Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Earlier that week

Darcy had never stared at a painting with such intensity in his life as the one in front of him, depicting three rotten apples and a dead fish. Other visitors had come and gone, and he had murmured assent to every expression of admiration they had made about it, hoping none of them would notice how often his gaze was not on the canvas at all but beyond it. For, with a furtiveness that was both uncharacteristic and unpardonable, he was watching Elizabeth stroll about the room, arm in arm with a woman he did not know, whilst he attempted to summon the courage to talk to her.

He had not expected to see her here. He had not expected to see her anywhere , ever again, and the shock of doing so had apparently knocked all rational thought out of his head. Nothing and no one else could reduce him to cowering out of sight behind an easel in a public viewing gallery, but he knew not how he ought to go about greeting her.

His initial thought had been that he ought not to attempt it at all; she could have no desire to see him, and he certainly had no wish to be mortified by her indifference. As was her wont, however, she had exerted an insuperable gravitational pull on him, and he had found himself approaching—only to divert at the last moment to contemplate the lifeless carp, a less perilous encounter by far.

He willed her to look his way; then he willed her with equal force not to, for the possibility that she might see him but choose not to acknowledge him was too painful to countenance. He instantly dismissed the notion; Elizabeth might not return his regard, but that did not alter the fact that she was the most compassionate and amiable woman of his acquaintance. Publicly slighting people was not something she would ever do. That assurance, in addition to the overwhelming desire to speak to her, drew Darcy out from behind the easel.

She and her companion had stopped to peer up at a large seascape hung high on the wall. In profile, with her chin tilted up and a pensive frown on her face, Elizabeth looked so lovely that Darcy smiled despite his unease. He had not forgotten a single feature of her countenance, but memories were no substitute for the real thing, and the real Elizabeth was sublime. His feet moved towards her, his heart began to pound as though he were approaching a lion's den, and then the woman on Elizabeth's arm struck up a conversation with another couple. It was enough to scatter Darcy's tenuous resolve, and he turned away, bumped into someone, apologised, sidestepped them, knocked into someone else, apologised again, and hastened to the opposite wall, cringing lest Elizabeth had heard the commotion and seen him scurrying away.

Damn this insanity! He would leave. He would return to his sister, waiting in the carriage outside, and forget he had ever seen Elizabeth. Except, he was now as far from the main double doors as it was possible to be, on the wrong side of the room to reach the only other exit—a small, single door in the far corner —and so depleted of courage that he could not bring himself to turn around. The painting he had come to be staring at this time was a particularly well-rendered pastiche of Judith and Holofernes , only in this one, rather than the woman slitting the man's throat, she was stabbing him in the heart. Apropos, he thought wryly.

In truth, though, Elizabeth had not intentionally inflicted any wound on him—his heartbreak was all his own doing. From his careless censure of her beauty, early in their acquaintance, to his profoundly offensive offer of marriage—somewhere in the middle, he had done about as much as any man could to ensure a woman's antipathy. It was little surprise that even his sincerest efforts to redeem himself in the succeeding months had failed.

Had it been up to him, he might never have stopped believing he would one day succeed in making her love him. He had, after all, fooled himself before into thinking that she did, and the force of the passion he felt for her could easily have led to him being fooled again. Regrettably, there had been a stream of evidence in proof of the fact that all hope was lost, which even his desperate heart had not been able to overlook.

The first blow had come during the few days the previous autumn when he had returned to London to attend to some insignificant business that he wished now he had ignored. He had left Hertfordshire with the expectation that Bingley would propose to Miss Jane Bennet while he was gone and with every intention of returning to try and secure the same happiness for himself with Elizabeth. Before his business was concluded, Lady Catherine had arrived at his London house with the news that she had visited Longbourn and been told that Elizabeth was absolutely, irrevocably decided against him.

Notwithstanding the insolence of his aunt's interference, her report was so accurate, the words and phrasing so like Elizabeth's own, Darcy had found it difficult to discredit. He could perfectly envisage Elizabeth unabashedly asserting that Lady Catherine was not entitled to know her business. He could almost hear her exclaiming at the implication that she and he were not equals. He knew precisely what expression she would have worn as she declared that she was resolved to act in that manner that would constitute her happiness without reference to anyone unconnected to her. He could not easily, therefore, dismiss Lady Catherine's claim that Elizabeth had also frankly and openly given the promise that she would never enter into an engagement with him.

This alone might not have been enough to rob him of all hope, but the very next day, Bingley had slunk back to London with his tail between his legs, despondent and still single. Jane Bennet, it transpired, had got engaged, only not to him. In the months of his absence, she had met and fallen in love with a Mr Malcolm. The happiness that Darcy had thought he perceived in her upon Bingley's return had been real, but his friend had not been its object.

"The whole family has forsaken me," Bingley had lamented at the time. "Miss Catherine told me Jane is happier with Malcolm than she ever was with me, and according to her, Miss Elizabeth is delighted that the man has no friends in high places to persuade him against her family."

Until that moment, Darcy had dared to dream that Elizabeth had forgiven him for separating Bingley and Jane. When they met in Derbyshire the previous summer, she had no longer seemed angry. Of course, that was before Wickham eloped with Lydia Bennet. When that news reached them, Elizabeth had hastened home to support her family, and he had raced to London with the purpose of saving her sister. Alas, Miss Lydia had not wanted to be saved, and the best Darcy had managed was to force Wickham to make an honest woman of her. With which act, he had hammered the final nail in the coffin of his own romantic aspirations.

