Chapter One Preview

The fire in Pemberley’s library gave little warmth that evening, though the logs hissed and popped with vigor enough. Darcy sat at his desk with the ledgers open before him, pen idle in his hand. The figures blurred into one another—sound, orderly, sufficient. All was as it should be.
He ought to have felt satisfaction at so prosperous a year. Instead, the very fullness of it left him restless, as though plenty had robbed him of purpose.
Bootsteps echoed in the corridor, brisk and unhesitating, before the door swung wide without the courtesy of a knock. Darcy did not lift his head. Only one man in England would enter his library with such a step and such indifference to ceremony.
“Still buried in accounts?” Colonel Fitzwilliam’s tone carried half laughter, half reproach. “If you continue thus, I shall send word back to Father and inform him we have lost you to figures and firelight.”
Darcy closed the folio with deliberate care. “It is my duty to attend to the estate.”
“Your duty! Always your duty. I have been home scarcely a fortnight, and in that time you have contrived to evade every invitation that has crossed your path. Balls, dinners, musicales—you have refused them all. Do you mean to spend Christmastide locked in this room with your steward’s neat columns for company?”
Darcy rose to stir the fire, though the flames leapt readily enough without his interference. “I prefer to make myself useful.”
“Useful.” Fitzwilliam threw himself into the chair opposite with the careless ease of a man accustomed to camp life. “Darcy, if I wished for lectures in economy, I would seek out a clerk. I came for cheer, and you deny me even the semblance of it. You were not always thus.”
Darcy kept his gaze on the flames. “Times change.”
His cousin said nothing for a moment, then, with exaggerated patience, “Very well. If London is too crowded, then what of Bath? The waters are warm, the company lively. A man might forget his gloom in such a place.”
Darcy gave him a look that would have chilled weaker men. “To sit in crowded pump rooms, trading inanities with strangers? I think not.”
“Indeed,” his cousin answered with exaggerated calm. “If Bath offends you, then Brighton perhaps? A sea-breeze, cards, half the fashionable world gathered in merry idleness.”
Darcy set down his pen more firmly than necessary. “The very notion of it is intolerable.”
Fitzwilliam leaned back, untroubled by Darcy’s brusque refusal. “If not London, Bath or Brighton, what of my cousin Saybrooke? He and his lady wife are hosting a revel on Twelfth Night. A masquerade. Music, dancing, a host of diversions.”
Darcy’s lips thinned. “You know I have no taste for masques.”
“I know you have no taste for anything save solitude and account books,” Fitzwilliam retorted. “But perhaps something quieter would tempt you. A hunting party, a few families gathered together for good food and a warm hearth. Mama’s cousin, Sir Edward Montford has invited me to Kelton Manor in Northamptonshire. He writes that he and Lady Montford mean to make a proper season of it. Not too many guests—enough to fill the halls with cheer, but not so many that a man of sober mind might feel lost.”
“Ah, there it is. Your trump—I knew you would confess your real design soon enough.”
“I did not think my tactics were that transparent,” Richard said with a jerk of his jacket front. “But as I can hardly deny it, yes. I mean to go to Kelton, and I mean to drag you with me.”
Kelton,” Darcy repeated without looking at him. “I cannot leave Pemberley. There are matters that require my attention.”
“Your steward can attend them.”
Darcy turned back to his desk, taking up the quill though he had no intention of writing. “You speak as if estate management were a pastime that may be set aside at leisure. I have correspondence to answer. Accounts to reconcile. Winter is a dangerous season to abandon one’s tenants.”
Fitzwilliam snorted. “Your tenants will not rise in revolt if you absent yourself a fortnight. Admit it, Darcy—duty is your shield. You hide behind it to excuse your solitude.”
Darcy’s hand tightened on the quill. He bent to the ledger once more, though he could not see the figures. “You presume much.”
“I presume nothing. I have eyes.”
Darcy made no reply. The fire crackled, hot and unfeeling, and the silence lengthened until Fitzwilliam shifted in his chair.
“It is no rout in London, Darcy. Sir Edward’s estate lies near Stony Stratford—three day’s ride if the roads are clear. A modest enough company, well chosen, with no idle young misses thrown at your head. You would not be paraded or pressed. Only a few days of tolerable society, and I would have the comfort of knowing my cousin is not burying himself alive.”
Darcy kept his gaze on the figures before him, though the lines blurred into meaninglessness. “You overstate my condition.”
“I do not,” Richard said simply. “You are not yourself, and all the world sees it. If you will not come for your own sake, then come for mine. A man grows tired of his own company.”
Darcy inclined his head, though he did not look up. He heard the scrape of the chair and the solid tread of boots moving toward the door.
