A Gentleman’s Pursuit (Happily Ever After with Mr Darcy #1)

Prologue

“Darcy? I should like to speak to you,” Lady Catherine commanded as she entered his study.

Fitzwilliam Darcy had pulled his chair to be near a window, wishing to capture as much of the dim light of a woolly grey winter afternoon as he could.

His extended family, the Fitzwilliam side, had gathered at Pemberley to celebrate the Festive Season, and much as he treasured their time together, he also found himself in need of an occasional few hours of peaceful solitude.

He had just reached the part of the book he most wished to read when Lady Catherine intruded, and it was with no little reluctance that he laid a small bit of leather cord on the page to hold his place, closed the book, and rose.

“Come.” She waved him towards the seating group by the fireplace, choosing for herself the largest and most comfortable of the chairs.

He sighed. Evidently it was not to be a short conversation. “I am afraid I am much—”

“Darcy.” She levelled a serious look at him. “I must have your attention now. It can take a long time or a short time, depending upon how recalcitrant you are. From the way things have begun, I can only presume we are here for an hour at least.”

Heaving an enormous sigh, he realised the wisdom in it.

Alas, it was how Lady Catherine had become so officious.

Everyone she dealt with always realised that opposing her required far more time and effort than indulging her.

With a tight, overly-patient smile, he walked to the sofa across from her and sat, raising his brows imperiously to let her know he was prepared to hear whatever it was she needed to say.

“Eleven is upon us,” she announced.

“Eleven?”

She briefly glanced heavenward. “The year, Nephew. A new one begins in only two days.”

“Of course.”

“The year eleven in which, if I am not mistaken, you will be age seven-and-twenty. My daughter will be five-and-twenty.”

“Yes, I daresay you are correct.” He ran one finger over the crease in his trousers. “And?”

“I think we ought to at last announce your engagement and begin preparations for the wedding. February, perhaps, before Lent. I cannot abide these persons who marry during Lent. It was not done in my day.”

Darcy raised his head and met her gaze squarely for several long seconds. “I am not engaged.”

She frowned and pretended not to understand him. “While it is true that you have yet to formally ask the question, the family has long known that—”

“No.” He held up one finger to stop her. “I have not asked the question, nor do I plan to. I cannot marry Anne. I am sorry to—”

His words were cut off by shock. Lady Catherine had risen from her seat and slapped him across the head as if he were an errant schoolboy.

It was not painful, but it was unspeakably insolent and he felt it acutely.

He ran a hand over his hair to smooth it back into place, feeling his face flush red with indignation.

She sat again with a self-righteous twitch of her skirts. “I will not hear this nonsense,” she said briskly. “You will marry Anne!”

“Such disrespect can only make my resolve more firm.” He rose from the sofa. “In any case, I will ask you to leave me now.”

“Are you lost to all feeling of decency?” she demanded, ignoring his request that she leave. “How can you promote the ruination of your own cousin?”

“Anne is not ruined. I never made my cousin any promise, never gave the least indication that I regarded her as anything save a cousin, and nor will I.”

“You disappoint me. I had thought better of your sense of honour.”

“This is nothing to do with my honour.”

“You think it nothing to jilt your own cousin, your intended since infancy?”

“An infant cannot enter into a betrothal; therefore, I have not ever been betrothed and neither has Anne,” he replied sharply.

“She might have been presented at court!” A vein bulged in his aunt’s temple. “She might have entertained suitors and had a London Season like a lady of her station should!”

“And who stopped her? I certainly did not. I would be more than happy to introduce her to my friends.”

“If your friends are half as rakish as you are, I beg you would not,” she retorted.

Absently, Darcy observed that his aunt’s skin had become a shade of puce that was alarming. “Then I shall not. But neither shall I marry her myself. I am sorry to disappoint you, but so it is.”

Lady Catherine rose to her feet, thrusting one long arm towards him, her finger pointed. “You are a miserable excuse of a man, Darcy. I am ashamed of you and can only rejoice in knowing my sister died before knowing what a disappointment you are.”

Civility demanded that Darcy hold his tongue; incivility compelled him towards the door. He opened it and thrust out his own arm to indicate to her that she should leave. “You have said enough, madam. You will not have your way in this. I beg you to leave me.”

