Chapter One
July 1806
Derbyshire
Fitzwilliam Darcy stared atthe inkwell. Not the letter atop the blotter. Not the man behind the desk. Not the tidy window beyond which summer bloomed like a wound.
The inkwell.
Round. Ornate. A dragon coiled round its silver neck, fire caught in its tiny mouth, its tail wrapped tightly about the base. He could not imagine why it was so aggressive. What was it meant to guard? Ink?
Ink did not need guarding. Estates did.
“I must ask, Mr. Darcy—have you reached a decision?”
Darcy blinked. Once. Then again, more deliberately. The solicitor’s voice was not unkind, but it carried the insufferable crispness of someone used to explaining difficult things slowly.
Mr. Dyer was not his father’s man—Darcy had dismissed him months ago—but the trustees required an independent party for this meeting, and the earl had chosen Dyer for his discretion and silence. Thus far, Darcy could vouch only for the silence.
“I was under the impression,” Darcy said, his voice scratchy with disuse, “that my father’s intentions were already decided. What, precisely, remains for me to determine?”
A flicker passed over Dyer’s face. Sympathy, perhaps. Or something close enough that Darcy wanted to snarl at it.
“Only the means by which you intend to comply, sir. The trust, as you know, becomes fully yours on the thirtieth anniversary of your birth. Unless certain… provisions are unmet.”
Provisions. The word tasted of cold iron.
Darcy had read the document a dozen times, perhaps more. The phrasing was maddeningly precise. By his thirtieth birthday, he must either marry, or relinquish sole control of the Darcy endowments.
Not Pemberley itself. That was safe—so long as he could afford to keep it. But everything else—the entailed investments, the shipping shares, the London property rents, Georgiana’s dowry and jointure and the full weight of her future—those would pass into shared hands.
And who were those hands?
“Remind me,” Darcy said coldly, “whom the clause names as alternate trustees.”
Dyer hesitated. Just long enough. “The Earl of Matlock is first listed. Should he decline, then Viscount Winthrop, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, or—”
Darcy stood.
“—a qualified solicitor, to be named by the board,” Dyer finished, rising hastily as well.
The room was too warm. Or his collar too tight. Or his father too absent. He could not decide which offended him more.
“My sister,” Darcy said, pacing to the hearth despite the season, “is eleven years old. A child. Gentle-hearted, painfully shy, and not yet come out of the schoolroom. You understand that?”
“I do,” Dyer said cautiously.
“She still names her dolls and weeps at the end of fairy tales. She is not to be made a pawn in a trust negotiation.”
“No one intends to treat her as such, sir.”
Darcy turned, his glare flaring. “Do they not? Because as I see it, unless I wed by some artificial deadline, Georgiana’s entire fortune becomes a chess piece for my aunt to push across a table.”
Dyer had the gall to look regretful. “I agree it is an unfortunate clause. But your father meant to protect her. You are only four and twenty this past February, and your father wrote the final draft of this trust in… yes, March of ’02, during your second year at Cambridge. Your affairs were—and if you will forgive me, sir—stillarelargely unsettled, and Miss Darcy’s future dependent upon a good match. He believed it prudent.”
Darcy stared at the document. It was neat. Too neat. His father’s hand had not trembled. Of course it had not. He had not been ill when he wrote it. Onlyprudent.
Egad, how he hated that word.