“Well, I cannot compel you,” Richard said. “But should you find your solitude less companionable than you imagine, Kelton Manor awaits. I have already sent my acceptance.”
The door shut behind him with a finality that rang through the quiet library. Darcy set down the quill at last, his hand resting on the edge of the desk.
Kelton Manor. Darcy repeated the name with deliberate scorn, as though the syllables themselves might lose their hold if he weighed them with contempt. A hunting party. Cards. Laughter echoing through corridors that were not his own. What purpose could such diversions serve, save to remind him of all he had lost?
He turned another page of the ledger, though he could not recall a single figure he had read. The idea was preposterous. He could not absent himself from Pemberley in the dead of winter. The tenants relied upon his constancy; the steward might require his judgment at any hour. It was not possible.
And if it were… Darcy pressed the quill so hard the nib splintered. What then?
To take his place among easy company, when his very name must call forth only contempt in the minds of those who knew him best? No, solitude was the only refuge left to him. The only safe course.
He shut the ledger at last, the columns swimming before his eyes, and leaned back in the chair. If his cousin longed for noise and diversion, let him take it. Darcy had no need of such hollow cheer.

Elizabeth’s needle pricked twice before it caught the narrow hem true. She drew the thread firm and smoothed the muslin over her knee, more for the comfort of the motion than for any great necessity in the work. The sitting room at Gracechurch Street was warm despite December’s mean temper—coal steady in the grate, lamp trimmed, the faint scent of orange peel and clove where her aunt had set a saucer to dry on the hob. Beyond the window, London kept its own winter music: cart wheels on wet cobbles, a hawker calling, the river’s breath somewhere farther off. Indoors, all was gentler. Mrs. Gardiner had taken the corner chair and was pretending to read; her gaze rested more on the fire than on the page.
“You will ruin your eyes, my dear,” Elizabeth said lightly. “That book has already confessed it will not be improved by your looking through it.”
Her aunt’s mouth tipped. “I am not reading so much as keeping company with the print.” The page turned—carefully, as if it might prefer not to be disturbed—and she set the volume aside. “You are very industrious tonight.”
Elizabeth glanced at the neat stack of finished handkerchiefs. “Industrious is a generous word. I am only determined to arrive at the bottom of a basket that appears to fill itself.”
“Like the loaves and fishes,” Mrs. Gardiner murmured, then reached to the saucer and pressed a clove deeper into the pitted orange rind. “One can hardly complain of abundance in winter, even if it is work one finds aplenty.”
There was a delicacy about her movements—no feebleness, only a care that had not always been necessary. Elizabeth felt it without wishing to name it. She set her needle and drew the lamp a little nearer, so the light did the work that her aunt’s strength ought not. “The house smells very like Christmas already,” she said. “You will have all Gracechurch Street envying us.”
“It will be the envy of very modest noses,” said her aunt, but the smile that accompanied it reached farther than her lips this time.
The door opened to admit Mr. Gardiner in a drift of damp air and city night. He shook the wet from his hat on the threshold and rubbed his hands before the fire with an energy that always cheered Elizabeth. “Cold enough to make a man doubt his virtues,” he declared, “until he remembers that virtue sits by the hearth.”
“Then your virtue is safe,” Elizabeth told him, rising to pour tea. “We have had care of it all the evening.”
“Only do not ask it to add figures,” he laughed, accepting the cup. “I have been with them all day, and they have proved stubborn companions. Yet the day was not wasted. I saw Mr. Taylor about the Northampton accounts; he believes the tanners there will settle before the new year.”
“Northampton?” Mrs. Gardiner looked up, interest pricking beneath her careful calm. “You mean to go yourself?”
“In a day or two, if the roads permit.” He sipped, warming. “I thought to take the northern road end of the week. A quick journey, if the turnpikes are not sulking.”
Towcester called a little picture into Elizabeth’s mind: under-inns steaming, post-boys splashed to the waist, a church tower pale against a pewter sky. “You will not go alone,” she said.
“No, my dear. I meant to ask if you would both accompany me as far as the Allenbys. You remember Mrs. Allenby—Louisa Meredith that was? Your aunt’s old school friend. They have taken a small house near Towcester for the winter. She wrote again last week, begging for a visit when the, ah… when the weather allows.” He softened his voice on the last words, and Elizabeth’s heart swelled with gratitude for the tact.
Mrs. Gardiner’s fingers worried at the corner of her handkerchief and then stilled. “Louisa is very kind. I had thought to answer that we would wait for spring.”
“Spring will not object to being cheated of us,” Mr. Gardiner said. “And the Allenbys are quiet souls. If it is too much—why, I can leave you to their good care and go on to Northampton alone. We will consult the weather and your comfort.”
