The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

Chapter 11

Two days after her aborted final dinner with Jerry, and nearly four hundred miles to the south, Eliza was driving a small red Toyota along a narrow state road in Virginia. The car-rental agent in nearby Roanoke, where she had arrived on the morning commuter flight, had marked a map and assured her that this was the way to Pemberley Farms, but Eliza was beginning to have her doubts.

Though it was nearly ten in the morning, the lush, green countryside through which she had been driving for the past half hour was still shrouded in morning mist, giving an eerie look to a landscape that appeared largely untouched by human habitation.

Certain that she had either taken the wrong road or somehow missed the distinctive landmark that was supposed to identify her destination, Eliza glanced at the map on the seat beside her. “Go to a pair of big stone gates,” she snorted, mimicking the earnest rental agent’s thickly accented directions, “Ya cain’t missem, ma’am!”

Eliza squinted into the mist. “Well if ah cain’t missem,” she groused with a New Yorker’s inborn sense of frustration, “then where the hell are they?”

She was on the point of turning the car around and returning for fresh directions to the last small town she’d passed through when, suddenly, a pair of tall stone pillars emerged from the fog ahead, flanking an unpaved side road.

Eliza grinned at her own impatience. “Sorry, Clem,” she apologized in absentia to the friendly Hertz guy. “They’re big stone gates, just like you said.”

She guided the Toyota onto the side road and proceeded another quarter mile through a tunnel of overhanging trees. Emerging from the forest, she encountered a second set of gates: the real ones. They were heavy wrought iron gates intricately scrolled with an intertwining PF on each, probably created by a slave artisan right here on the plantation. Standing maybe ten feet tall and attached to brick pillars, they were secured by a large padlock. The pillar on the left held what Eliza assumed was the Darcy family crest or coat of arms or whatever they were called. The plaque on the right pillar appeared to be of patinized bronze. She slowly read the words spelled out in old English lettering, Pemberley Farms, Established 1789, then whistled softly to herself, “Oh my God!” she breathed, “I’m beginning to think that Thelma may actually have stumbled onto something here.”

Leaning out of the car to examine the formidable barrier in her path, she jumped slightly, startled by the cultured tones of a deep baritone voice in this seeming wilderness. She swiveled around in her seat to find an elderly black man looking politely in at her through the passenger window of the car.

“Good morning, miss, I’m Lucas. May I help you?”

“Yes, I, uh…” she stammered, caught completely off guard. “That is,” she began again, “can I drive in to the, uh, farm?”

The old gentleman, whom she noticed was dressed in a neatly pressed black suit, a snowy white shirt that matched his hair, and a black tie, looked regretful. “Oh, I am sorry, miss,” he answered, “but there’s no cars allowed up at the farm on the weekend of the Rose Ball.”

Eliza tried to go with the flow. “Oh, sure, of course, Lucas!” she said, all but slapping her forehead in an overdone attempt to convince him that she knew what he was talking about. “How idiotic of me. I completely forgot about the Rose Ball.”

If Lucas detected the patent phoniness of her response, he was too polite to betray any sign of it. “If you’ll just drive your car around behind the gatehouse there,” he said, gesturing to a fairly large stone cottage among the trees that she had somehow overlooked, “I will call up to the Great House for a guest carriage.”

“A guest carriage?” Eliza had a quick vision of her impromptu meeting with Darcy going straight down the tubes as her brain filled with images of a phone call to the “Great House,” whatever that was, followed by queries as to who she was and what business she had there. “Well, that’s awfully sweet of you, Lucas,” she quickly answered, “but I think I’d just like to walk on up to the house and, uh, admire the scenery along the way.”

Lucas seemed unruffled by the request. “Certainly, miss,” he replied. “Whatever you like.”

Smiling graciously, the relieved Eliza drove around the gatehouse and was surprised to find several luxury cars and two pickups parked in a large, grassy meadow. Parking the red Toyota as inconspicuously as possible between a BMW and a classic Jag, she shouldered her handbag, grabbed a small portfolio from the backseat and walked to the gates. Lucas already had them open for her.

