The Warden of my Prison

Chapter One The Ink Blot of Destiny

FITZWILLIAM DARCY WAS not, as he had anticipated, staring happily into the eyes of his beloved, triumphant in the knowledge she rightly esteemed—nay, adored—him above all other men.

Instead, he was engaged in the agonising discovery that a gentleman’s pride, when forcefully hurled against a brick wall by a lady’s brutal rejection, did not shatter cleanly and efficiently.

Instead, it exploded outwards into fragments—a thousand humiliating, undignified shards he would be picking out of both his pride and heart for many a sleepless year to come.

He was pacing the length of his guest chambers at Rosings Park immediately following his disastrous proposal at the Hunsford parsonage.

He moved with the restless energy of a caged tiger who had just been informed that he was not the king of the beasts as he had always supposed, but a grave disappointment to the entire animal kingdom.

It would therefore be best if he packed his trunks and quietly left the county.

He was a tempest of wounded amour-propre and heartbreak.

He had offered her everything. He had laid his hand, his heart, the splendour of Pemberley, and the undeniable sacrifice of his own consequence squarely at her delightful feet.

And she had effectively told him she would rather marry a mildewed bath sponge.

“The last man in the world,” Darcy muttered aloud, executing a sharp turn near the fireplace that nearly knocked over a hideous porcelain shepherdess.

“The last man. In the world. She used the word ruined. She accused me of ruining her sister’s happiness and behaving in an ungentlemanly manner. Ungentlemanly! Me!”

“Will that be all, sir?”

The imperturbable enquiry came from Dawson, Darcy’s valet.

Dawson was a man of seemingly inexhaustible patience with a passion for order, who could be relied upon to produce correct opera attire even if shipwrecked on a desert island.

He currently stood by the wardrobe holding a pristine evening cravat at the ready, as if he had all along anticipated a funeral for Darcy’s dignity.

“No, Dawson, that will not be all,” Darcy snapped, dragging a hand through his immaculately styled hair.

His once-pristine coiffure now resembled a bird’s nest that had survived an attack by a pack of ravening, tree-climbing wolves.

“I have just been informed that my manners are inferior to those of a feral badger. My character has been dismantled by a woman whose family is an active embarrassment to the Crown.”

“Most unfortunate, sir. I suggest we tie the Waterfall as an appeasement to the gods of lost stature. And shall I lay out the black superfine with the navy velvet facing for the evening? Blue is a very soothing colour.”

“I am not going anywhere and I do not require soothing! I require a—a—a mechanism capable of turning back time, Dawson, or perhaps a sudden, preferably painless lapse into a catatonic state of nothingness.” Darcy threw himself into an armchair, staring blindly at the heavily patterned wallpaper.

“She despises me. She looked at me as though I were a tax collector who had tracked manure onto her best rug, and then taken the rug. I told her of my struggles with her family’s lack of decorum and manners.

I told her of my family’s potential and, dare I say, quite understandable objections.

I laid bare the internal war between my intellectual understanding of the need to ally with a woman of fortune and connections, and my overwhelming, irrational, consuming passion for her! ”

“A bold strategy indeed, sir,” Dawson observed, moving to the washstand with the grace of a ghost. “Informing a lady that loving her is a severe lapse in your impeccable judgment. It is a wonder she did not immediately declare herself overcome and swoon into your arms.”

Darcy glared at the man, but the barb hit its mark with devastating precision. He groaned, burying his face in his hands. “I was nervous. I was in a state of utter panic. I thought... I thought honesty was the best policy.”

“Honesty is an excellent policy when appearing as a witness to a serious crime, sir. For romance, a little mild perjury is generally preferred.”

Unable to contain his agitation, Darcy surged to his feet and marched to the writing desk.

He required an outlet before his brain physically detached from his skull.

He sat heavily in the chair, seized a fresh quill, plunged it into the silver inkwell, and penned his feelings onto a crisp sheet of paper.

This quickly became an unmitigated disaster.

You have ruined my peace, he scratched furiously, the nib of the quill catching on the paper and sending a spray of ink across the page. I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. I cannot look at a moderately pleasant landscape without comparing it unfavourably to the exact shade of your eyes.

He crossed the sentence out with three vicious, jagged lines, nearly tearing the paper. It was too poetic. He was a Darcy, not a penniless poet in a garret.

He had also managed to intimate her eyes were the colour of dirt.

You are unjust, he tried again, writing so hard the desk shuddered.

You have wilfully misunderstood my character based on the slander of a scoundrel.

Yet, God help me, your defiance only makes me admire you more.

When you told me I was the last man in the world you could ever be prevailed upon to marry, my primary thought was how magnificently your eyes flashed when you said it.

I did not at first even comprehend the finality inherent in your words.

I am unwell, Elizabeth. You have made me incurably unwell.