Elizabeth watched her aunt’s face, the way a shadow of reluctance crossed it and then retreated before something steadier. It was not fear; merely a weighing of what would soothe and what would tire. “I should like you to go,” Elizabeth said softly, directed to the whole room and to one woman in particular. “A new fire to sit by may be as good as a new book, and we have already read this one.”
Mr. Gardiner’s eyes warmed. “Then I shall write to the Allenbys by the morning’s post.” He set his tea on the mantelshelf and drew a folded letter from his pocket. “We have a note from Longbourn as well. Your mother sends a great many exclamation points and the news—if news it is—that Netherfield may not be so empty as all that.”
Elizabeth’s needle paused. She kept her tone even. “Empty houses seldom remain so.”
“So I told her,” he returned, cheerful but kind. “But your mother has decided that a gentleman who does not live in a house may still be said to haunt it. I had begged for your sister to come to us, but your mother insists Jane must remain at home, in case a specter is susceptible to hot suppers.”
Elizabeth could not help laughing, and her aunt’s answering smile came quicker for it. “Poor Jane,” she said, easing the thread through. “When she marries, it shall not be to a ghost.”
“No,” Mrs. Gardiner agreed, gently resolute. “Jane will not live on a perhaps. She is too sensible for that.”
The name and all that hung about it passed through the air like the faintest draught and was gone. The stitch Elizabeth had made was true; the next went in more easily. She was pleased with the steadiness of her hand. Steadiness was a virtue of its own.
“Will the roads bear us, do you think?” she asked, to turn the talk forward. “You know them best.”
“If the frost is hard, they may help us along,” Mr. Gardiner said. “If it is thaw and ruts, we must say our prayers. But Towcester is a town built for travelers; it does not like to be defeated. And from there to the Allenbys is short enough even for a sulky road.”
Elizabeth tied off her thread and bit it clean. “And you would go on to Northampton,” she repeated, tasting the syllables. “A good deal farther on bad roads, is it not?”
“Not so far as to be unreasonable,” he said. His look flickered between them. “I have not promised anything. I only mention it because the invitation reached me to-day, and it would be discourteous to ignore it entirely.”
Mrs. Gardiner smoothed her skirt. “Neighbors are not strangers,” she said, after a moment. “And I should like to see Louisa first.”
Elizabeth’s thoughts ran ahead in a quiet line: the bustle of an inn yard, a smaller hearth with old friends, the safe industry of a kitchen where one may be useful without being noticed. She did not hunger after gaiety; she had no appetite for it. But to sit where her aunt might be cheered and her uncle amused—yes. She could like that very well.
She folded the finished handkerchief and placed it with its fellows. “We shall be governed by the weather,” she decided aloud, and felt the room agree. “And by the Allenbys.”
Mr. Gardiner came to stand behind his wife’s chair, his hand resting for a moment on the worn wood. “Very good. Then to-morrow I will send a note to the Allenbys and another to Northampton, with my compliments and a polite uncertainty.”
“An uncertainty dressed as civility,” Mrs. Gardiner said, the corner of her mouth lifting.
“It is the only coat uncertainty wears in December,” he answered.
When the little bustle of letters and lists subsided, the room took up its earlier peace. Elizabeth threaded a fresh needle, pleased with the quiet weight of purpose that came simply from being useful in the right place. She did not look outward for happiness; she did not expect it to seek her out. But she felt, not for the first time, that there were kinds of contentment which did not require a future to be bright in order to be good to-day.
Her aunt’s book had wandered back to her lap. “Why, Lizzy, I declare you have been practicing. You mend very neatly,” Mrs. Gardiner observed. “I shall have nothing left to do.”
“Then I will begin on Mr. Gardiner’s shirts,” Elizabeth said. “He is forever injuring a cuff out of pure industry.”
“Industry is my only vice,” her uncle protested. “I wear it threadbare.”
“You are safe with us,” Elizabeth returned. “We have a whole basket of virtue to keep you decent.”
After a time the lamplight grew softer, and the sounds beyond the windows dimmed to a hush that was not quite silence. Elizabeth rose to draw the curtain fully and caught a glimpse of the street: wet stones, a trace of white on the step where a late flurry had found a corner to linger. She rested her fingertips against the glass. The cold made a small ring about them and then faded.
“Snow?” Mrs. Gardiner asked.
“A little,” Elizabeth said. “Only enough to make the lamps look friendly.”
She let the curtain fall and returned to her chair. The orange on the hob had warmed; the cloves had given up their sweetness to the air. If the roads held, they would go north—first to a modest hearth, and perhaps beyond. If they did not, she would remain where she was needed, which was no poor fate. She threaded the needle once more and bent to her work with the sort of hope that belongs to hands—quiet, steady, and very nearly content.

To Be Continued!