Chapter Three The Chamber of Horrors
FITZWILLIAM DARCY STRODE back into the gilded halls of Rosings Park feeling a bizarre, intoxicating mixture of tragic nobility and exhaustion.
He had done it. He had faced the architect of his misery, he had maintained his composure, and he had delivered his impeccably reasoned defence.
As he navigated the grand staircase, he congratulated himself on his flawless execution.
He had not begged. He had not yelled. He had handed Miss Elizabeth Bennet the sealed letter with a stiff bow and walked away.
He was a man of iron, a bastion of aristocratic resilience.
He was, frankly, a martyr of such historical significance that someone should probably commission a statue of him for the entrance hall of Pemberley.
He required solitude to properly bask in his own tragic martyrdom. He pushed open the door to his private chambers, expecting the soothing silence of empty space and the comforting scent of beeswax polish.
Instead, he was greeted by the sight of his cousin, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, sprawled horizontally across the chaise longue, tossing an apple into the air and catching it with infuriating rhythm.
In the corner, Dawson was meticulously ironing a newspaper.
They had made themselves too comfortable.
“You are intruding,” Darcy announced, stopping on the threshold and deploying his most effective scowl. “This is a private chamber. The word ‘private’ implies a distinct lack of cousins.”
“And a good morning to you as well, Fitzwilliam.” Richard caught the apple and took a loud, obnoxious bite. “You look dreadful. Did you sleep in a hedge? Or is that the natural pallor of a man who enjoys the company of Lady Catherine at breakfast?”
“I am seeking a moment of order,” Darcy replied, his voice trembling with repressed exhaustion. “I require peace. My head feels as though it has been used as an anvil, and your chewing is echoing.”
“You have a very grim disposition, sir,” Dawson observed. “Shall I order a black armband, or are we mourning the general state of the universe?”
Richard sat up, swinging his polished boots to the floor. “Truly, Darcy, you look as if you had just attended your own funeral and found the floral arrangements lacking. What has happened? Did Miss Elizabeth reject your opinions on the weather? You have been mooning over her since we arrived.”
“I have no interest in discussing Miss Elizabeth,” Darcy lied smoothly. He unfastened his greatcoat, shrugging it off. “I have conducted my business. I have restored my equilibrium. I am fine.”
Seeking a moment of physical order to match his proclaimed mental state, Darcy moved to his writing desk to tidy his remaining papers. It was a habit born of years of managing an estate—when the world was mayhem, one aligned one’s inkwells.
He reached for the inkwell.
His hand stopped in mid-air.
There had been two letters.
One had been immaculate, covered in tight, rational prose.
The other was a site of devastation, covered in ink blots and the phrase I cannot look at a moderately pleasant landscape without comparing it unfavourably to the exact shade of your eyes.
Sitting precisely in the centre of the green leather blotter, next to the silver pen tray, was a neatly folded, uncrumpled sheet of paper.
Darcy stared at it.
No, his exhausted brain whispered. No, I could not have. I am a Darcy. I am observant. I am meticulous. I am not an idiot.
But he had been awake for more than twenty-four hours and was operating on nothing but brandy, wounded pride, and pure panic.
He slowly extended a trembling index finger and pushed the edge of the letter, flipping it open.
Be not alarmed, madam, on receiving this letter...
The immaculate, reasoned letter of defence—the one detailing the truth of George Wickham properly, the one defending his actions regarding Jane Bennet with reason, the one he had spent hours agonising over to ensure every syllable was drenched in cool, unbothered logic—was sitting exactly where he had left it.
In a desperate attempt, Darcy checked the desk. Moved the blotting paper. Looked under another page. Looked beneath a book. Then, absurdly, he checked inside a drawer, as if the wrong letter might have returned from the grove out of remorse.
“Which document is missing, sir?” Dawson asked, ever practical.
Darcy could not answer.
His blood ran cold. Then colder still, until every vein in his body seemed packed with splintering ice.
If the dignified defence was sitting on his desk...
The devastating truth hit him squarely in the chest. He had not handed Miss Elizabeth his stoic justification. He had just handed Miss Elizabeth the unhinged, ink-stained, passionate rant.
He had handed her the letter where he called her the warden of his prison.
He had handed her the letter where he complained about his inability to sleep and confessed that he was unravelled by her refusal.
He had sealed a record of his own complete emotional collapse with the Darcy crest, walked into a grove, and pressed it into the hands of a woman who already thought he was the devil incarnate.
