Chapter 2 #2
“Pemberley needs you! After so many years of travel, are you not ready to find a nice lady with whom to settle?”
As though he had a choice in the matter! He listened to Richard list his reasons—mostly irrational—why Darcy must stay in England, manage a place that had brought him equal measures of love and misery, and fulfill his duty by the family from which he had fled.
When one argument ran into another and Darcy’s patience had reached its limit, he interrupted. “Father disinherited me.”
“Balderdash!” Richard shot back.
“Have you ever known my father to make empty threats?”
“No, but this is about Pemberley. Your inheritance! His legacy!” Still, Richard did not believe him.
“He arranged my marriage, and I refused to comply.”
“He wou—what? He did what?” Richard sputtered and fell silent.
“When I was sixteen years old, still at school”—a shiver ran through Darcy at the memory of that awful place—”my father saw a little girl do something he considered brave in the park.
After investigating the family thoroughly and deeming them satisfactory, he decided that I must marry her in order to inherit. ”
“That is preposterous! Uncle George would never—”
“It is, and he did it anyway.”
“Good heavens! What on earth did this girl do?”
“She confronted a gentleman who was acting cruelly toward someone weak and defenseless.”
“That is all?!”
“That is all I know. I was not there.”
“You did not get details?! I need details, man!”
“I was too irate when I learned about it.”
“What sixteen-year-old young man would not be!?”
“It was two years later, when I was eighteen, that I learned of it.”
“He did not tell you?”
Now Richard was catching on. Darcy nodded. “Father kept it a secret from me until I came home from school, two years after he had put the stipulation in his will.”
“Just after the death of your mother?! Dear God! Darcy, why did you not tell me?”
“Tell you that my father distrusted me so much that he took it upon himself to select my bride?” It had been a deathblow to Darcy’s pride, the first of many more to come, it turned out.
“This girl, who is she? She could not have been more than a child.”
“She is eight years younger than me.”
“Practically an infant! What was Uncle George thinking?! Why, she might have grown to be an opinionated, overbearing shrew! This must be a mistake. A misunderstanding.”
“It is not a mistake. I saw the will with my own eyes.”
Richard opened his mouth several times, finally producing a labored, “How?”
“It was after Mother—” Darcy sucked in a breath and continued, “He left the door of the safe in his study open, the contents spread over his desk—her jewelry, her letters to him tied in a pink ribbon, a lock of Georgiana’s hair, his will. I read it myself.”
What had made Darcy so angry at that moment now filled him with sadness. He had removed his family ring and added it to the pile of his mother’s jewels. It was his first act of rebellion against his father’s wishes and the first step taken to remove himself from the burden of being a Darcy.
“Did you try to discuss the matter with him?”
“If by discuss you mean quarrel, then yes. That he would take away my freedom was bad enough, but to attach me to a young girl I had never met was unthinkable—for me and for her.”
“Of course! It was good of you to consider the girl.”
For all the good that had done! “Father was unmovable. He threatened to disinherit me if I refused to comply, so I left. It was the only way to get him to withdraw his offer.”
“Did it work?”
“After about a year, I received word that he had changed his will.”
“Who told you?”
“John Reynolds.”
“Mrs. Reynolds’s son? The solicitor?”
Darcy nodded.
“He is not with your family’s solicitor…” Richard snapped his fingers and squinted his eyes.
“Wrayburn clerks toiled under heavy bundles of legal documents. Gentlemen walked with purpose.
Darcy followed the line of houses, listening to Richard and reading the engraved bronze plates mounted on black doors until he saw the name he sought: BOFFIN, WILFER, REYNOLDS & ASSOCIATES, SOLICITORS.
A clerk rose from his desk, turning the page of a large, open ledger and dipping his pen into the inkwell as he greeted them.
Darcy pulled a card out of the silver case in his pocket. “I am here to consult with Mr. Reynolds. If you would be so kind as to present him with my card, I will wait for his reply.”
The clerk took the card, running his finger over the copper-plate engraved letters raised on the thick, silky paper. He bowed, his manner more deferential than before. “If you will follow me, please?”
He led Darcy and Richard to a waiting room. Three portraits, the senior partners of the firm, hung directly in front, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined with leather-bound tomes. A Turkish carpet padded their steps.
After an offer of refreshment, which Darcy politely refused, the young man departed.
“Reynolds has done well for himself,” Richard observed.
Darcy’s father believed that a good education was the key to a young man’s development, that the future of the nation lay in the hands of those dedicated young men who would apply themselves to put their hard-earned knowledge to use.
He had taken an interest in Reynolds’s prospects, and Reynolds had clearly not wasted the favor granted to him.
They had not waited long when a familiar voice behind them called, “Robbie?”