Chapter One
“Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
Britons never will be slaves."
Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam sang loudly, and so far off key that he could have been trying to break into someone’s house, directly into Darcy’s delicate ear as he waved a jug of porter high in the air.
Lips pressed tight together, Darcy focused. His entire world became the stick, the cue ball, and the red ball.
With an indrawn breath Colonel Fitzwilliam began the next lines, “The nations not so blest as thee! Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall!”
Darcy sank into a reverie, he imagined the cue stick was a gun, the ball he would hit was the bullet, and the red ball that he wanted to knock into the pocket was Wickham’s head.
Crack!
“Rule Britannia! Rule — damnation, by Jupiter himself! How do you keep your hands so steady!”
Darcy permitted himself a small smirk as he stepped back and rubbed a piece of white chalk over the tip of his cue.
Setting his drink on the rim of the table Colonel Fitzwilliam lined up his own shot. He potted the white off a complicated shot where he’d clearly hoped to put both the red and white in. With a groan he picked his porter up again. “Still four back.”
A loud and happy voice intruded into their game. “‘Pon my honor! Darcy! Fancy seeing you here. Proper rain pelting outside, isn’t it?”
Darcy felt a decided happiness as he saw Charles Bingley’s beaming countenance approach him and Colonel Fitzwilliam. Darcy leaned his cue stick against their club’s billiard table and stretched his hand out to shake his friend’s hand.
Bingley’s honest delight to see him made the shadows in Darcy’s mood fly away — if only for the brief present. The meeting earlier this day with Mr. Wickham had left Darcy in a surly mood. But despite the differences in their characters, time with Bingley always transformed Darcy into a lighter and more sociable form of himself.
“My friendly fellow,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said to Bingley, “whatareyoudoing in London in this part of the year?”
“Eh, weather’s nottoobad.” Bingley wiped sweat off his brow.
“Itistoo bad,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “but beside the point — would you poke Darcy on his shoulder as he pulls back to take his next shot?”
Bingley glanced between them and then at the felt covered table. “Losing, Fitzwilliam?”
“Hardly, I merely have reached the stage of the game where I must resort to unconventional stratagems.”
“Ah, in that case, certainly.”
“Bingley,” Darcy said warningly, but he was unable to keep a smile of amusement out of his voice.
His friend extended out one finger and poked him twice in the shoulder, grinning as he did.
“Do not.”
“Of course not.” Bingley’s eyes were full of mischief.
Darcy shook his head and picked the stick up again, preparing to take his shot. He was stiff and ready for the poke, and after he lined up a shot he pulled back and went as though he were to take the shot, but he did not strike the ball.
No poke on the shoulder. He glanced at Bingley who held his hands out wide with a very innocent expression.
Colonel Fitzwilliam grinned.
With a sigh Darcy turned back and tried to convince them that he was about to take the shot once more. Failure.
He then lined the shot up seriously, thinking about the angles. This one would be a bit of a difficult one to take.
Lined up like that, potting the red would be easy, but if he got the touch just right, the cue ball would also bounce into the opposite pocket.