He raised his eyebrows and smiled as she stepped through. “You have a nice walk now, miss,” he said as she moved past him and started up a drive that vanished into another thick stand of trees.

“How far is this house anyway?”

Despite the lingering coolness of the morning air and the movie-set fog swirling about her ankles Eliza was perspiring as she trudged wearily along the endless drive. Around her the landscape had gradually changed from dark woods to rolling meadows, then to woods again. But her destination was still nowhere in sight and her feet were beginning to seriously hurt.

“The problem with this place,” she grunted as she followed the drive down a small hill, across a picturesque wooden bridge, and then started up another steep incline, “is that there’s never a taxi around when you need one.”

Almost before she had finished uttering those words, a deep, thundering sound rumbled at her back. Whirling around to look back at the fog-shrouded bridge, she listened for a heart-stopping moment as the thunder reached deafening proportions. Then, like magic, a rider on a magnificent black horse burst out of the mist at a full gallop, bearing directly down on her.

Screaming in terror, Eliza hurled herself into the muddy ditch at the side of the drive, to avoid being trampled. She landed facedown in three inches of soft brown muck and felt a paralyzing jolt of pain as her left elbow connected solidly with a moss-covered rock protruding from the mud.

She rolled over and sat up in time to see the rider leaping from his mount and pounding back down the drive toward her. “My God! I’m terribly sorry,” he apologized. “Are you all right?”

Stunned by the force of her fall, Eliza blinked and stared groggily into his face…a face that seemed somehow familiar. “I…think so,” she answered, still more aware of the gooey muck clotted in her hair and smeared across her face than of the injured elbow, which had gone mercifully numb.

“Let me help you up,” said the horseman, stepping gallantly into the mud with his high, shiny boots and helping her to her feet, then gently pulling her back up onto dry ground. He stood there helplessly, regarding her filthy clothing and hair. Then he saw her badly skinned and bleeding elbow. “You’re bleeding,” he exclaimed. “That arm could be broken.”

“I guess it was my own fault,” she grumbled. “I thought they ran the Derby in Kentucky,” she added, trying for a bit of humor.

She did not resist as he pulled a spotless white silk scarf from around his neck and fashioned it into a makeshift sling for the injured arm. That done, he bent and peered into her eyes, obviously searching for additional signs of trauma.

Then he surprised her by asking, “Have we met somewhere?”

Eliza looked back into his unforgettable sea green eyes and felt the breath catch in her throat. “Darcy!” a voice was screaming from some distant corner of her brain. “This guy is Darcy, you nitwit!”

Suddenly it all made a weird kind of sense to Eliza: the e-mails, the oh-so-knowledgeable man at the library, his rumored purchase of another Jane Austen letter. Eliza blinked and looked at him again, dimly aware that he was speaking to her.

“Your elbow looks awful,” he said, looking worried. “I’d better ride up to the house for help.”

“No, please…” Eliza’s feeble protest was intended to prevent him from going to any more trouble. But from the expression on his face she saw that he completely misunderstood her motive.

“Of course, you’re right,” he said in a how-could-I-be-so-stupid tone. “I can’t leave you alone here. You might go into shock.” He looked around the deserted landscape and his eyes settled on the large black horse, which was placidly munching grass a few yards away by the side of the drive. “Do you think you can ride?”

Eliza stared at the huge animal. “On a horse?” she asked with a nervous little laugh. “I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve never been on one before,” she added, by way of explaining. “So maybe I’d better walk.”

He shook his head. “It’s almost a mile to the house,” he informed her.

“Oh!” Eliza could think of nothing more to say. So she watched in silence as he brought the horse over to her, then knelt at her side and made a stirrup with his hands.

“There’s nothing to it,” he assured her in his soft, slightly accented voice. “Just grab the saddle with your good hand and put your leg over when I push.”