“I will most certainly leave you.” She approached him slowly, with a mean glare creasing her countenance. “I will leave Pemberley and take the whole family with me, and not one of us will recognise you ever again!”

Darcy knew not how he was meant to respond to such an assertion and so only scoffed and again gestured towards the door. She finally quit the room without a look backwards. Darcy went back to his chair by the window, nearly falling into it.

Her presumptions that he should marry her daughter were beyond the pale.

A union between Anne and himself was impossible.

Though it was true he did not find her person desirable in the least—Anne was a pale, sickly creature, with frizzed hair the colour of a mud puddle and greyish, lifeless eyes—he found her persona still more distasteful.

Anne was a person who revelled in illness and misfortune.

When she read, she was more likely to comment on the manner in which the print strained her eyes than on the subject matter in the book.

Walks left her overheated and headachy rather than in harmony with nature, and meals generally caused indigestion rather than enjoyment.

In short, Anne had no joy, no vivacity, and no inclination to good humour.

Simply beholding her was enough to cause a significant dampening of his own spirits.

Darcy flushed as a new burst of anger came upon him.

While it was true that he had never gainsaid Lady Catherine, neither had he ever offered so much as one word of encouragement to her, or to Anne.

He had never singled Anne out for any walk, any attention—nothing!

He did not feel he should be held accountable for what was nothing more than their shared delusion.

Less than an hour later, Lord Matlock entered his study without invitation or announcement, but Darcy welcomed him nevertheless.

His aunt’s conduct appalled him, and as his shock at her behaviour in the minutes prior receded, his indignation swelled.

His uncle was no doubt equally surprised by his sister, and Darcy anticipated sympathy for his position.

“Pray sit,” Darcy offered, keeping a grave countenance and offering his uncle some wine.

His uncle declined. “I do not suppose I need tell you how disappointed I am; nay, how disappointed we all are.”

“It was all quite shocking,” Darcy agreed solemnly.

His lordship was equally serious. “What shall we do about it?”

Darcy considered for a moment. “An apology would be a good start.”

“I am glad you see it that way.” Lord Matlock leant towards him. “Start by apologising to your aunt, and after that—”

“Apologising to my aunt? You mistake me, sir,” Darcy replied. “I do not mean to say I shall apologise; rather, I think I should be apologised to. Lady Catherine struck me. And this nonsense about a betrothal—”

“She was upset,” Lord Matlock replied, as if this unimaginable exception to propriety should be universally understood. “I am sure you can imagine your poor cousin’s reaction to being abandoned in such a way.”

“Abandoned!” Darcy wondered if the entire family had run mad. “My lord, with all respect, I have never promised Anne anything, nor have my actions or words suggested I would!”

“Anne is, even now, in a state of shock. Mrs Jenkinson is still trying to soothe her nerves.”

“Perhaps I should have done better had I made it clear sooner that I did not intend to propose, but I did not think I needed to express my lack of intentions towards a lady who—”

“Who was your intended from the cradle!”

“No matter what my aunt believed—”

“Your aunt and your mother, too.”

“That is the family lore, but it was never said so to me. In fact, my own father said quite the opposite. Do you not recollect when I spoke of it with you last spring? I told you then I was not inclined towards marrying my cousin.”

Lord Matlock shrugged dramatically. “Inclined or not inclined, I believed you understood your duty to the Fitzwilliams as well as the Darcys.”

“Marrying Anne is not my duty,” Darcy retorted warmly.

Lord Matlock rose from the chair then and walked over to the window, staring out. Darcy knew what he must see: the stark winter beauty of Pemberley unfurling before him. Turning back, his lordship was more calm.

“Son, pray use reason. You would be master of two large and profitable estates, as well as…well, I confess, I do not even know all of Anne’s holdings. But they are extensive. Your fortune would equal that of any duke!”

“I can buy more land if I wish it, but I cannot buy a marriage of affection.”

“Affection.” His lordship said it like the word was new to him. He slowly walked back to the chair opposite Darcy, his hand stroking his chin. “In marrying Anne, you will be uniting two families rich in consequence and heritage. Do you not see how important that is?”

“I see it is important to you,” Darcy replied calmly. “What is important to me, however, is—”

“Affection,” his uncle concluded for him.