Chapter One The Hazards of Hatchards #2
It wasn't that the book was rare. It was popular.
But he had seen this book in her hands. It had been a rainy afternoon at Netherfield.
Elizabeth had been sitting on the sofa, seemingly engrossed in the volume.
He had asked her an inane question about the weather or the roads, just to hear her voice.
She had lowered the book, marking her place with a slender finger. "Do you not think, Mr Darcy, that books are a perfect way to avoid conversations one has no wish to have?"
She had been teasing him. She was always teasing him. And he, fool that he was, had taken it as a rebuke instead of an invitation.
Darcy stood in the middle of the crowded bookshop, the noise of London fading into a dull buzz.
He held the book as if it were a holy relic.
He opened the cover, staring at the print, but he wasn't reading the words.
He was remembering the way a loose curl had fallen over her ear as she read.
He was remembering the intelligence in her gaze.
He was remembering that he had walked away from the only woman who had ever made him feel like he was in danger of losing his mind.
He stroked the leather binding with his thumb, a look of profound, hazy longing softening his usually severe features. He looked less like the Master of Pemberley and more like a man who had been hit over the head with a very heavy realization.
"It is a good book," he whispered to no one. "She liked this book."
He felt a sudden, desperate urge to buy every copy in the store. To build a fort out of Cecilias and live inside it.
"William?" Georgiana's voice came from his left. "Did you find a book for Robert?"
Darcy didn't answer immediately. He couldn't look away from the page. "I found... something."
"Is it a novel?" Georgiana sounded surprised. "Who is it for? You never read novels. You say they are full of improbable coincidences and people behaving irrationally."
"People do behave irrationally," Darcy murmured, closing the book but clutching it tightly to his chest. "They behave with absolute madness."
He was aware he was standing in public, hugging a romance novel. He did not care. For a moment, holding it felt like holding a connection to Hertfordshire.
And then, the universe, which had been waiting for this precise moment of vulnerability, decided to strike.
"Well, I'll be damned."
The voice was smooth, cultured, and laced with an intolerable amount of amusement.
Darcy stiffened. His spine snapped straight, though he did not—could not—relinquish his death grip on Cecilia. He closed his eyes briefly, praying to any deity listening that it was a hallucination.
It was not.
He turned slowly to find Robert Fitzwilliam, Viscount Keathley, standing at the end of the aisle.
Robert was thirty-three, possessed of a lazy grace that Darcy envied, and was currently dressed in a coat that fit him scandalously well. He leaned against a bookshelf, looking for all the world like he owned the place, or at least had a controlling interest in the alphabet.
"Robert," Darcy said, his voice dropping three octaves into his 'Master of Pemberley' register.
"Fitzwilliam," Robert replied, his eyes dancing. He pushed off the shelf and sauntered over. "And fair Georgiana. You look charming, Cousin. That shade of grey suggests a delightful melancholy."
"Hello, Robert," Georgiana said, managing a genuine smile. "We are shopping for gifts."
"As am I," Robert sighed, gesturing to a pile of books a clerk was holding for him. "The tedious annual tribute to the parents. I was considering getting Father a book on the history of sheep, but Mother says I must be 'thoughtful' this year. It is a terrible burden."
His gaze dropped from Georgiana's face to Darcy's chest. Specifically, to the novel Darcy was clutching like a lifeline.
Robert's eyebrows rose. They kept rising. They threatened to disappear into his hairline.
"I say," Robert drawled, pointing a gloved finger at the book. "Is that Cecilia?"
"It is a book," Darcy said defensively.
"It is a novel about a young heiress navigating society," Robert corrected. "I read it years ago. Excellent satire. But you, Cousin? You consider fiction to be a moral failing. Last Christmas, you gave me a book on Drainage Systems of the Fenlands."
"It was educational."
"It was dry. Literally and figuratively." Robert took a step closer, his eyes narrowing with the precision of a hawk spotting a field mouse. "And yet, here you are, hugging Miss Burney's work with a look on your face that I can only describe as... lovesick."
Darcy bristled. "I am not lovesick. I am merely inspecting the binding."
"You are inspecting the binding with your heart?"
"It is a gift," Darcy lied. "For Georgiana."
Georgiana blinked. "I have read Cecilia, William. Twice. You said it was 'frivolous nonsense' when I read it."
Darcy shot his sister a look of betrayal. Georgiana covered her mouth, her eyes wide.
Robert let out a low whistle. "Caught out by your own infantry. Tragic." He crossed his arms, leaning in conspiratorially. "So. Who is she?"
"There is no 'she'," Darcy snapped. "I am simply broadening my literary horizons. Is a man not allowed to grow?"
"A man like you grows by reading a new agricultural journal," Robert countered. "A man like you does not stand in Hatchards in the middle of December looking like a poet who has lost his muse unless there is a woman involved. A woman who, I wager, likes this book."
Darcy felt the heat rising up his neck. This was exactly why he avoided Robert. The man was too observant by half.
"You are imagining things, Keathley. As usual."
"Am I?" Robert grinned, and it was the grin of a wolf who had found the door to the sheepfold unlatched. "Let us see. Dark hair? Witty? Probably figured you out within five minutes of meeting you, which is why you are obsessed with her?"
Darcy's jaw twitched. It was a microscopic movement, but Robert saw it.
