Chapter Thirteen The Flight of the Bumblebee #2
“Do not move,” Darcy whispered, his voice a strained, high-pitched hiss.
Miss Elizabeth, who had been staring at him with romantic awe only a second before, slapped both hands over her mouth. Her eyes crinkled in agony as she fought the most heroic battle of her life against a shout of laughter.
“I am not moving,” she squeaked, her voice trembling with suppressed hysterics.
“It is plotting,” Darcy hissed, his eyes still crossed. “I can feel it plotting.”
“It is resting, sir,” she managed to choke out.
She leaned forward, closing the distance between them. Her face was mere inches from his, her scent enveloping him. Very gently, very slowly, she raised her gloved hand and with the delicate flick of her index finger, she gently shooed the bee.
The insect buzzed indignantly, lifted off his nose, and lumbered away to a nearby patch of clover.
Darcy let out an explosive exhale, slumping back against the bench.
Miss Elizabeth could hold it in no longer. She burst into a fit of giggles, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.
“I am glad my brush with mortality brings you such joy,” he muttered, though he was smiling.
“It was...” she gasped for air, wiping a tear from her eye. “It was the most majestic display of stoic bravery I have ever witnessed. You stared down the beast without flinching.”
“I am a Darcy. We do not flinch in the face of the enemy. Even if the enemy is pollinating.”
They sat together on the bench, laughing. It was a sweet, silly moment, the misunderstandings a million miles away. God, I want this forever, Darcy thought.
Eventually, the bells of the church chimed in the distance, signalling the approaching luncheon hour.
“I must return,” Miss Elizabeth sighed, reluctantly standing up. “If I am late, Mr Collins will likely send a search party. The search party being Sir William, who will be lost and then we will have to send another search party. An endless loop.”
Darcy stood up with her. He did not want to let her go. He wanted to freeze time under the oak tree.
He reached out and took her gloved hand. He bowed his head, his lips brushing over her knuckles.
“Until London, Miss Elizabeth,” he murmured against her hand.
“Until London, Mr Darcy.”
She turned and walked away, glancing over her shoulder once to offer him a final smile before disappearing behind the laurel bushes.
Fitzwilliam Darcy stood in the grove long after she left. Had he been any other man, he would have skipped all the way back to Rosings Park. As it was, he settled for a stride so buoyant and ridiculously energetic that Dawson would likely assume he had suffered a blow over the head.
The euphoria lasted precisely until Dixon opened the front doors to usher Darcy in.
The grand entrance hall was in an uproar. It sounded as though a small war had broken out in the primary drawing room.
Darcy rushed towards the noise.
The scene before him was bedlam. Lady Catherine de Bourgh was standing by the fireplace, her face an alarming shade of puce, wielding her cane like a broadsword.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was standing behind a sofa as though he were seeking cover.
Viscount Keathley was leaning casually against the mantelpiece unbothered, while a small army of footmen hovered in the hallway, looking terrified.
And in the centre of the room stood Anne de Bourgh.
The heiress was not sitting. She was not coughing. She was standing straight, her arms crossed over her chest, her foot tapping the marble.
“Absolutely not!” Lady Catherine roared, striking the floor with her cane. “I forbid it! It is madness! It is suicide! You will catch your death of cold before you even reach the coaching inn!”
“I am not taking a post-chaise, Mother. I am taking Robert’s carriage,” Anne replied, her voice cool and dangerously steady. “And I am not catching a cold. I am going to London.”
“What is happening here?” Darcy demanded, stepping into the fray.
“Ah, Fitzwilliam, excellent timing,” Robert drawled. “We have just informed Aunt Catherine that Richard, you, and I are returning to London at the end of the week. Friday, to be precise.”
“And your traitorous cousin,” Lady Catherine shrieked, pointing her cane at Anne, “has decided she is going with you!”
“I need a change of scenery,” Anne stated. “I have stared at these wallpaper patterns for twenty-four years. I want to see a play, to go to a museum, and to eat something that has not been boiled to death by your French chef.”
“You are too frail!” Lady Catherine wailed, clutching her chest. “The London air is thick with soot and disease! You will perish!”
“I am robust enough to survive a carriage ride, Mother.”
“And she refuses to take Mrs Jenkinson!” Lady Catherine threw her hands into the air, addressing the ceiling as if seeking divine intervention. “She wishes to travel unchaperoned! Like a common vagabond!”
