“What are you doing?” Robert stammered, yanking his arm away.
“I am checking for a pulse,” Richard announced loudly, causing Miss Bennet to look on in alarm. “Your skin is clammy and you have lost the power of speech. I believe you are suffering from a severe case of impending doom. Shall I fetch a physician to bleed you?”
“I am perfectly well,” Robert gritted out, his face flushing a violent shade of crimson.
“He is not well, Miss Bennet,” Anne drawled, drifting forward to join the assassination of her cousin’s character. She looked at Robert. “He has been struck dumb. If we were to place a hat upon his head and stand him in the corner, he could serve as a coat rack.”
Miss Bennet, ever polite, was distressed. “Oh dear. Are you feeling faint, my lord? Perhaps we should sit down?”
“I am not faint, Miss Bennet,” he choked out, attempting to bow reassuringly. Unfortunately, his rigid posture caused him to misjudge the angle, and he bumped his shoulder solidly against a low-hanging branch of a willow tree, sending a shower of leaves cascading over his top hat.
From the safety of a few feet away, Darcy and Miss Elizabeth watched the disaster unfold.
“It is painful to witness,” Miss Elizabeth murmured. “He is entirely undone. The great Viscount Keathley, reduced to wrestling with willow trees.”
“It is the greatest spectacle I have ever witnessed,” Darcy replied, his chest swelling with poetic justice.
Even Georgiana, who had been quietly observing the dynamic over the past two weeks, found her courage. As Robert frantically tried to brush the leaves from his coat while avoiding Miss Bennet’s eye, Georgiana leaned to her brother.
“Fitzwilliam,” she whispered, her eyes dancing withnewfound mischief. “Perhaps Robert needs to write Miss Bennet a letter. With ink blots.”
Darcy winced, half regretting having revealed the history of the disastrous missive to his sister, but he let out a bark of laughter and threw an arm around her shoulders. “You are ruthless, Georgiana. Do not give him ideas, or he will write the modern Iliad.”
The valets were equally merciless in their clinical assessments.
“The viscount rejected his intricately tied waterfall cravat this morning, Mr Dawson,” Boodles whispered one afternoon. “He requested the mathematical knot. A sure sign of distress, which means he needs structure to hold himself together.”
“Indeed, Mr Boodles,” Dawson replied evenly. “Though I fear a cravat cannot salvage a man who forgets the English language when a lady asks him about the weather. He requires an intervention.”
An intervention was precisely what occurred.
It was a rainy evening. Georgiana had retired early, and the cousins were gathered in the library of Darcy House.
The air was thick with tension. Robert was pacing, moving with the restless energy of a caged lion who had just been informed he was a disappointment to the animal kingdom—a feeling Darcy remembered all too well.
Darcy, Richard, and Anne were arranged around the room, forming a tribunal.
“Sit down, Robert,” Darcy commanded.
Robert ignored him, raking a hand through his hair until it resembled a bird’s nest. “I cannot sit! I feel as though my veins are filled with gunpowder.”
“Sit,” Darcy repeated, his voice dropping into the authoritative register of the master of Pemberley.
Robert slumped into an armchair, dropping his head into his hands, utterly defeated.
Darcy walked over to his desk and picked up a paper-knife. He tapped the cool metal against the palm of his hand, turning to face his cousin.
“Let us review Scenario Four, Robert,” Darcy said, rejoicing in the perfect reversal of the coaching session Robert had subjected him to at Rosings Park. The tables had not merely turned; they had been flipped over and set on fire.
Richard let out a snort of laughter from the sofa, grabbing a throw pillow to muffle the sound. Anne leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands, delighted.
Robert looked up through his fingers, his eyes narrowed in misery. “Do not do this, Fitzwilliam.”
“I am merely offering pedagogical support,” Darcy continued, pacing in front of the armchair, wielding the paper-knife like a fencing-master’s foil. “You are walking down a path. The sun is shining. The birds are singing a cheerful melody. Miss Jane Bennet turns to you and says, ‘Lord Keathley, the weather is fine today, is it not?’ What is your response?”
Robert swallowed hard. “I tell her she is an angel.”
“No, Robert.” Darcy’s voice was dripping with faux-patience. “You stare at her in silence. You look as though you are attempting to calculate the square root of a turnip. You go rigid, you sweat through your broadcloth coat, and you bump into a tree.”
