“Darcy?” Lady Catherine’s voice brought him back to the present. “I was saying, I am much put out that I will not have the pleasure of making a first introduction, for Miss Bennet assured me that you were well acquainted. I find that she is rather close to impertinent on occasion, which might lead her to overstating the situation. Is this true that you are acquainted?”

“Quite true, Ma’am. The society in Hertfordshire was small, and we were thrown in each other’s way rather often,” he confessed.

“Is that so?” Richard pursed his lips, a wicked gleam lighting his eye. “Then perhaps we should pay Mr. and Mrs. Collins and Mrs. Collins’s friend a visit tomorrow. What do you say, Darcy?”

A shiver of alarm passed through Darcy. Tomorrow? He gathered himself to discourage the project when a thought struck him. Would it not be better to have their first meeting away from the eyes of Lady Catherine? Although he would need to exercise caution where Richard was concerned, it was the perfect opportunity to test his own composure and discover how Elizabeth meant to go on.

“An excellent notion, Cousin,” Darcy answered him. “I could not, in good conscience, deny you the felicity of becoming the object of Mr. Collins’s admiration a moment longer than tomorrow.”


Darcy gave the bell pull a quick, impatient tug. Finally permitted to excuse himself to prepare for dinner, he had almost fled his aunt’s and cousins’ company for the sanctuary of his bedchamber. Fletcher had not been there ready for him, a singular circumstance in and of itself and, at this juncture, a disconcerting one as well. Where was he? If he was dallying with…Darcy strode back across the great high-ceilinged bedchamber, his back stiff in agitated aggrievement with his valet’s absence, but then stopped short. No, that could not be! Fletcher was now a man betrothed. Knowing his valet as he did, Darcy discounted his first, ungenerous impulse. Fletcher held his simple sense of honor too close to trifle with his beloved’s affection and trust. Perhaps a few more minutes of solitude would not be amiss if he was leaping to such unwarranted conclusions. Darcy strolled slowly to one of the great windows and stared out onto the green, rolling grounds that were Rosings Park. He must come to terms with himself and stop this ridiculous beating of his heart.

Elizabeth…here! It had taken all his power of will to keep the thought from himself as his aunt pontificated on the Bennet family, the new rector’s wife, and all her latest projects in the village. But now, away from the scrutiny of his relations, the realization burst upon him like a flood. She was here! She had been in the very salon he had just left, and more than once, from the length of his aunt’s discourse. She resided in the house at the end of the lane, just beyond the gate where Collins had stood greeting their arrival. She walked the lanes and paths of Rosings. That flash of color in the grove! Might it have been…? The rush of blood through his body made the fine lawn of his shirt feel like rough linsey-woolsey and the collar tight and irritating. He turned to a mirror and hooked the fingers of both hands into the knot at his throat, pulling it apart in increasing frustration until it finally fell to the carpet at his feet. It was only then that he dared to look at his reflection, praying that he didn’t look like…He groaned and turned away. Yes, he did…the veriest mooncalf!

To what had he pledged himself only just that morning? Had he not released those embroidery silks to the spring winds in solemn resolve to put from him all thought and desire of her? There was no possibility of avoiding the disturbing reality of those threads now, nor a voice whispered insistently, did he want to do so. Rather, he must needs master this irrational impulse that urged him to tear down to the parsonage immediately and insist on the privilege of drinking in all her remembered loveliness. He briefly imagined such a scene as he loosed the first two buttons of his shirt, but the memory of Elizabeth’s challenging eye overarched by that expressively raised brow stayed his flight into fancy. No, such fashionable, violent adoration she neither expected nor craved. She would want the truth from him, as he, when the heat that now consumed him cooled, would want from her. And the truth was, nothing had changed. All the impediments remained, and he still would be guilty of trifling with her should he in any way indicate the tumult of his emotions and thus raise her expectations.

Darcy closed his eyes as he sat down heavily on the edge of his chamber’s imposing bedstead, its grandeur as richly apparent as its lack of human comfort. He had never slept well at Rosings. Elizabeth. The conflictions of the previous autumn were returned now tenfold with her reentry into his life. The torments of his imaginings of her would be nothing compared with her actual presence. He shifted uncomfortably and unbuttoned his coat as he considered his dilemma. Were his desires merely manifestations of selfish willfulness, a lack of self-control? Or was it his duty and his beliefs, the code of conduct in which he had been raised, being shown inadequate? In four months he had not discovered the answer, but above the confusion, he did know this: beginning with the visit to the parsonage tomorrow and for the length of this reacquaintance, he must be careful — very, very careful.

The sound of hurried footsteps from the other side of the dressing room door brought Darcy up off the bed with a jerk. Fletcher! Quickly, he composed his features and turned to face the door as it swung smartly open.

“Your pardon, sir!” The valet bowed from the doorway. Darcy could see that he was panting slightly from his run. But from where?

“Fletcher!” Darcy’s voice was more stern than he intended, but there was no other means of concealing his true state. “Where have you been while I have cooled my heels awaiting your attention? I would not have thought that you would find anything of overpowering interest at Rosings to cause such negligence!”

“That is true, Mr. Darcy. Nothing precisely at Rosings, sir, nothing at all. Precisely.” Fletcher paused only a heartbeat before continuing. “May I help you with your coat, sir? Shall I have water for the bath sent up? It is ready and waiting.” He pulled the kitchen bellrope then advanced upon his master. In a trice, Darcy’s coat was down his arms and flung uncharacteristically upon the bed. “There. Your waistcoat now, sir?”