Eliza stared wide-eyed at the horse. Up close it was even more enormous than she had previously thought. “I don’t think I can do this,” she protested.

“Come on,” he urged, “just give it a try.”

Feeling more than slightly ridiculous, she placed her left foot in his clasped hands and grabbed the saddle with her right hand. And suddenly she was looking down at him from a great height. “Who do you like in the fourth race?” she quipped in an attempt to cover her abject terror.

Laughing, Darcy retrieved her purse and portfolio from the mud, wiped them on his riding breeches and handed them up to her. She smiled appreciatively, “Thank you.” Smiling back he swung easily up into the saddle behind her. Reaching around for the reins, he urged the horse into a slow walk up the drive.

Acutely aware of his body moving maddeningly against her back and buttocks as her legs tightly gripped the powerfully muscled back of the horse, Eliza managed a breathless grin. “You could get arrested for doing this in the subway,” she said.

He laughed more heartily. “Well, we’ve established that you’re from New York,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Eliza Knight,” she answered, feeling slightly lightheaded. “What’s yours?” she added, remembering that she wasn’t supposed to know.

“Fitzwilliam Darcy, at your service,” he replied.

She had known he was Darcy but the Fitzwilliam caught her by surprise—the F in the e-mails, she should have guessed. “Fitzwilliam. Was your mother a Jane Austen fan?”

“It’s a family name.”

“Oh. Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Darcy.”

“My friends call me Fitz.” Darcy guided the horse at a slow pace for Eliza’s comfort and the small talk slipped into silence.

Feeling slightly dizzy she unconsciously leaned back against him. His breath caught in his chest. After a few moments she realized what she’d done and sat bolt upright. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, lean back, relax.” Unequal to the upright position she did relax against him. Strange, it made her feel safe and she sighed in contentment.

Fitz looked down and had to stop himself from kissing the top of her head. Odd reaction to a complete stranger and this was the second time in less than a week that a woman had stirred feelings he had not experienced in over three years. It felt good. Warmth radiated through his body as she instinctively nestled against him. It felt right, as though she belonged there. In spite of feeling slightly silly for what seemed like a schoolboy’s reaction, a small smile of contentment lit his face.

Chapter 12

The sun had already burned off the worst of the morning fog from the higher ground surrounding the magnificent Federalist-style mansion at the center of the estate.

Out on the broad front lawn, which sloped gently down to a small lake, tables and chairs of white wicker had been set up near a buffet table laden with cold meats and salads. Four of Darcy’s closest friends were standing around one of the tables making small talk about the fine weather and helping themselves to drinks and coffee, before sitting down to lunch.

The most striking member of the luncheon group was an elegant blonde. Her name was Faith Harrington and her golden hair was pulled straight back into a severe bun of the type that only the extremely wealthy seem to get away with. The classic hairstyle accentuated rather than detracted from her patrician good looks and minimal makeup. In fact, Faith looked absolutely wonderful in her form-hugging, fawn-colored English riding costume, the cost of which roughly approximated three months of the nearest servant’s salary.

Clutching a frosty Bloody Mary in one perfectly manicured hand, Faith raised her free hand to shade her sky blue eyes and peered anxiously out over the estate.

“Has anyone seen Fitz yet?” she asked nobody in particular. “He promised to ride with me.”

Harv Harrington—a slightly disheveled young man whose tousled hair and movie-star looks eclipsed his downscale out-fit of rumpled golf shirt, old khaki trousers and topsiders without socks—grinned and sauntered over to a table where he slouched into a comfortable wicker chair.

“You’ll have to start rising earlier if you want to catch Fitz that way, Sis,” Harv said, pausing to sip his own drink, which was primarily comprised of Stoly with a slight hint of orange juice for the sake of appearances. “Our gracious host lit out of here on his horse this morning before your first layer of natural-look makeup was dry.”

