“She is here,” Richard whispered, leaping nimbly behind a wingback armchair and crouching low.
“Stand firm,” Robert ordered, adjusting his cuffs with practiced elegance. “Georgiana, retreat to the music room. This is no place for civilians.”
Georgiana did not need a second invitation; she gathered her skirts and vanished through the side door, accompanied by Mrs Annesley.
Downstairs, the door opened and a voice caused the crystal chandelier in the morning room to rattle ominously.
“OUT OF MY WAY! WHERE IS HE? FITZWILLIAM!”
Footsteps thundered upon the grand staircase. The double doors of the morning room did not just open; they were thrust apart with the force of a gale.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh stood on the threshold, a vision of outraged bombazine. Her towering feathered hat sat slightly askew on her head, her complexion burned a vibrant shade of purple, and in her right fist, she clutched a crumpled piece of paper as though she intended to strangle it.
“Aunt Catherine,” Darcy began, stepping forward and executing a flawless, placating bow. “What an unexpected—”
“SILENCE!” Lady Catherine roared, advancing into the centre of the room. She shoved the crumpled letter directly under Darcy’s nose. “This is an express from Lady Lucas! A woman who resides in a dwelling that barely has a proper sofa! And do you comprehend what this woman had the audacity to write to my clergyman?”
“I imagine she complained about the damp, Aunt,” Robert offered unhelpfully from his position by the fireplace.
Lady Catherine whipped her head towards the viscount, glaring with enough force to wilt a houseplant. “She wrote that the master of Pemberley—my nephew!—is engaged in a courtship with a Cheapside-dwelling, dirt-hemmed, impertinent nobody!”
Darcy’s spine snapped straight. The ingrained instinct to placate his aunt evaporated, replaced by the need to defend the woman he loved.
“Her name is Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” he stated, his tone adopting the granite authority of his late father. “Her hems are impeccable, and she is the woman I intend to marry, provided she will have me. If Lady Lucas penned those words, then Lady Lucas is the first person in Hertfordshire to report a fact with any degree of accuracy.”
Lady Catherine staggered backward. She clutched her chest, her cane clattering on the floor.
“It is true?” she gasped, her visage contorting as though Darcy had just confessed to robbing the Bank of England. “You would pollute the shades of Pemberley? You would abandon the compact? Fitzwilliam! You are supposed to marry Anne! Ithas been settled since you were in your cradles! It is what is best for you!”
“Aunt,” he softened his tone, taking a step closer to her trembling form. “There was never a formal compact. You are aware of this. Anne and I—”
“I know what is best!” she interrupted, her voice cracking with genuine distress. “She is a fortune hunter! She has ensnared you with her arts and allurements and her rustic wiles! You must return to Rosings at once! Both of you! Anne, fetch your pelisse! We are departing this corrupted metropolis immediately!”
Lady Catherine turned to the sofa, fully expecting her daughter to meekly obey the command, to summon a maid, and to shuffle to the carriage.
But the woman on the sofa did not shuffle.
Anne de Bourgh stood up. She did not lean on a cane and she did not cough into a handkerchief. She rose to her full height, rolling her shoulders back.
“I am not fetching my pelisse, Mother.” Anne’s voice was not a frail whisper; it rang like a crystal bell in the quiet room. “And I am not returning to Rosings.”
Lady Catherine stared at her daughter as if a stranger had suddenly possessed the girl’s body. “Anne? Are you delirious? Have you inhaled the London soot? You are standing upright! You are not wearing a shawl!”
“I am exceptionally robust,” Anne confirmed, stepping around the tea table. “I have the constitution of a stevedore, Mother. I have spent the past decade feigning illness because it was the only conceivable method to avoid your relentless management of my existence.”
If Lady Catherine had staggered before, she now seemed to require smelling salts. “You... you feigned it?”
“I did,” Anne replied without a single ounce of apology. She went to stand next to Darcy. “And let me be explicitly clear, Mother, so that this matter is settled for eternity. I formally, loudly, and irreversibly reject Fitzwilliam Darcy. He is the last man I could ever be prevailed upon to marry, and he feels the same about me. He is my cousin and a dear friend, but he would make a boring husband.”
“I second the rejection,” Darcy added with conviction. “Though I take minor offence at the accusation of being boring.”
“You read about crop rotation for fun, Fitzwilliam. You are boring.” Anne’s gaze stayed locked with her mother’s.
Lady Catherine huffed in supreme indignation, recovering a fraction of her usual bluster. “Anne, you cannot mean this nonsense. Let us go back to Kent, right this instant. The city air has addled your brain.”
“Mother, I am not returning to Kent.” Anne dropped her ultimate weapon into the conversation. “I sent word to the caretakers this morning. I am opening my father’s townhouse in Portman Square. It has been shuttered for years, and it is time it had a mistress. I am establishing my own household, Mother. I will reside there with Mrs Jenkinson as my companion.”
“Portman Square?” Lady Catherine whispered. “You are leaving me?”