“Fletcher, where were you…precisely?” Darcy’s brow lowered at the valet’s busyness.

“Just now, sir?”

Darcy nodded.

“Why, in the kitchen, sir, testing the water that it —”

“Before that.” Darcy cut him off.

Fletcher’s mouth shut with a snap, and a curious look washed over his features. Then, lowering his eyes, he confessed. “I was at the parsonage, sir. But it was on your behalf, Mr. Darcy.”

“On my behalf! At the parsonage?” Darcy sputtered in surprise and no little alarm.

“Yes, sir.” Fletcher took a deep breath. “I heard that a lady you met and had much discourse with while we were in Hertfordshire was a guest there. Not content to hold with an idle rumor, I went to assure myself that it was, indeed, the same lady.” He then raised his eyes and informed Darcy triumphantly. “I am happy to apprise you, sir, that it is the very same female, Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”

Darcy regarded him darkly. “ ‘If this were play’d upon a stage — ’ ”

“You would ‘condemn it as an improbable fiction.’ ” Fletcher finished for him. “I assure you, sir, I was at the parsonage on just that errand — to determine if the lady was indeed Miss Elizabeth Bennet or no.”

“Humph,” Darcy responded, longing to know more, but to ask was impossible.

“The lady is in good health, sir,” Fletcher murmured as he pulled Darcy’s waistcoat from his shoulders.

“How do you know?” He couldn’t stop himself from asking the question.

Fletcher bent to the task of dislodging Darcy’s shirt buttons from the close-stitched holes. “The lady was just returned from one of her rambles when I arrived, and she looked very well. Mrs. Collins’s housekeeper says she has never seen a young lady as often out and about the groves and pathways of Rosings Park as is Miss Elizabeth.” The shirt joined the coat and waistcoat on the bed. The sound of water splashing into the bath in the dressing room distracted them both for a moment. “Unless the weather prevents her,” Fletcher continued quietly, “it is her daily habit and delight.”

“And you believed so strongly that I should know this that you went down to the parsonage yourself to ascertain the matter?” Darcy asked skeptically. “Why should I wish to know in what manner Miss Elizabeth cares to spend her time?”

“So that, at all costs, you may avoid her, sir!” Fletcher replied adamantly.

Darcy pursed his lips and looked narrowly at his valet, weighing their seven-, almost eight-year relationship, and the faithful part Fletcher had played in the terrible events at Norwycke Castle, against what they both knew to be his “improbable fiction.” Fletcher must have had his reasons. Given his exceptional service, Darcy would press him no further, and he acknowledged to himself, he would probably have ample time to regret his generous motion later. Besides, the man had provided him with just the information he required.


The walking path from Rosings to the lane that passed by the parsonage of Hunsford was refulgent with the bold trumpets of spring and the softer colors of their more retiring bedfellows, but Darcy spared their beauty no more than an occasional glance as he followed behind his cousin and Mr. Collins. The good reverend had presented himself in Rosings’s hall at the earliest possible hour that could not be considered an imposition and had immediately pled that Rosings’s guests do him the honor of meeting his new wife. “We also may boast the felicity of guests.” He preened under the Colonel’s fascinated regard. “My wife’s sister and a cousin on my father’s side, whom Mr. Darcy has already had the pleasure of meeting, Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Hertfordshire.”

“My nephews are already aware of Miss Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Collins.” Her Ladyship had cut in sharply as Fitzwilliam was accepting the invitation. “I informed them of her visit yesterday, almost upon their arrival, and of my disappointment in not having the joy of a first introduction. Now you deny me the joy of Fitzwilliam’s introduction as well!” Mr. Collins had flinched visibly at her words and apologized profusely for his error. But the invitation had already been extended, and here they now were on the flower-bordered path to Hunsford.

Insensible to the lavish beauty freely bestowed by Providence, Darcy concentrated on catching the words of the one-sided conversation that drifted over the shoulders of the men before him. Fitzwilliam’s keen sense of the ridiculous had recognized a fountainhead in Mr. Collins, and he was unabashedly monopolizing the man’s conversation in their stroll to the parsonage in hopes that more of the same would gush forth. For this, Darcy was more than grateful. The emotions and apprehensions battling in his mind and disturbing the balance of his bodily humors rendered him in no fit frame to entertain Collins’s absurdities; yet it was from the parson’s studied speech that bits concerning Elizabeth might be gleaned in preparation for this, their first meeting since the ball at Netherfield. Darcy strained to hear what Collins was saying without giving the appearance of attention, but the odd tricks of the wind carried the man’s words off willy-nilly into the grove, or his sentences so convoluted themselves that any sense of them was lost.

Giving up in a frustration exacerbated by the undisciplined tangent his emotions had taken, Darcy applied himself instead to shoring up the eroded edges of his composure. Although rather earlier than he had planned, they were to meet. Well, what matter the time? Morning or afternoon, soon or late? Had he not committed himself to a course of action when he released those embroidery threads to the winds? Those convictions, hard-won but held as firmly as his honor, would not be abandoned merely because the reality would soon stand before him! However, he was not a fool. The power his imagination had led him to allow her would be as nothing to the delight her actual person would bestow. His hand, he sternly reminded himself, was irrevocably withheld from her — there was no danger there — but his present discomposure was proof that his heart remained in danger. To that end, he must show her no favor, no attention, regardless of her temptations. Remember who you are! His father’s oft-repeated admonition sprang to the fore. His back stiffened. There was Pemberley, Georgiana, family to consider. Think on those! he commanded himself. Resolute, he set his jaw.