Faith was not amused by his taunt. “Baby brother, remind me to slip something toxic into your next martini,” she retorted, sitting primly in a chair opposite her brother and sticking out her lower lip in the tiny pout that had gotten her almost everything she’d ever wanted since the age of two.

“Don’t you two start,” warned Jenny Brown. She was a statuesque, awesomely beautiful black woman, and her rich, melodious voice carried a serious undertone of warning that instantly quelled the brewing argument between the Harringtons. Jenny’s husband, Artemis, a handsome, muscular man dressed comfortably in a threadbare Harvard T-shirt and baggy sailing shorts, arrived from the beverage table at that moment and diplomatically seated himself between Harv and Faith. He and Jenny exchanged a quick, cautious glance, then he raised his coffee mug to Harv.

“Cheers,” Artemis said without preamble. “Let’s eat.”

Faith’s lower lip extended another quarter inch, expressing her added displeasure at his suggestion. “Artie, we will not begin without Fitz!” she said emphatically.

“Faith, I’m hungry now!” Artemis countered. “And Fitz may not be back for hours.”

“Or at all,” Harv interjected, giving his sister a meaningful wink. “Remember that time when he—”

Faith’s cheeks instantly reddened through her imported Swiss makeup base. “Shut up, Harv!” she spat.

“Good Lord,” Jenny interrupted, pointing down the curving drive, “will you look at what’s coming!”

Distracted from the brewing argument, the others all turned and stared in the direction indicated by Jenny’s finger, in time to see Darcy riding slowly up the drive with the bedraggled Eliza tucked securely into the saddle ahead of him. As they watched, Darcy angled the black horse onto the grass and guided it straight toward their table.

“By God, it’s Fitz,” Harv laughed, getting to his feet, “and he appears to have rescued a damsel. She’s a real beauty, too, from the look of her.”

Faith glanced at the approaching pair and sniffed disdainfully. “How on earth can you tell?” she asked. “The poor thing looks as if she’s been freshly dipped in mud.”

By the time the horse reached them everyone but Faith was on their feet. “Harv, Artemis, lend a hand, will you?” Darcy called out. “Miss Knight has been injured.”

Harv and Artemis rushed forward to help Eliza down. When she was safely on the ground, Darcy dismounted and handed the horse over to a groom who had run up from the stables.

“We need to get your arm taken care of right away,” he told Eliza, who stood forlornly dripping mud in the circle of staring strangers.

“I think it may be broken,” he said worriedly to Artemis.

“I’m fine, really,” Eliza insisted. She looked down and cautiously fingered her bad arm, getting a good look at the blood for the first time since her fall. She winced at the sight because her arm really did look like hell. “It’s nothing, I’m sure,” she said without much conviction. “Just a skinned elbow.”

“Nevertheless,” Darcy said firmly, “I’d like you to go up to the house and let Artemis have a look at it.” He lowered his voice to a confidential tone and gave Eliza a conspiratorial wink.

“You see, Eliza, Artemis here is the leading orthopedic surgeon in our neighborhood and he will be crushed if you don’t allow him to demonstrate his healing skills for us.”

Darcy grinned at his friend. “Isn’t that true, Artemis?”

Artemis nodded, poker-faced. “I only ever come to Fitz’s weekends in hopes that someone will break something,” he told Eliza. “But nobody ever does,” he said glumly.

“Okay,” Jenny interrupted, scowling at the men. “That’s enough, you two. Let’s get this poor girl into the house.”

She took Eliza’s uninjured arm and led her toward the front steps of the mansion, with Artemis trailing behind. “Don’t pay any attention to them, honey,” Jenny told the newcomer. “They’re all crazy but harmless.”

Darcy stood watching until the trio had disappeared into the mansion. Then he walked over to the beverage table and drew himself a cup of coffee from a silver urn. He stood silently sipping the steaming brew and gazing out at the lake as Harv sidled up beside him.

“Nice catch, Fitz,” the younger man remarked. “Where did you find her?”

