Just as Darcy was seriously calculating the travel time to Geneva, a strange noise echoed from the corridor.
The door to Darcy’s chamber had not been fully closed. It rested slightly ajar, leaving a two-inch gap that looked out into the hall.
Ahem. Cough, cough.
It was a delicate, distinctly feminine cough, but it lacked the wet, rattling quality of a genuine illness. It sounded like a throat being cleared for dramatic effect.
Darcy froze. Richard stopped laughing. Dawson blinked.
Anne de Bourgh, who was robust but feigned a persistent cough solely to escape her mother’s relentless lectures, had been passing by.
The door swung fully open.
Anne swept into the chamber. She was not wrapped in her usual three layers of woollen shawls, nor was she leaning heavily on a cane. She stood upright, her pale eyes glittering with an uncharacteristic, ruthless amusement.
“I must say, Fitzwilliam,” she announced, stepping inside and dropping her frail persona, the one only her cousins had the questionable privilege to witness. “I was on my way to the library to die ofennui, but you have provided much better entertainment. A poetic endeavour? Really?”
Darcy stared at her, horrified. “Anne. How... How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to hear that you are apparently suffering from indigestion caused by Miss Bennet’s eyes.” Anne’s voice was dry, sharp, and dripping with wit. “I must say, I always thought your prose was rather dry, but ‘warden of my prison’? That is quite Gothic. Mother would hate it. I love it.”
“You were eavesdropping,” Richard accused, though he seemed delighted by this new development.
“I was passing by,” Anne corrected him, moving to the chaise longue and sitting down with a grace that belied her supposedly fragile constitution. “You men were shouting. It is hardly my fault that Fitzwilliam projects his humiliation at a volume that could wake the dead.”
“You must not speak of this, Anne.” Darcy stepped forward, his hands raised in a placating gesture. “It is a matter of the utmost delicacy. If your mother were to find out—”
“If Mother were to find out, she would have an apoplexy, you would be disinherited from her good graces, and I would be forced to listen to her lament about the ‘shades of Pemberley’ for the next decade,” Anne summarised neatly.
She paused, steepling her fingers. She stared at Darcy, and then at the letter still resting on the desk, recognising a golden opportunity to permanently derail Lady Catherine’s marital schemes. For years, her mother had been forcing the narrativeof their eventual union down her throat. Here was the weapon to end it.
“However,” she continued, a slow, predatory smile spreading across her face. “I am willing to offer my services to help retrieve this disastrous letter. For a price.”
“A price?” Darcy echoed. “Anne, you are a lady. You do not negotiate ransoms.”
“I am a prisoner in my own home, Cousin, and I will negotiate with the devil if it gets me a new horse and less supervision.” She leaned forward. “I will help you retrieve your love letter from the Bennet girl. In exchange, you will formally, publicly, and irreversibly declare to my mother that you have no intention of ever marrying me.”
Darcy blinked. “I never had any intention of marrying you.”
“Yes, but you never tellherthat! You just stand uncomfortably while she plans my wedding clothes!” Anne snapped. “I want it to end, Fitzwilliam. I want the ‘compact’ burned to ash. And I think saving your dignity from being paraded around Hertfordshire is a fair trade.”
“This is extortion,” Richard observed, rubbing his chin. “I am so proud of you, Annie. I did not know you had it in you.”
“I read a lot of political history while pretending to be asleep,” Anne explained.
“I cannot involve a lady in this,” Darcy protested, his innate sense of propriety warring with his predicament. “It is scandalous. It is thievery. You are asking to participate in a raid to steal a letter from a parsonage.”
“He is right, Anne.” Richard adopted a mock-serious tone. “It is unseemly. A lady of your station cannot be seen crawlingthrough shrubbery to retrieve a misdelivered romantic tragedy.”
With Darcy and the colonel predictably refusing to involve a lady in such a scandalous thievery, Anne did not argue. She stood up, smoothed the skirts of her gown, offered a smile, and turned to the door.
“Very well,” she threatened calmly. “If you do not require my assistance, I shall march downstairs to the breakfast room where I believe Mother is eating her eggs. I shall recite everything I just heard to her. Including the part about the ink-stained rant and the ‘ruined peace’.”
Darcy lunged forward as if he had been shot from a cannon.
“Wait!” he shouted, throwing himself between Anne and the door.
“I surrender,” he gasped, holding his hands up in defeat. “I unconditionally surrender. You may have whatever you want. I will buy you a stable of horses. I will tell your mother I am taking holy orders. Just... do not tell her.”