“Mrs Jenkinson weeps when the carriage goes over a bump.” Anne rolled her eyes. “She gives me a headache.”
“She is your companion!”
The battle raged on. Darcy watched in awe as Anne held her ground against the unstoppable force of her mother. Lady Catherine was raving, her dictatorial nature warring with the fear for her only child’s well-being.
“Aunt Catherine, please,” Richard attempted to intervene safely behind the sofa. “We are three grown men. We are capable of escorting Anne safely to town. I have guarded military convoys; I can guard a carriage.”
“You are a bachelor! Robert cares for nothing! And Fitzwilliam is too distracted lately to notice if she fell out of the window!” Lady Catherine snapped, her assessment accurate.
Darcy cleared his throat, recognising the exact moment to deploy his consequence. He stepped forward, adopting the commanding presence of the master of Pemberley.
“Aunt Catherine.” His baritone cut through the shouting. “Anne will not be unchaperoned, nor will she be staying in rented lodgings. Fear not.”
Lady Catherine stopped waving her cane. “What do you mean?”
“Anne shall be my guest,” he stated calmly. “She will stay in Grosvenor Square with me and Georgiana.”
Anne looked at him, her eyes widening in surprise, followed quickly by gratitude.
“Darcy House?” Lady Catherine hesitated, her eyes narrowing. “Not Matlock House? My brother should be the one to host her.”
“I am sure Uncle would be delighted.” Darcy pressed his advantage. “But Georgiana’s companion, Mrs Annesley, is a woman of sense, gentle demeanour, and medical competence. She is fully capable of tending to Anne’s needs, and she does not weep over carriage bumps.”
Robert seized the opening. “You see, Aunt? It is the perfect arrangement. Anne will be secured in the finest house in London, guarded by an army of Fitzwilliams, and chaperoned by a veritable saint. She will be safer there than she is here.”
Lady Catherine looked at Robert, then at Darcy, then at Richard still cowering behind the sofa, and finally at her daughter. The matriarch’s shoulders slumped a fraction of an inch. She was strict, she was overbearing, and she was a tyrant, but she loved her daughter to her last breath.
“Darcy House,” she muttered, tapping her cane thoughtfully. “It is respectable. The air in Grosvenor Square is better than the rest of the metropolis, at least.”
She turned to Anne, her face softening into something resembling maternal concern. “You truly wish to go, Anne?”
“I do, Mother.”
Lady Catherine let out a huff that ruffled the lace on her collar. “Very well. You may go.”
“Oh, Mother!” Anne stepped forward to kiss her mother’s cheek.
Lady Catherine accepted the kiss, patting Anne’s arm awkwardly. “Yes, yes. But you shall not go unprepared!”
The dictator returned in full force, revitalised by a new challenge. Lady Catherine addressed the hovering footmen.
“You!” she barked. “Fetch the housekeeper! Anne cannot travel to London with nothing in her trunks! She requires her winter pelisses! And the fur-lined muffs!”
“Mother, it is nearly May,” Anne protested.
“The London fog is deceptive! You will freeze!” Lady Catherine ignored her, marching to the hallway. “And I shall order the seamstress to make you four new shawls! Thick wool! Double-lined!”
As Lady Catherine’s voice faded down the corridor, demanding an unreasonable amount of wool for the spring season, the four cousins stood in the drawing room.
“Well,” Richard sighed, finally abandoning his vigil behind the sofa. “That went better than expected. I thought she was going to have us all flogged.”
“Fitzwilliam.” Anne turned to Darcy, her eyes shining. “Thank you. Truly. Darcy House sounds like paradise.”
“It is the least I could do, Anne.” Darcy held her hands between his for a moment. “Considering you saved me from a lifetime of hiding in the shrubbery.”
“London,” Robert mused, wandering over to the drink cart and pouring four glasses of sherry. “The entire menagerie is descending upon the metropolis. The Bennets, the Lucases, the Darcys, the Fitzwilliams, and the de Bourghs.”
He handed a glass to each of his cousins, raising his own in a toast.
“To Friday.” He grinned, his eyes gleaming with the promise of spectacular social anarchy. “May London survive us.”
Darcy raised his glass, touching it to Robert’s. He thought of Miss Elizabeth and the beautiful summer stretching out before them.
“To London,” he agreed, drinking the sherry and finding that smiling came easier when it cost him no effort.