Fitzwilliam Darcy, a man of ten thousand a year, experienced a total collapse of his faculties right in front of his audience.
His knees ceased to function, but he did not lower himself gracefully into the chair; he dropped into it like a puppet whose strings had been severed. His head hit the desk with a hollow, resounding thud.
“Good God,” Richard said, dropping his apple. It rolled across the carpet, forgotten. He vaulted over the chaise longue and rushed to the desk. “Darcy? Fitzwilliam? Are you having a seizure?”
Dawson abandoned the newspaper and moved across the room. “I shall fetch the brandy, Colonel. Or perhaps a physician. He is not well.”
“I am dead,” Darcy groaned, his voice muffled by the wood of the desk. “Leave me. Tell the undertaker to bury me face down, for I do not wish to look at the world ever again.”
“You are not dead.” Richard grabbed Darcy by the shoulders and hauled him upright.
Darcy’s face was a mask of pure, unadulterated horror, paler than a marble bust. He pointed a shaking, accusatory finger at the letter on the desk.
“I left it,” he wheezed, struggling to pull air into his lungs. “It is here.”
“Yes, that is a piece of paper,” Richard observed slowly, eyeing his cousin with curiosity. “It is a very nice piece of paper. Did it offend you?”
“I wrote two letters last night,” Darcy confessed, the words tumbling out of him in a rush. “One was a defence. A masterpiece of logic. It is sitting right there. It is sitting right there, Richard!”
“And the other?” Richard asked, eyeing Dawson, who was holding a glass of brandy just out of Darcy’s reach, correctly deducing that his master might drop it.
“The other was... it was not a letter. It was a crime against dignity. It was a humiliating account of my... my shattered composure. It was a rant. A passionate, utterly deranged rant!”
“And?” Richard prompted, though the corners of his mouth were beginning to twitch upwards.
“And I sealed the wrong one,” Darcy whispered, the full gravity of his error crushing the last breath from his lungs. “I was exhausted and I grabbed the wrong paper. And ten minutes ago, in the grove, I handed it to Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
A pregnant silence descended upon the chamber.
“What exactly was in that letter? And why hand her a letter anyway?” Richard asked.
Darcy squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to elaborate.
Dawson, on the other hand, had no such scruples.
“Colonel, Mr Darcy proposed to Miss Elizabeth last night, while you and the parsonage party entertained Lady Catherine. To say the least, his proposal was rejected vehemently. Not only that, it was thrown back at him with accusations concerning his manners and his failure to behave in a gentlemanlike manner. It was a massacre, sir.”
The colonel’s eyes rounded like saucers.
“Proposed? Refused? And you wrote her letters and you have handed her the wrong one? Oh, this is grand. I cannot believe it! Oh, this is magnificent. This is the greatest day of my life.” He threw his head back and let out a bark of laughter so loud it rattled the windowpanes.
“It is not amusing, Richard!” Darcy roared, surging to his feet. “She has it! She is probably reading it right now! She is reading about how her eyes have ruined my peace! She is reading about my inability to digest my food! About how she is the warden of my prison! I am a general laughing-stock!”
“Technically, sir, you are only a laughing-stock to one person,” Dawson pointed out reasonably, finally handing over the brandy. “Unless she reads it aloud at the parsonage dinner table. Which, given her reported wit, is a distinct possibility.”
“Dawson, you are dismissed,” Darcy snapped, throwing the brandy back in one gulp.
“Very good, sir. Shall I pack my bags before or after you throw yourself from the roof?”
“I have to get it back,” Darcy began to pace the room with frantic energy. “I have to find her. I will tell her it was a draft, a jest! A poetic endeavour!”
“Yes, because nothing says ‘poetic endeavour’ like the Darcy crest stamped in wax.” Richard wiped a tear of mirth from his eye. “Fitzwilliam, you are doomed. You must pack your trunks and flee to the Continent. I hear Switzerland is lovely this time of year, if one does not mind the French.”
Just as Darcy was seriously calculating the travel time to Geneva, a strange noise echoed from the corridor.
The door to Darcy’s chamber had not been fully closed. It rested slightly ajar, leaving a two-inch gap that looked out into the hall.
Ahem. Cough, cough.
It was a delicate, distinctly feminine cough, but it lacked the wet, rattling quality of a genuine illness. It sounded like a throat being cleared for dramatic effect.
Darcy froze. Richard stopped laughing. Dawson blinked.
Anne de Bourgh, who was robust but feigned a persistent cough solely to escape her mother’s relentless lectures, had been passing by.
The door swung fully open.