“I am not leaving you.” Anne stepped forward and squeezed her mother’s trembling hands. “I am simply leaving Rosings. I will call upon you and you may call uponme—provided you send a note first. But I will no longer be your invalid, and I will no longer be a pawn in your marital schemes. I am going to live.”
Lady Catherine stared from Anne, to Darcy, to Robert, and finally to Richard, who had cautiously emerged from behind the armchair. She drew herself up, released Anne’s hands, and took a step back, her spine stiffening as she gathered the shattered remnants of her dignity. She was outflanked, outnumbered, and for the first time in her existence, outmanoeuvred by her own offspring.
“You are making a grave mistake, Fitzwilliam,” Lady Catherine enunciated the syllables with dripping venom. “You will pollute the bloodline. You will be the ruin of us all.”
“I will be happy, Aunt.” Darcy bowed his head respectfully. “I hope, one day, you will be able to comprehend that.”
Lady Catherine offered no reply. She turned on her heel, her bombazine skirts swishing fiercely as she marched out of the room. Mostyn escorted her down the stairs, kicking the door shut behind them.
They waited for the rumble of the carriage pulling away from Grosvenor Square, and then, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam threw his hands into the air and let out a deafening cry of victory.
“Huzzah!” he cheered, grabbing Anne by the waist and spinning her around in a circle. “Annie, you were magnificent! I have never been more frightened of you in my life!”
Robert collapsed into the nearest armchair, laughing so hard he had to wipe a tear from his cheek. “A stevedore! You told her you had the constitutionof a stevedore! I shall commission an artist to engrave it upon a plaque for your new mantelpiece!”
Anne, laughing and dizzy as Richard set her on her feet, smoothed her emerald skirts. “I feel as though I have dropped a boulder from my shoulders. I am free. I am actually free.”
“Right,” Robert announced, clapping his hands together and standing up. He turned to Darcy with an expectant grin. “What next, Cousin?”
“Now, I have an important question to ask a certain lady,” Darcy replied, a laugh bubbling up from his chest, so bright and unburdened he actually snorted. It was an undignified sound, and he did not care in the slightest.
“Darcy, are you well?” Richard asked, incredulous.
“I am perfectly well.” Darcy laughed, waving him off. “But I have spent the last six months behaving like a fool. I handed her a disaster of a letter after delivering the worst proposal in human history. Ferrets have more romantic tact than I displayed in Hunsford.”
He turned to survey his relatives affectionately.
“Miss Elizabeth deserves the most romantic, flawlessly executed proposal, and we are not leaving this room until we have planned it.”
A slow, reverent expression of awe spread across the viscount’s face.
“You want to hold a council,” Robert whispered, “for romance?”
“Yes, Robert! Sit down, all of you. Boodles! Dawson! Mostyn! Fetch the tea. And the brandy. We have work to do.”
Georgiana, having deemed the coast clear, slipped back inside and took a seat beside Anne, her face bright with excitement.
“Very well. Let us think. We need a setting. We need a mood. How does the most brooding, unyielding, unimaginative man in England propose?” Robert rubbed his chin in deep contemplation.
“Approach her from the side,” Richard suggested, slamming a fist into his palm. “Cut off her escape route. Back her into a corner of the drawing room so she cannot slip away, and then deploy your primary question.”
“Richard,” Georgiana sighed, shaking her head. “A proposal is not a fox hunt. You cannot ambush the poor woman.”
“I agree with Georgiana,” Anne said, steepling her fingers and adopting an intense, gothic expression. “It needs atmosphere. You should wait for a thunderstorm. Stand on a windswept moor, let the rain soak your shirt, and threaten to throw yourself from a cliff if she does not accept you. It is very fashionable right now in all the circulating libraries.”
“I am not throwing myself off a cliff,” Darcy said, even though the thought held some merit. “And there aren’t any moors in London.”
“You could hire a choir,” Robert suggested. “Hide them behind the curtains in Cheapside. When you pop the question, they burst into a chorus of Handel! It would be like no other!”
“It would give her aunt a heart attack,” Darcy pointed out reasonably. “Mrs Gardiner is already concerned about the symmetry of her cushions, I am told. A hidden choir might finish her off.”
“Poetry,” Georgiana offered sweetly. “You must recite a poem, Fitzwilliam. Something by Lord Byron.”
“Byron is a scoundrel, Georgiana. I am not quoting him to my future wife,” Darcy countered.
“Well, what do you suggest, oh Master of Romance?” Robert demanded, crossing his arms on his chest. “You reject the ambush, the cliff, the choir, and the poetry. What is your grand stratagem?”
Darcy leaned back in his chair, listening to the banter of his family. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, picturing Elizabeth. He pictured her eyes, her sharp wit, and the way she had laughed when the bumblebee had landed on his nose in the grove.