“She was walking along the drive, near the bridge,” Darcy replied distantly. “I nearly killed her.”

“Walking?” Faith exclaimed. She had joined the men at the table and was refreshing her Bloody Mary. “My God, what for?” she asked in genuine puzzlement.

Eliza sat on a small stool at an exquisite antique dressing table that blended beautifully with the other furniture in the large bedroom suite decorated in pale shades of blue. Artemis was down on one knee before her, gently examining her arm, while Jenny rummaged in a tall wardrobe behind him.

“It’ll be sore,” Artemis pronounced, getting to his feet, “doesn’t appear that you broke anything. If it continues to give you problems we can run into my office in town later and take some X-rays…”

Eliza gave him a grateful smile. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

Artemis nodded and closed the small emergency bag he’d dug out of a drawer. He reached over to give Jenny a quick kiss, then started to leave the room. Pausing at the door, he turned back long enough to order Eliza to let him know if she needed anything for pain, then he left.

“That’s some great husband you have, Mrs. Brown,” Eliza told Jenny, who was holding up a flowered sundress for her inspection.

Jenny grinned. “Isn’t my Artie something?” she marveled. “Now who would have ever thought a plain old country schoolteacher like me would have the luck to land a Harvard man, and him a damn fine doctor at that.”

“From my first quick impression of you two I would say that Artemis considers himself the lucky one to have landed you,” Eliza said with a smile.

Jenny’s lovely ebony face glowed at the compliment. “He does act that way, doesn’t he?” she smiled. “So I guess that makes us both lucky.”

She offered the flowered sundress to Eliza. “This may be a little big on you but I think it’ll do until we can get your luggage up here from the gatehouse.”

It took a moment for Eliza to comprehend that the other woman believed she was another of Darcy’s weekend guests. “Oh, I’m not going to be staying,” she exclaimed, shaking her head.

“You’re not?” Jenny Brown’s voice was filled with sincere disappointment. “But you’ll miss the Rose Ball tomorrow night.”

“I came down here hoping to see Fitz…Mr. Darcy for an hour or two,” Eliza explained. “I had no idea he had houseguests, or I would never have dropped in like this.”

Jenny gave her a strange look. “Well, you might have just dropped in but you surely landed with a big splash,” Jenny chuckled.

She put the sundress down on the bed. “You wear the dress anyway,” she insisted. “Fitz certainly isn’t going to let you get away without lunch.” Jenny scrutinized Eliza’s ruined clothing and matted hair. “The shower is right through there,” she told her, pointing to a door. “You’ll find everything you need in the bathroom, including Band-Aids. Just take your time and come on out to lunch whenever you’re ready.”

Eliza nodded gratefully. “Thank you, Jenny,” she said. “You’ve been very kind.”

Jenny smiled and gave her a wink. “And watch out for the icy blonde when you come downstairs,” she advised. “If our dear little Faith thinks you’re after Fitz, she’ll plant a dagger in your heart.”

“My mission is strictly one hundred percent business,” Eliza assured her with a grin, “so there’ll be no need for further bloodshed.”

As soon as Jenny left, Eliza entered the bathroom and looked into the mirror. For a moment she was shocked by the sight of her dirt-streaked face. And then she suddenly realized that the dirt and mud must have been the reason Darcy hadn’t recognized her from the library.

Removing her contacts, she stepped into the shower. Hot water pelted down on her, scouring the mud from her body and hair, stinging her elbow. She watched as the dirt swirled down the drain, reminding her that he would recognize her when she was cleaned up. She stood in the pulsating water wondering why she had denied having met him. Shaking off the guilt, she attributed the denial to her inbred New York paranoia. But that wasn’t going to make it any easier when he finally realized she’d lied.

Well, she supposed that it didn’t really matter right now; she would just have to cross that bridge when she came to it. Breathing deeply she accepted the fact that she couldn’t stall too much longer, she was already starting to prune.

