Chapter One
1December 1811
Fitzwilliam Darcy slammed his grandfather’s journal shut, his hands trembling as he shoved it aside. He felt as if a metal band had been fitted around his chest and was slowly being tightened. He pushed himself to his feet and began to pace the length of his study, the fire in the hearth snapping and hissing, casting flickering shadows that matched his dark mood.
Miss Elizabeth Bennet haunted him. No matter how he tried, he could not drive her from his mind—her fierce gaze, her sharp wit, her lovely, intelligent eyes. She stirred in him feelings of desire and fear in equal measure. He had hoped by returning to London he would feel less. He had been wrong.
But Miss Elizabeth was not the only Bennet causing Darcy grief this night.
His pace quickened, each step more agitated than the last. From the moment he had laid eyes on Mr. Bennet, something had gnawed at him, a sense of familiarity he could not shake. Mr.Bennet rarely appeared in company, and it was not until the end of the Netherfield ball that Darcy had seen it.
He returned to the desk, his eyes unwillingly drawn back to the journal, to the sad family history it contained. He opened it to the page he had been searching days to locate, the page he only knew of because when he had reached his majority, his father had revealed its existence.
18 February 1758
After six weeks of pain and torment, the house is quiet tonight. Although it was a very near thing, the heavens have been merciful enough to spare my beloved Arabella, and our second son, praise God, grows stronger each day. Yet, I cannot shake the shadow of that first-born boy, the elder twin, who came into this world so frail that the midwife shook her head and whispered of his death.
How does a man grieve a child he never held, whose face he did not even glimpse before he was taken away? The midwife claimed the boy would not survive the night, yet in the morning, she and he were gone—and having not left my wife’s side, I was unaware for some time after. Even now, despite every effort, no word of either has reached us here. The agony of it has worn on me as much as my fears for my wife and second son.
I am reminded, as any man would be, that the Almighty has seen fit to spare my wife and to bless us with one strong son, and for this, I am endlessly grateful. It is his life and health—and Arabella’s—that we must hold dear, yet at night I lie awake and wonder: did our first-born indeed find his rest, or does he yet live, perhaps never to know his blood and birthright? Who he truly is?
I pray that if he is in God’s care, he lies in peace. But if he remains in this world, I pray he is safe and that somehow, he feels the bond of kinship, even if he cannot name its origin.
Darcy pushed the journal away again.
Mr. Bennet was similar enough in both appearance and figure to Darcy’s late father to be unsettling. The man’s age seemed right. He was tall, as George Darcy had been. Yet Mr. Bennet’s crooked smile was what had first alarmed Darcy. It waspreciselylike his father’s, half upturned mouth, half crooked, twisted sarcasm. Darcy’s father had not employed it often, but it was so different from his normal good nature that it was indelibly impressed upon Darcy’s memory. When Mr. Bennet had smiled that way at the obsequious Mr. Collins as they waited for their carriage to be brought around after the ball, something icy had taken hold of Darcy’s heart.
A wave of nausea curled dangerously in his stomach. Twins so seldom lived that to lose only one was considered a successful birth. Even his grandmother had lived, though she had been unable to bear any other children. The midwife, perhaps believing they would all die and fearing for her reputation, had disappeared. But why would she not have left the ailing infant at Pemberley so that he might be buried with his family? Were his grandfather’s fears borne in truth? Had the child lived?
Could that babe be Mr. Bennet?
If it was true, everything Darcy thought he knew—about Pemberley, about his own legacy—was a lie. His knees buckled beneath him, and he collapsed into a chair that creaked sharply under the sudden weight. He pressed his hands to his temples, as if that would erase the very possibility, blur it, force it to fade.
But it would not.
It was one thing to be tormented by his attraction to Miss Elizabeth, to grapple with the impropriety her family displayed so freely, but this was something else entirely. This was not about Miss Elizabeth or his disquieting fascination with her. If he was right—and he fervently hoped he was not—she might notbe so unsuitable a choice after all. No, this was not about his own feelings. It was about Pemberley.
When Darcy's father had reached his majority, he had been the last Darcy to inherit Pemberley under the entail. He could therefore leave it to anyone he wished. Of course he had left it to his only son, but if his father's elder brother still lived, George Darcy had not possessed the right to inherit at all—or to pass the property to his son.
Everything Darcy had ever known, ever worked for, ever trusted in, now rested precariously upon a single, terrifying possibility: Mr. Bennet might be the rightful heir to Pemberley.
The weight of this realization was suffocating. Darcy could ride north in the morning and speak with Mr. Bennet. Tell him everything. Reveal the story these crumbling journals told.
But if he did, Pemberley might no longer be his.
The thought pierced him like a dagger. Pemberley was more than an estate. It was the very core of who he was. Generations of Darcys had shaped it, built it, preserved it. It was his father’s legacy. It had been entrusted to him, with the expectation that he would safeguard it for the future. Could he risk it all on an old journal and a few physical similarities?
He exhaled sharply. He could see it now. Mr. Bennet’s calm acceptance, perhaps even gratitude, for the revelation. And then the inevitable: Pemberley passing into Bennet’s hands.
Hecouldsay nothing. What was a smile, after all? A similarity in build and looks? It might be nothing at all. The journal could disappear. He would remain master of Pemberley, just as he had been since his father’s death. He could continue his life unchallenged, his reputation intact.
He could marry Miss Elizabeth, for if her father was a Darcy by birth, then so was she. He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, attempting to quell the megrim he knew would come. If she was a Darcy by birth, then Pemberleybelonged to her branch of the family, not his. She might not even want him were his status so diminished. It was a humbling thought.
But how could he keep such a secret?
His father had only rarely spoken of his twin, but then he had never met Mr. Bennet. Could Darcy continue on as though nothing had changed, all the while knowing that he might possess a fortune that was never supposed to be his?
The very thought disgusted him. And yet the alternative was too crushing to face.
