“Which document is missing, sir?” Dawson asked, ever practical.
Darcy could not answer.
His blood ran cold. Then colder still, until every vein in his body seemed packed with splintering ice.
If the dignified defence was sitting on his desk...
The devastating truth hit him squarely in the chest. He had not handed Miss Elizabeth his stoic justification. He had just handed Miss Elizabeth the unhinged, ink-stained, passionate rant.
He had handed her the letter where he called her thewarden of his prison. He had handed her the letter where he complained about his inability to sleep and confessed that he was unravelled by her refusal. He had sealed a record of his own complete emotional collapse with the Darcy crest, walked into a grove, and pressed it into the hands of a woman who already thought he was the devil incarnate.
Fitzwilliam Darcy, a man of ten thousand a year, experienced a total collapse of his faculties right in front of his audience.
His knees ceased to function, but he did not lower himself gracefully into the chair; he dropped into it like a puppet whose strings had been severed. His head hit the desk with a hollow, resoundingthud.
“Good God,” Richard said, dropping his apple. It rolled across the carpet, forgotten. He vaulted over the chaise longueand rushed to the desk. “Darcy? Fitzwilliam? Are you having a seizure?”
Dawson abandoned the newspaper and moved across the room. “I shall fetch the brandy, Colonel. Or perhaps a physician. He is not well.”
“I am dead,” Darcy groaned, his voice muffled by the wood of the desk. “Leave me. Tell the undertaker to bury me face down, for I do not wish to look at the world ever again.”
“You are not dead.” Richard grabbed Darcy by the shoulders and hauled him upright.
Darcy’s face was a mask of pure, unadulterated horror, paler than a marble bust. He pointed a shaking, accusatory finger at the letter on the desk.
“I left it,” he wheezed, struggling to pull air into his lungs. “It is here.”
“Yes, that is a piece of paper,” Richard observed slowly, eyeing his cousin with curiosity. “It is a very nice piece of paper. Did it offend you?”
“I wrote two letters last night,” Darcy confessed, the words tumbling out of him in a rush. “One was a defence. A masterpiece of logic. It is sitting right there. It is sittingright there, Richard!”
“And the other?” Richard asked, eyeing Dawson, who was holding a glass of brandy just out of Darcy’s reach, correctly deducing that his master might drop it.
“The other was... it was not a letter. It was a crime against dignity. It was a humiliating account of my... my shattered composure. It was a rant. A passionate, utterly deranged rant!”
“And?” Richard prompted, though the corners of his mouth were beginning to twitch upwards.
“And I sealed the wrong one,” Darcy whispered, the full gravity of his error crushing the last breath from his lungs. “I was exhausted and I grabbed the wrong paper. And ten minutes ago, in the grove, I handed it to Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
A pregnant silence descended upon the chamber.
“What exactly was in that letter? And why hand her a letter anyway?” Richard asked.
Darcy squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to elaborate. Dawson, on the other hand, had no such scruples. “Colonel, Mr Darcy proposed to Miss Elizabeth last night, while you and the parsonage party entertained Lady Catherine. To say the least, his proposal was rejected vehemently. Not only that, it was thrown back at him with accusations concerning his manners and his failure to behave in a gentlemanlike manner. It was a massacre, sir.”
The colonel’s eyes rounded like saucers. “Proposed? Refused? And you wrote her letters and you have handed her the wrong one? Oh, this is grand. I cannot believe it! Oh, this is magnificent. This is the greatest day of my life.” He threw his head back and let out a bark of laughter so loud it rattled the windowpanes.
“It is not amusing, Richard!” Darcy roared, surging to his feet. “She has it! She is probably reading it right now! She is reading about how her eyes have ruined my peace! She is reading about my inability to digest my food! About how she is the warden of my prison! I am a general laughing-stock!”
“Technically, sir, you are only a laughing-stock to one person,” Dawson pointed out reasonably, finally handing over the brandy. “Unless she reads it aloud at the parsonage dinner table. Which, given her reported wit, is a distinct possibility.”
“Dawson, you are dismissed,” Darcy snapped, throwing the brandy back in one gulp.
“Very good, sir. Shall I pack my bags before or after you throw yourself from the roof?”
“I have to get it back,” Darcy began to pace the room with frantic energy. “I have to find her. I will tell her it was a draft, a jest! A poetic endeavour!”
“Yes, because nothing says ‘poetic endeavour’ like the Darcy crest stamped in wax.” Richard wiped a tear of mirth from his eye. “Fitzwilliam, you are doomed. You must pack your trunks and flee to the Continent. I hear Switzerland is lovely this time of year, if one does not mind the French.”