"Precisely," the Viscount whispered. "Oh, this is going to be the best Christmas since Richard set the gazebo on fire."
"We are leaving," Darcy announced, pivoting on his heel. He still held the book.
"You just arrived!" Robert protested, falling into step beside him with annoying ease. Georgiana trailed on the other side, looking between her brother and her cousin with fascination.
"We have completed our purchases," Darcy lied.
"You haven't purchased it yet," Robert pointed out. "You are effectively stealing Cecilia. Is this your new rebellious phase? First, romance novels, now petty larceny? I like it. It gives you an edge."
"I intend to pay for it," Darcy gritted out, marching towards the counter.
"So, tell me," Robert continued, leaning his elbow on a stack of encyclopaedias as Darcy fished for his coin purse. "Where is she? Why are you here staring at books and not kneeling on a rug somewhere reciting a sonnet?"
"Because," Darcy said through clenched teeth, throwing a sovereign onto the counter with a loud clink, "our acquaintance was brief, she is currently in Hertfordshire, and I have no intention of pursuing the matter."
"Hertfordshire?" Robert wrinkled his nose. "Good God, Darcy. The country? You fell for a rustic? Did you bond over the price of corn?"
"She is not a rustic," Georgiana piped up, suddenly bold. "William wrote about a lady with fine eyes."
Darcy froze. The clerk, who was wrapping the book in brown paper, paused. Robert looked at Georgiana with delight.
"Fine eyes!" Robert crowed. "Oh, this gets better and better. William 'Standards High as The Himalayas' Darcy, has been brought low by a pair of fine eyes in Hertfordshire."
"Georgiana," Darcy said, his voice dangerously calm. "You are disowned."
"You mentioned it in your letter from Netherfield in November," Georgiana said innocently. "You said, 'It is a pity such fine eyes are wasted on a woman of such impertinent opinions.'"
"Impertinent too!" Robert slapped the counter. "I am in love with her already. Any impertinent woman is one of discernment."
"I did not say she was impertinent," Darcy corrected, digging his grave deeper. "I said her opinions were. She is stubborn. And obstinate. And she decided to misunderstand my character entirely."
"And let me guess," Robert said, taking the wrapped parcel from the clerk and handing it to Darcy with a flourish. "You decided to prove her right by brooding in London instead of correcting her?"
Darcy snapped the parcel from his cousin's hands. "It is complicated, Robert. Her connections are unsuitable."
"Ah," Robert's face sobered slightly, though the twinkle remained. "Unsuitable connections. The Darcy Achilles' heel. Let me guess—her father is a solicitor? Her mother was an actress?"
"Her father is a gentleman, but her uncle is in trade," Darcy mumbled.
Robert stared at him. Then he burst out laughing. It was a loud, uninhibited sound that drew stares from the entire shop.
"Trade! Oh, the horror! The humanity!" Robert wiped a tear from his eye, ignoring the scandalized look of a nearby vicar. "You are pining over a woman with fine eyes and a brain, but you won't court her because her uncle sells... what? Fish? Carpets?"
"I believe he owns warehouses. Somewhere in Cheapside," Darcy muttered. He gripped his parcel tighter. He had already paid for the book, thank God, or he might have abandoned it on the counter just to escape this conversation. "It does not matter. It is done. I have removed myself from danger."
"You have removed yourself from happiness," Robert corrected, shaking his head, looking impressed in a horrified sort of way. "You are a one-man wrecking crew of romantic potential. Remind me never to let you near my love life."
"You don't have a love life, Robert," Georgiana teased, glancing up from a display of poetry she had been politely pretending to read during this interrogation. "You have a series of unfortunate misunderstandings."
"Precisely," Robert winked at her. "And I intend to keep it that way."
He turned back to Darcy, his expression sharpening. "Look, Cousin. You are miserable. You are buying books you claim to hate. You are positively pining. And it is Christmas."
"What is your point?"
"My point," Robert said, clapping a hand on Darcy's shoulder, "is that you are a fool. But you are my favourite fool. So, I will let this go for now."
"You won't," Darcy said miserably.
"No, I won't," Robert conceded cheerfully. "I intend to bring this up constantly. Especially in front of Richard. Speaking of whom, have you bought him a gift yet?"
"No."
"Excellent. We shall find him an offensive tome later."
Darcy sighed, the weight of his family pressing in on him even in the middle of his favourite bookshop. He could feel the hard edge of Cecilia through the brown paper of the parcel in his hand. He was trapped. He was being mocked. He was entirely, entirely transparent to his rake of a cousin.
He stared at the parcel. He had the book. He had his misery. He had a headache. But he certainly did not have the will to move.
"If you are quite finished dissecting William's romantic failures," Georgiana piped up, her voice small but determined as she stepped up to the counter, "might I actually purchase my gifts? Or are we to stand in front of the till until the New Year?"
Darcy looked at his sister, who was holding a stack of novels with a defiant expression, then at the clerk who was pretending to be very interested in a ledger, and finally at Robert.
Robert was leaning against the mahogany counter, crossing his ankles, and smirking like a village idiot who had just been bequeathed a brewery.
"By all means, Georgiana," Robert gestured grandly to the clerk. "Proceed. I am in no rush. I have nowhere else to be that is half this entertaining."