Page 7 of The Widower of Pemberley

Then, instead of doing his further duty and dancing with another woman—many other girls in the room were sufficiently ugly—or following his inclination and dancing with that particularly pretty girl whom Georgiana had spoken with, Darcy walked over to the portrait of the king.

He clenched his jaw.

Must?

Must he marry again? His nature was unsuited to the state.

Emily was a perfectly suitable human being. If only his grandfather had not established the entail that would send the estate to the grandson of that grandfather’s brother—a second cousin whom Darcy had not met more than three times and whom he had no high opinion of from those occasions—he would not be obliged to marry again.

Darcy stared at the familiar portrait of His Majesty.

No. Not marriage.

Not that sling of fate; not that form of scorn. And he did not want to marry an ugly woman so that he would not ever like her enough to trust her or be hurt when she betrayed that trust.

He should lock himself in his own rooms and drink his way into a senseless stupor like a sensible gentleman.

Everything pressed inwards. Another dance, another facing of the world tomorrow, another rising from bed, another talking in a friendly manner to Bingley, another keeping his sister from seeing what he was like, and another keeping Emily from seeing his intrinsic heartless coldness. It was too much.

Close your eyes.

Deep breath. Settle your posture. Shoulders squared, hands behind the back. Tall. Another deep breath. Let it go.

Feel what you have a duty to feel, whatever that is.

The portrait of the king was a copy of Ramsay’s coronation portrait. In the painting, His Majesty was young and almost handsome. It was quite unlike the way the sovereign had appeared when Darcy had been blessed to be close enough to clearly see him.

Had it been too much concern for duty and morality that drove His Majesty to lose his wits at last? Farmer George had been, all in all, a good king.

Seventy years of duty would ruin the sanity of any man.

Darcy was filled with a deep melancholy. He loathed his duty. He loathed the thing in him that carried him forward, making him do what he believed he must, whether he liked the notion or not.

If only he could delay!

Darcy did not trust himself.

One delay.

One indulgence of his weakest self. It would mean nothing. Just a short deferment before he did his duty.

And that weakness would grow, and it would grow, and it would grow, and soon he would never do anything he did not wish to do, no matter how important it was.

An heir was of the utmost importance.

Not really. Nothing really matters. Nothing except Emily.

Darcy stared at the oil-rendered face of the young king who had become an old madman. He tried to take inspiration from the image. He tried to feel his former schoolboy reverence for the monarch and the mystic connection between His Majesty and every loyal Briton.

The king had lavished great care and attention on the education of the Prince Regent. Even a concerned and devoted parent could produce a child with a temperament and habits the opposite of his own. There was nothing that foresight and effort could do to make it impossible for a bad branch to grow from a good tree.

He should not be angry at the entailment. He should bless it.

Had he failed his father by becoming the sort of man that he was?

He had always tried so hard to do what was right.

A white face. An expression of shock. Only visible for an instant. The eerie bluish light of a harvest moon. Mary’s terrified face in that second before she hit the ground was imprinted on Darcy’s mind more deeply than the moment Emily was first presented to him, or when he had seen his father’s cold dead face after the old man could not be wakened in his bed.