Chapter 13

The others were lingering still over their delayed lunch on the lawn by the time Eliza put in an appearance. Harv was the first to spot her coming out of the house with her purse and portfolio in hand. He grinned lopsidedly and raised his glass in her direction. “Here she comes,” he announced loudly.

Faith looked up and grimaced to show her disinterest in the interloper. “Be still my foolish heart,” she muttered into her third or fourth Bloody Mary.

Ignoring Faith, Darcy rose immediately to his feet and strode across the lawn to meet the new arrival. “Miss Knight, are you feeling better?” he inquired with concern.

Eliza looked up at him through the glasses she used when she didn’t want to wear her contacts. Her thick black hair, still damp from the shower, was now pulled back into a flaring ponytail, and in Jenny’s oversized sundress she felt fairly confident that her own mother wouldn’t have been able to pull her out of a police lineup. So, for the moment at least, she was safe.

“Yes, thank you,” she replied to Darcy. “It’s nothing at all,” she assured him. “Dr. Brown says my elbow will be fine,” lightly touching her arm, “so there’s no harm done.”

Looking over at the table where the others sat, Eliza saw that they had stopped eating and were obviously waiting for Darcy’s return. “Please go back to your guests,” she told him. “As I explained to Jenny, I wouldn’t have come today if I’d had any idea I was intruding—”

Darcy gave her a warm smile and waved off her protest. “It’s no intrusion at all,” he assured her, nodding toward the others. “They’re all old friends of mine who came out early to help me coordinate our annual Rose Ball. You can tell me over lunch why you’re here.”

He arched his eyebrows like a film noir detective. “I presume you did come all the way down here to see me about something.”

“Yes, I did,” Eliza confirmed. “But I can easily come back on Monday when you’re free. I saw several motels in the last little town I passed…” She hesitated, glancing over at the table where his friends sat waiting. “My reason for wanting to see you is somewhat confidential in nature at this stage.”

Darcy nodded his understanding. “You all please go ahead without me,” he called to the others. “Miss Knight and I have some private business to discuss.”

He guided Eliza up the steps of the mansion to an empty table, signaling for a servant to bring place settings and drinks. “We can still talk over lunch,” he said, smiling. “Everyone here knows that I frequently entertain buyers who want to talk about nothing but horses, and almost always in confidence, so they’ll understand completely.”

Eliza allowed herself to be seated at a table on the veranda, some distance away from the others. She took a look around her while a white-jacketed waiter set places for her and Darcy. “Your house and grounds are truly beautiful,” she remarked as they waited for the man to leave.

“Thank you,” said Darcy. “But you haven’t seen the best part yet. And since you came all this way you’re more than welcome to stay on for the weekend. We’re expecting something over two hundred guests tomorrow night, all in authentic period costumes from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It’s always a spectacular event.”

Eliza reluctantly shook her head. “It’s very nice of you to ask me,” she said. “And it really does sound fascinating. But I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you any further. Actually, I only need a few minutes of your time and then I’ll be on my way.”

“Very well,” Darcy replied. “What can I do for you?”

At the other luncheon table Darcy’s friends were speculating about Eliza and the purpose of her unexpected visit to Pemberley Farms on the eve of the Rose Ball. Never one to stand on ceremony, Harv stared over at the pair, who seemed to be engaged in a serious discussion. As he watched, Eliza made a series of broad gestures with her hands and Darcy emphatically nodded several times.

“Okay, Jenny,” demanded the younger Harrington, turning back to his own table, “who is she and what’s she doing here?” Harv cast a mischievous glance at Faith, who was gazing glumly into her empty glass. “My sister won’t lower herself to ask you,” Harv said, injecting a comic maniacal tone into his voice, “but I can see that her eyes are already beginning to take on that familiar evil red glow.”

“Harv,” Faith snapped, “will you shut the hell up!”