He tried to have as little to do with the Wickhams as possible, but since they moved to Newcastle, he had been required to settle several more debts of honour as well as to vouch—in person—for Wickham's character, to prevent him losing his commission and returning to Longbourn to live off Mr Bennet's meagre income. Whilst Darcy was in Newcastle, Mrs Wickham, far further into her first pregnancy than her few months of marriage made feasible, had railed at him for her pitiful circumstances.

"This is all your fault! You made me marry him! You, who knew he could never be a good husband, made me take him into my bed!"

When Darcy pointed out that she had obviously taken him there long before anyone insisted that they marry, she had replied, "Only because I thought he could be trusted! If you had told us what he really was, I would never have thrown myself into his power! You know it is true. Wickham knows it, my aunt and uncle Gardiner know it. Lizzy knows it."

"Your sister knows of my involvement in this?" he had demanded.

"Of course she does! You think yourself so cunning—well, Lizzy is twice as clever as you. She knows precisely who condemned me to this hell, and it is hell, Mr Darcy. I have not one reason to be happy. I shall never forgive you for it. None of us will."

That was how Darcy discovered that Elizabeth knew he had ruined her sister's life, and what had finally put paid to any pretensions to winning her heart.

He let his shoulders slump. Whom was he deceiving? Elizabeth would not wish to speak to him, and it would be an egregious imposition to compel her to do so by accosting her in public. He absolutely must leave before she saw him. With a deep breath, which he let out very slowly, he turned to go. The very first thing he saw when he lifted his eyes to the room was Elizabeth's aunt, Mrs Gardiner, meandering about between the exhibits, just inside the large double doors.

Bloody hell!

He whipped back around, intending to leave via the smaller door instead. Only, upon turning in that direction, he saw, now seated upon the couch directly behind him, Elizabeth and her companion. Elizabeth began to lift her head, and in a blind panic, Darcy stepped behind one of two large, marble pillars flanking the couch, stubbing his toe as he did so. The pillar made a hollow sound and swayed, revealing itself to be made of plaster and possessing a distinctly inferior equilibrium than its marble counterpart would have had. He grabbed it with both hands to steady it, and thus it was that the master of Pemberley, who abhorred disguise of every sort, found himself hugging a fake Grecian column whilst inadvertently eavesdropping on a most alarming conversation.

"He spends more time than is good for him in gambling dens and gin houses and worse," the unknown woman was saying, "but none of us has ever been able to persuade him against it."

Elizabeth's quiet, "My goodness," prevented Darcy from leaving immediately. She sounded distrustful, and it drove a spike of alarm into his chest.

"Quite! Still, better the devil you know, and a titled cad is a vast improvement on your nameless adversary. I shall tell him to meet you here tomorrow and parade you about the place a bit. He will like that, for you are very pretty—and it will do you good to be seen with him."

"How so?"

"It will stop people whispering that you are persona non grata ."

"But none of these people will be here tomorrow. I cannot see how it will help to have a hundred different people see me with Lord Rutherford."

"People talk, no matter where they are, Miss Bennet. It is up to us to make sure they talk about the right thing. Do not look so worried; I am not proposing that you pledge your troth to him here and now. You only need to hang off his arm for a bit until the gossip dies down. But if he did take a shine to you, I am sure you could overlook his faults. If only to please your mother."

"I…I am really not sure?—"

"Fie! I have made him sound ten times worse than he is! He is a great favourite, really. You must not allow his more tedious habits to put you off."

Who is this woman? Darcy had not recognised her face, and he was certain he did not know her voice, but he knew he did not like her. She was as officious as Lady Catherine and seemed equally assured of herself. He wished he had paid more attention to what she looked like, for he might at least have been able to describe her to someone else, but his attention had been fixed solely on her companion.

He did not hear Elizabeth's reply, but she must have given her consent to the meeting, for the obnoxious woman said, "Excellent. You will not regret it. I shall tell him to meet you here at noon."

In a resigned voice, Elizabeth agreed, after which both ladies stood up and moved away into the crowd. Without hesitation, Darcy dashed in front of the couch and out of the door in the opposite corner. After getting lost in a warren of passages and empty rooms, he eventually exited the Institution onto a side alley, and found his way back to where his carriage and his sister awaited him at the front of the building.

Georgiana peered at him expectantly. "Did you?—"

"Drive on!" he called to the coachman.

His sister made no further comment, perhaps discouraged by the furious scowl he was directing out of the window, but he could scarcely spare the thought to care. Elizabeth had just been coerced into agreeing to an exceedingly ill-advised meeting with a man who had been described as a cad, who inhabited places ‘worse than gambling dens'—which could only mean brothels—and who would take pleasure in parading her about like a trinket on his arm. A man whose name was sitting just out of reach of recognition in the back of Darcy's mind, taunting him with its potential significance.

It was enough for Darcy to know he must act. He had not protected Elizabeth or her sisters from Wickham, and the result had been disastrous. He would not make the same mistake again. Yet, having moments before concluded that she could not possibly wish to speak to him, he knew not how he was to help her.