He went on about Wickham, about Georgiana, about Kympton.

He swept the perspiration off his forehead and stared at the page.

It was a landscape of scored-out words, furious ink splatters, and deeply embarrassing confessions regarding his pathetic admiration for her.

It was not a letter; it was a written account of a complete emotional collapse.

It looked as though a spider had dipped itself in ink and suffered a seizure across the paper.

“Sir.” Dawson appeared at his side with a glass of brandy on a silver tray. “You have ink on your chin.”

“Leave it,” Darcy growled, staring at the chaos. He felt unravelled. The formidable master of Pemberley had bled his heart out onto a piece of paper, and it made him look like a madman.

He shoved the damning confession aside. He took a long, burning swallow of the brandy. The alcohol hit his stomach, cutting through the haze of turmoil and replacing it with the steel of his breeding.

He had to explain properly. He could not leave her thinking him a monster who destroyed Jane Bennet’s happiness out of malice, nor a tyrant who had cruelly banished George Wickham to a life of squalor. But he required logic. He required structure.

He took a fresh sheet of paper, tested a new quill, and then—barricades in place, portcullis down, drawbridge up—meticulously composed a formal, dignified defence of his actions.

Be not alarmed, madam, on receiving this letter...

This was better. This was elegant. Calm.

Structured. This was proper. He laid out the facts regarding Jane and Bingley with exactitude, ensuring he took full responsibility for his interference whilst gently pointing out the blatant impropriety of her mother and younger sisters.

He wrote for hours. The candles burned down to sputtering stubs, casting long, wavering shadows across the walls of the chamber.

When he reached the section regarding George Wickham, his handwriting became tight and controlled.

He poured out for the second time that night the humiliating truth of his father’s generosity, Wickham’s profligacy, and the secret of his sister Georgiana’s near-ruin at Ramsgate.

He gave Elizabeth the weapon that could destroy his family’s reputation and Georgiana’s faith in him, trusting her honour even as she had suborned his own.

By the time he signed his name, the sky outside the window was beginning to lighten to a bruised and sullen grey.

Darcy dropped the quill. His eyes burned, his hand cramped, and his soul felt as though it had been dragged through a gravel pit. He was exhausted, sleep-deprived, and emotionally unstrung.

“You have finished, sir?” Dawson asked, stepping out from the shadows where he had been silently standing vigil like one of Lincoln Cathedral’s more disapproving stone imps.

“Shall I assist with the sealing wax? You look as though you have been run over by a mail coach. And possibly Lord Alvanley in his high-perch phaeton.”

“I am perfectly capable, Dawson,” Darcy replied, his voice a hoarse croak. Driven by a stubborn, wounded pride that demanded he manage his own humiliating correspondence, he flatly refused the valet’s assistance.

He turned his signet right side out so the Darcy crest showed.

His vision blurred with exhaustion and lingering emotional devastation.

Not tears. He could not taste salt. Not at all.

He grabbed the stick of red wax, holding it to the flame of the dying candle until it melted into a rich, bloody pool.

His exhausted hand reached across the surface. He folded his confession into a neat square, poured the hot wax onto the seam, and sealed it.

“It is done. I shall give it to her this morning,” Darcy whispered, staring unseeingly at the image in the scarlet.

“Very good, sir.” Dawson eyed his master with a distinct lack of confidence. “Shall I draw a bath? You cannot present yourself in the grove smelling of despair and brandy.”

DARCY WALKED THE GROUNDS of Rosings Park two hours later. The crisp air did nothing to soothe the pounding headache situated behind his left eye. He felt hollowed out, a shell of a gentleman eternally shambling to his own execution.

He paced the boundary of the grove, rehearsing the exact angle of his chin required to project unbothered indifference. He would hand her the letter; he did not have to speak. He would prove that he was a man of reason, logic, and consequence.

Then, he spotted Miss Elizabeth approaching through the trees.

His heart launched into an undignified gallop. She was wearing a simple garnet morning gown, her curls escaping her bonnet to frame her face. She was beautiful. She was infuriating. She was the only thing in the world that mattered.

Darcy tightened his grip on the sealed missive in his pocket and forced his facial features into a mask of pure granite. He stepped onto the path, intercepting her.

Miss Elizabeth halted, her eyes widening in surprise, her posture stiffening into defensive hostility.

He did not speak. He trusted his vocal cords about as much as he trusted George Wickham in a bank’s strong-room. He performed a masterpiece of stoic dignity. He offered a stiff, geometrically precise bow, wordlessly handed her the sealed letter, and executed a sharp turn to walk away.

Perfect, he thought. Impeccable. I have defended my honour. I have drawn a line in the sand. I have acted like a gentleman. This will show her.

He strode away from her, congratulating himself on his dignity. He had survived the worst of it. The matter was closed.