Harv grinned and raised a glass to his sister as everyone turned to await Jenny’s reply. The tall black woman shrugged and, enjoying their suspense, speared a bite of her salad.

“I don’t know why you’re all making such a to-do,” Jenny said at length. “Her name’s Eliza Knight, she flew down from New York to see Fitz on some kind of business. And she’s definitely not staying the weekend.”

Jenny raised her right hand like the key witness in a murder trial. “That’s all I know.”

“Not staying, huh?” Harv looked crestfallen. “That’s too bad,” he complained. “We could definitely use some new blood around here.”

“Yes, but preferably not on the ballroom floor,” quipped Artemis around a mouthful of ham.

Jenny giggled and jabbed him in the ribs. “That was funny, Artie darling,” she laughed. “I wish you’d employ that dry Harvard wit of yours more often.”

Artemis shrugged. “I would but it’s a big strain,” he replied with a deadpan expression.

While his friends at the other table were busy conjecturing about Eliza, lunch was being served. Eliza watched in silence as a lovely salad with blackberry vinaigrette was placed before her, followed by a beautifully grilled trout, caught right here on the estate, as her host proudly explained. The servant finished his task, leaving a delicately woven silver basket filled with warm bread and a crystal dish of butter. Once he was out of sight and, she assumed, earshot, Eliza began her story. She started with the purchase of the dressing table (excluding any mention or thought of Jerry) and ended with Thelma’s confirmation of the authenticity of the letter and by extension the vanity as well.

Darcy had been listening with growing fascination to the pretty New Yorker’s remarkable tale. Every word she said about her discovery had the ring of truth to it and he was certain this was the break he had been anticipating for so long. By the time she had reached the end of her narrative he was leaning expectantly across the table, his green eyes fixed raptly on hers.

“The two letters you found,” he began when she had finished, “do you have them with you?”

Eliza nodded and lowered her eyes to the portfolio on the table near her. “As a matter of fact I do,” she said. “Although I’m afraid that poor Thelma Klein nearly had a nervous breakdown over my taking them out of her temperature-controlled vault. I was forced to remind her that they are still my property,” she added, thinking of the heated debate she had had with the stolid researcher.

She paused thoughtfully, examining Darcy’s eyes in an attempt to read the surging emotions she saw there. “I felt that it was important to bring the actual documents with me so you could examine them for yourself,” she told him.

Darcy nodded eagerly. “May I see them, then?” he asked, reaching for the portfolio.

Eliza’s hand beat his to the leather case, pinning it firmly to the table. “On one condition,” she said.

Disappointment was evident in his eyes as he leaned back in his chair and stared at her.

“You are reputed to have bought another Jane Austen letter from a British document dealer two years ago,” Eliza continued flatly. “I would like to see that one.”

“Who told you there was another letter?” Darcy demanded. “Oh, of course,” he snorted angrily, “it was that damned Klein woman.”

Darcy then realized that his tone had been too sharp. “I’m sorry,” he told her, “but the letter you mentioned has been a source of immense irritation to me for some time. I paid a great deal of money for it, with the express understanding that I would remain completely anonymous,” he explained. “So perhaps you can imagine how I felt when Thelma Klein, whom I had never met, suddenly began pressuring me to send it to her within twenty-four hours of the purchase.”

Eliza smiled. “Sounds exactly like Thelma.” Conceding in a pseudoconspiratorial tone, “She can be more than a little pushy.”

“At any rate,” Darcy said, calming down, “of course there’s no reason you can’t see the letter. I have it in my study.” His handsome features lit up with a charming smile, “If you’re finished with lunch we can go in now.”

Almost knocking his chair over in his rush to stand, his cheeks flushed pink and he looked away. Regaining his composure he gestured to the door. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Eliza was amused by the exuberance with which Darcy expressed his impatient desire to go into the house and see the letters. Trying not to reveal her own excitement, she smiled at him as she rose, “No time like the present.”

