go and rusticate on some flimsy excuse of fishing or shooting or such, and see what transpires. What say you?"

An image sprang to mind of Fitzwilliam strolling in the maze at Netherfield with Elizabeth smiling and laughing on his arm. A roaring sound filled Darcy's ears and his head swam, and before he knew what he was doing, he shouted, "No. No!" He set his glass down, wincing at the bang it made; he had not intended to do that. "You cannot…Elizabeth… No! You will not do this."

Fitzwilliam startled when Darcy's glass slammed onto the desk. He stared, first at the glass and then at his cousin before saying, with infuriating calm, "Darcy, I knew you might not be wholly pleased by this, but pray consider my interests above your own for once."

"It is not selfishness that?—"

"What else could it be? You are off to Kent to propose to Anne, are you not? I say Miss Bennet is fair game."

Panic thrust Darcy upwards out of his seat. "Fair game? How dare you speak of her so?"

"What do you call it then? You would not wish her to remain unmarried forever. Is that to be her punishment for refusing you, that no man could ever have her?"

Another man. It was not the first time Darcy had imagined her in the arms of another, but it was the first that he had imagined her in Fitzwilliam's arms. Darcy leant against his vacated chair for several long moments, willing his gorge to settle, then walked towards the window, staring down at the street below.

Behind him, Fitzwilliam said, "I should hope you would wish us both well."

"I shall not." Darcy turned to his cousin and thrust a pointing finger in his direction. "She is not for you, and that is the material point."

"Who says? You?" Fitzwilliam challenged him, arms crossed over his chest.

Darcy took a deep breath. "She is not a suitable wife for either of us, if you care to examine it with a clear head. She is cousin to Lady Catherine's parson!"

"Who, himself, will be a landowner one day," Fitzwilliam observed.

"When her father dies."

"Yes, Darcy, that is how most of us inherit land…because someone died. You included."

"H-her family…her mother! You could never see her mother and yours in a room together."

Fitzwilliam shrugged. "Then I shall not put them in a room together. I do not wish to marry her family."

"She is…she is uneducated. They never had a governess, she and her four sisters."

"Neither did I."

"You did!"

Fitzwilliam shook his head slowly. "Saye put frogs in her bed and ran her off and got himself sent away to school. He liked it so well, his lordship followed suit with me, as did your father with you two years following."

"I had a governess until I was nine," Darcy retorted. "At Pemberley."

"Well done, you," Fitzwilliam replied sarcastically. "Nevertheless, I did not, and nothing you say will convince me I did. And what does it signify? Miss Bennet is clever and sweet, and I do not care two straws how she came to be that way."

"She lacks…she lacks the birth, the…the…town bronze, if you will. You have seen all her finest gowns, you know! The ladies in town would never accept her as one of their own."

"Darcy." Fitzwilliam shook his head. "I admit I had some reservations about coming to you with this, but everything you have just said verily proves what I believe."

"Which is what, precisely?"

"That you think you love her more than you actually do."

It was such a shocking thing to say that Darcy laughed. "What?"

"I think what you are really upset about is the injustice of it all. How dare she refuse the great Fitzwilliam Darcy something he wants!"

Never before had Darcy so wished to punch his cousin right in his smug face, but he restrained himself. "You are wrong."

"Am I? You met her when? Last autumn?"

Darcy did not reply.

"If my memory serves me, it was October, nine months or so ago, at an assembly during which you refused to stand up with her and insulted her in front of her friends and relations."

"I told you why I?—"

"And you certainly have never had any good to speak of her since then. Even in this conversation, you have only disparaged her and insulted her family. Not much the look of love, from my angle."

"My reservations with regard to her connexions and upbringing?—"

"Have been detailed at length," Fitzwilliam replied with a roll of his eyes. "Your inclination for the lady was rather easily conquered by your pretensions. Forgive me but that, sir, is not love."

Darcy restrained his fist, but he did hurl a few curse words at his cousin.

Fitzwilliam chuckled. "Speak as you like, Darcy, but to all of that I shall add that when presented with a challenge, your response was to curl up in your den for a few weeks and then run off to marry your cousin. I am afraid you have a very sorry idea of love."

"It was a scathing, painful rejection—not merely a challenge!"

"Either way," Fitzwilliam continued, "it is done. You have said yourself that any future intercourse is impossible, so I thought, ‘Why not?'"

"Fie on that!" Darcy interrupted angrily. "Not impossible, not at all. Pursue her if you wish, but you will need to go through me."

"What?" Fitzwilliam stared at him in an exaggeratedly disbelieving way. "You told Saye yesterday that you were on your way to Kent to propose to Anne, and now?—"

"I have had a change in plans," Darcy retorted tightly. "I intend to win Miss Bennet instead."

"You would not stoop to paying court to her simply to outdo me?"

"I shall outdo you, because I love her and you do not, and thus do not deserve her."

"I am certain I could make Miss Bennet fall in love with me ten times over before she would grant you the slightest measure of her affection, Darcy. Indeed, she might be in love with me already, for it was I, and only I, who dedicated myself to her amusement at Rosings."

"You did, that is true. I think it very likely she considers you a fine friend ."

Fitzwilliam crossed his arms over his chest. "She will not think of me merely as a friend for long, not once I set my mind to it. Do recall, in matters of courtship, I am far and above your master. I spend most of my time warning women against falling in love with me."

Darcy returned to his chair. "You think far too much of yourself."

"It does a man good to know poverty and hardship. I have been required to develop other means by which I might draw the attention of the fairer sex. Forgive my boasting, but in such arts, I am unequalled."

"Certainly at Rosings you were unequalled. I doubt there is another bachelor under the age of sixty in the whole county," Darcy countered drily.

"Save for you ," said Fitzwilliam. "And yet she spent her time with me ."

Darcy felt his gut tighten, but he spoke evenly when he said, "I know how to win a lady's heart as well as the next man does."

"I have never seen it."

"Just because you have not seen it does not mean I am incapable of it."

"What I have seen is your habit of keeping the ladies at a distance. Old habits die hard, do they not?"

"I love Elizabeth Bennet, and I shall do whatever it takes to win her, against any man, be he relation, friend, or foe. You may depend upon it."

Fitzwilliam stood. He wore no sword, so it was a second or two before Darcy understood his upright stance and his meaning in raising his right arm, palm straight and pointed left, over his face, then lowering it sharply. A fencer's salute.

Darcy rolled his eyes but then returned the gesture. "You pledge me a fair fight then?" he asked wryly.

"With all honour," Fitzwilliam replied.

There was a silence between them as Darcy—and his cousin too, he supposed—considered the words that had passed between them. Fitzwilliam was first to drop his gaze, though there was no shame in his countenance. He looked, to Darcy's eye, quite pleased with himself.

At length, Darcy said, "Let us begin by going to Bingley. If we have no means to so much as see the lady, this entire contest becomes near to impossible."