“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.
