CHAPTER 1 THE MISSING DOWRY
Fitzwilliam Darcy had never disbelieved his eyes.
He stared at the notation. Blinked, praying that his eyes were deceiving him. That he was misreading, but the words refused to alter.
Darcy drew a slow breath. Across the sun-dappled study, his maternal aunt Lady Eleanor, the Dowager Countess of Blackmore, sorted through potential guest lists for Georgiana’s upcoming Season, blissfully unaware that said Season had just become a considerably more complicated proposition.
“Nephew, are you quite well? You’ve gone rather pale.”
Lady Eleanor’s voice penetrated his shock. He looked up, arranging his features into an approximation of composure. “A minor discrepancy in the accounts.”
“Minor?” Her eyebrow arched with precise aristocratic skepticism. “You look as though you’ve discovered the Crown Jewels have been replaced with paste.”
A dry laugh escaped him. “An apt comparison.”
“Perhaps I should leave you to your financial tribulations.” She gestured toward the door. “I can finalize these guest lists with Georgiana directly.”
“Yes. Please consult my sister.” He dragged his fingers through his hair, still staring at the damning scribble. “I have matters requiring further examination.”
Eleanor’s gaze sharpened. The Fitzwilliam intelligence—that particular blend of shrewdness and perception that characterized his mother’s family—gleamed in her pale eyes. “Fitzwilliam, what has happened?”
He considered his options. He required assistance to untangle this catastrophe, but explaining to one’s maternal aunt that her late brother-in-law had somehow lost her niece’s entire dowry seemed a conversation best avoided until necessary.
Surely this qualified as a circle of Dante’s Inferno that he had somehow overlooked in his classical education.
“I need to review records from my father’s final year.” He kept his voice neutral. “Nothing that cannot be resolved, I’m sure.”
A polite fiction. They both recognized it as such. Eleanor studied him with that piercing Fitzwilliam gaze before gathering her papers.
“Very well. I shall relocate to the drawing room. The light is better, at any rate.” She gathered her papers with efficient movements.
At the door, she paused. “When you decide to share what has actually occurred, nephew, I shall be ready to hear it. I have weathered rather more shocking revelations than you might imagine.”
The door closed behind her with a soft click. Darcy exhaled slowly, his shoulders lowering a fraction.
While he had been managing the spring planting at Pemberley.
While he had been ensuring the welfare of tenants and overseeing repairs to the north fields.
His father had been lost in London, carousing with men of loose morals, but never, not in all his darkest imaginings, had he conceived that his father would touch Georgiana’s dowry.
Of all the family assets, that should have been sacred.
The one inheritance specifically designated for his daughter’s security and independence.
He rang for his steward, keeping his hand steady through sheer force of will.
“Mr. Stephens. I require every record from the Pemberley accounts, January through April of 1806. Everything.”
“Sir?” Stephens blinked at the urgency. “That would be just before—”
“Before my father’s death. Yes.” Darcy’s hands fisted on the desk. “Bring them. All of them.”
Two hours later, buried in a box of his father’s personal effects, Darcy found it. A sealed letter addressed to him with the Darcy wax seal. He broke it and read.
My dearest boy,
If you are reading this, then I have followed your mother into the hereafter, and you have discovered what I have done. I pray you will forgive me, though I have no right to expect it.
The grief of losing Anne has unmade me. I find I cannot bear this world without her. The laudanum brings temporary relief, as does the oblivion of the gaming tables. I have made many poor decisions these past months, none more shameful than what I confess to you now.
I have lost Georgiana’s dowry. All of it. Thirty thousand pounds, wagered and lost in a single night at White’s.
Mr. Thomas Bennet of Longbourn, Hertfordshire—a gentleman I had befriended at the card tables. A mathematical genius. He warned me against the wager. He calculated the odds and told me it was a long shot. All I needed was one good win to restore everything I had been losing to the tables.
Over the course of the night, Mr. Bennet won all thirty thousand pounds.
I cannot claim deception or trickery. Indeed, he warned me against the stakes—challenged me in that sardonic style of his.
I persisted, convinced my luck must turn.
It did not. I could not believe Providence would be so cruel as to take both Anne and our daughter’s future.
When I confessed what I had wagered, Mr. Bennet looked at me with something between pity and disappointment. He took the money. He had every legal right.
I have not the courage to face you with this truth, nor the strength to go on without Anne. Forgive me, my son, for leaving you with this burden.
I have left instructions for Winters to deliver this after my passing. By then, it will be too late for you to prevent me from taking the coward’s path.
Your father, who has failed you and Georgie
Darcy read the letter twice. Then a third time, as if repetition might somehow alter its contents.
Mr. Thomas Bennet of Longbourn, Hertfordshire, had collected thirty thousand pounds from a grieving widower drowning in laudanum and despair. How very sporting.
His hands shook, the letter crackling in his grip.
What were his options now?
He could accept the loss. He had already sold three smaller properties to cover his father’s other gambling debts; what was one more sacrifice?
Pemberley’s resources, while strained, could absorb this blow.
Georgiana need never know. He could rebuild her portion over time, through careful management and strategic investment, and no one would ever discover how close they had come to ruin.
Except.
What Mr. Bennet did was not right. Legal, perhaps, but morally bankrupt.
He’d plied a grieving widower with strong drink and dreams of one good win, guided him through the warrens of the gambling halls, and then, with mathematical precision and calculated cruelty, stripped him of his only daughter’s dowry.
That was not the action of an honorable man.
Darcy had underestimated the man when he’d met him the previous autumn. Took him for an indolent country gentleman more interested in literature than landownership. But this was a matter of honor, and he would challenge him for the funds.
The man had driven his father to a dishonorable death.
The thought of Georgiana—sweet, gentle Georgiana—now eighteen and standing on the threshold of her first Season—entering society with a diminished dowry, her options limited, her vulnerability increased, was insupportable.
Equally insupportable was the thought of doing nothing while this cardsharp possessed what rightfully belonged to her.
“Stephens!” he called.
The steward appeared almost instantly, suggesting he had been hovering nearby. “Sir?”
“Have Perseus saddled immediately. I must depart for Hertfordshire.”
“Sir, it’s past four o’clock. Hertfordshire is—”
“Now, Mr. Stephens. I will ride through the night.”
Twenty minutes later, Darcy drove his horse hard through London’s streets, his father’s confession burning in his coat pocket.
The rhythm of Perseus’ hooves became a steady counterpoint to the thought driving him forward:
Long-bourn. Ben-net. Long-bourn. Ben-net.
The man who had won his father’s money.
The man who would return it, one way or another.