Read an Excerpt
"Missed, damn it!" Bingley handed off his musket without a second glance.
With a frown, Fitzwilliam Darcy accepted an intricately decorated rifle from his loader. "Bingley, is anything the matter? You do not seem yourself."
"I missed the damned bird; that is the matter!" Bingley scowled. Darcy had seen little of Bingley's habitual smiles since his friend had arrived at Pemberley.
"There is no shortage of birds to shoot at." Darcy waited while the handler shooed the spaniel into the brush. A brace of partridge rose obligingly from the trees. He sighted down the barrel and shot. One of the birds plummeted to the ground, and the dog crashed through the brush to retrieve it. "I was surprised your sisters did not accompany you on this visit." It was his only guess as to what might be troubling Bingley.
"I do not care if I ever see them again."
So it was something his sisters had done. Certainly they could be irritating, but it surprised Darcy that they would affect Bingley enough to cause this uncharacteristic fit of ill humour. "Have you quarreled, then?"
Bingley took another shot, hardly bothering to aim, but said nothing until Darcy had his own rifle to his shoulder again. "Do you remember Miss Elizabeth Bennet?"
Darcy's finger tightened involuntarily on the trigger before he braced himself. The rifle recoil knocked him back a step, and his shot went wide. "I remember her, yes," he said brusquely.
"I saw her at Kew Gardens. Did you know she is living in London now?"
Darcy rubbed his shoulder where the rifle had kicked him. He tried to still his racing pulse. Of all the mutual acquaintances Bingley could have named, why did it have to be that one? Darcy had almost put her memory behind him after his last Easter visit to Rosings when he discovered Mr. Collins had left his aunt's employment, thus terminating his only potential source of intelligence about Elizabeth. "No, I had not heard."
"Her father died last autumn, and the estate was entailed away from the family. That idiot cousin of theirs, your aunt's clergyman, inherited. Mrs. Bennet and her daughters moved in with her sister in Meryton, but there was not enough room for all of them, so Miss Elizabeth came to live with her aunt and uncle in Cheapside. She helps them with their children."
"I had not realized there was an entailment." Yet another reason it was fortunate that Elizabeth had returned home from Rosings the previous year to care for her ailing father before Darcy had time to act on his impulse to ask her to marry him. Still, the idea of Elizabeth without a home of her own gave him a tinge of discomfort. He had always imagined her comfortably ensconced at Longbourn. And unmarried. His imagination refused to consider the possibility she might marry another. He watched absently as the handler took the dead partridge from the dog's mouth and dropped it into the game bag.
"She seemed to think I might know about it, and said her sister Jane had written to Caroline and told her the news, but never received a reply. I asked her if Jane was in London as well, and do you know what she told me?"
"I have no idea." He was certain from Bingley's savage tone that it was nothing good.
"A week before their father's death, Miss Bennet accepted an offer of marriage from one of her admirers in Meryton, one who had been thought beneath her consideration, but this way Jane could be in a position to provide for her mother in her old age. My Jane, married to a shopkeeper old enough to be her father." Bingley practically spat the words out. Darcy shook his head. Bingley should be thanking his lucky stars for his narrow escape, and instead he was still pining over the girl two years later. "I hope it will work out well for her."
"Miss Elizabeth told me she had tried to persuade Jane not to do it, because Jane always wanted to marry for love, but she said she could never marry the only man she would ever love, so it mattered little whom she did marry. I could not help but ask what happened to the man she loved. Miss Elizabeth looked me straight in the eye and said, 'He left one day without explanation and never returned.'"
Darcy could picture it all too easily. Elizabeth had never hesitated to speak her mind, and if her sister had truly loved his friend, despite her appearance of indifference, Elizabeth would no doubt resent Bingley for his abandonment. "I am sorry to hear it."
"Not as sorry as I am. Then she asked me if I happened to see her sister when she had been in London the winter before their father died. Apparently Jane had called on Caroline and Louisa, who never saw fit to mention it to me. Caroline claims she did it to protect me." Bingley's bitterness was obvious.
It was just as well Bingley had no clue as to Darcy's interference in the matter. Darcy was not sure he would trust his friend with the information while he had a gun in his hand.
The loader held out a musket to Bingley, but he pushed it away. "I have lost my taste for shooting."
