Page 133 of The Matchmaker’s Mistake

“And I shall not.” She sipped her wine and then set the glass on a table.

Elizabeth caught on to the meaning of their conversation, and one hand came up to her mouth.

“I am not certain I believe you,” Darcy said.

“It is true.” She looked back towards her brother. “I shall not match your uncle to anyone without his consent.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Nothing at all.”

Darcy had lived eight-and-twenty years in his mother’s company. He waited. “Mother. What is your plan?”

She smiled. “To allow your uncle to consider what my plan might be. The uncertainty will trouble him exceedingly, until he begs me to get on with it so that he may regain his peace.”

Elizabeth’s eyes opened wider, and behind him, somebody laughed at the card table. Darcy did not turn to see who.

“You are diabolical, Mother. Have you no wish to match yourself instead?”

“One day, perhaps,” she said, and patted his cheek twice. “But there is much work to be done first.”

Darcy was still composing his objection when his uncle glanced up and found his sister watching him. Whatever he read there, he disliked it at once. His shoulders came back. His glass stopped halfway to his mouth.

“Anne,” he said, a bit too loudly. “No.”

The nearest conversations faltered.

“Brother.” His mother’s voice carried without any effort at all. “I believe it is your turn.”

“I am fifty-eight, Anne.”

“So much the better. You will require less training.”

His lordship looked about the room. His sons discovered a sudden and profound interest in their feet. Lady Euphemia turned away and began speaking very rapidly to her Scottish peer about the weather in Perthshire. Even the clergyman found his conversation with Mary rather more urgent than before.

Uncle Matlock looked about him. “Not one of you will help me?”

Darcy shrugged. He had tried.

His mother moved towards the door.

“Anne,” his uncle said, drawing out her name. “Where are you going?”

“To write a letter.”

Lord Matlock set his glass down on the mantel. “In the middle of your party? To whom?”

She paused upon the threshold. “A widow.”

Darcy noted that she had not said she was writing a widow to match her with his uncle. Only that she meant to write to one.

“Do not be ridiculous.”

“I am never ridiculous, dear brother. Merely thorough.”

Then she was gone. The door was left standing open behind her, which Darcy thought was very probably deliberate.

His uncle said something under his breath that Darcy thought fortunate the clergyman could not hear and then finished his wine in two large swallows.