Chapter 14

The enormous cherrywood paneled room that Darcy referred to as his study reminded Eliza more of a university research library than a personal workplace. Besides the massive hardwood desk holding his computer, phones and what appeared to be several stacks of business papers, and a grouping of antique furniture arranged around a large fireplace, the richly decorated study contained a long, banquet-sized table that was strewn with reference texts, piles of letters and leather bound journals and diaries, all of which appeared to be of great age.

After showing Eliza to a comfortable armchair beside his desk, Darcy walked over to a file cabinet, removed a plain manila folder from an upper drawer and laid it on the desk in front of her. She looked at him questioningly and he nodded. “Go ahead, open it.”

With trembling hands Eliza opened the folder and found herself looking at a tattered fold of writing paper nearly identical in size and texture to the sealed letter that she had found behind the vanity mirror. Her voice was an awed whisper as she excitedly read the address written by the familiar hand in faded, rust-colored ink. “‘Jane Austen, Chawton Cottage ~ Fitzwilliam Darcy, Chawton Great House.’”

Her dark eyes sparkling with anticipation, Eliza looked up at him. “Yes, it looks the same as mine,” she told him. “May I read it?”

Darcy nodded, then he walked to one of the study’s tall windows and stared out at the lawns as she carefully unfolded the letter. Eliza read aloud:

12 May, 1810

Sir,

I have after some study located the passage that you and I were discussing last evening. If you will call on me at home at 2:00 p.m. today, I shall be glad to point it out for you.

“It’s signed ‘Jane A,’” she concluded.

Eliza looked up at Fitzwilliam Darcy, who had turned back to face her. “This is positively amazing,” she said, examining the old letter more closely. “This letter is dated the same day as my letter from Darcy to Jane. In that one he told her that someone he called ‘the Captain’ was suspicious of him and that he had to go into hiding.”

Darcy acknowledged that information with a slight nod. When he offered no further comment Eliza opened her portfolio and took out her two letters. She picked up the opened one and held it out for his examination. “Would you like to read it?” she offered.

To her utter amazement, he made no move to take the proffered letter but merely shook his head. “May I see the letter from Jane now?” he asked in a curiously subdued tone.

Eliza frowned at what struck her as his exceedingly odd behavior, but she handed him the sealed letter anyway. Darcy said nothing, but stared at it for several long seconds, slowly turning it over and over in his hand.

“Your letter from Jane says that she found the passage they were discussing,” Eliza interrupted, hoping to start a discussion with him about the mysterious message she had just read. “Do you have any idea what that means?”

Ignoring her question, Darcy returned to his desk and seated himself in the leather chair. Reaching down, he unlocked a lower drawer and removed from it a large folio checkbook, which he opened on the desk before him.

“Miss Knight, let me come directly to the point,” he said without looking up at her. He lifted a silver-chased fountain pen from an ornamental holder on the desk and held it poised above a blank check. “I would like very much to purchase these letters from you, as well as the vanity table in which you discovered them.”

Darcy slowly raised his eyes to meet Eliza’s. “What is your price?”

Taken completely off guard, both by the man’s seeming disinterest in the mysterious contents of the two opened letters, and by his abrupt offer to buy her letters without further discussion, Eliza could think of no instant reply. Instead, she sat there scrutinizing him from behind her glasses, trying to imagine what was going on in his mind.

Darcy remained motionless, waiting for her to speak. Sunlight from the tall study windows glinted brightly on the silver barrel of the fountain pen hovering over the check.

“Mr. Darcy,” Eliza finally commenced, clearing her throat and taking pains to keep her voice deliberately neutral, despite her growing anger. “I came here today hoping you might confirm for me that these letters were exchanged between Jane Austen and one of your ancestors. I certainly hope you don’t think that I intended to sell mine to you.”

Darcy smiled back at her with the barely concealed impatience of a headwaiter who has been insufficiently tipped. “I’m sure you had no such intention,” he said in a condescending tone that Eliza interpreted to mean that that was exactly what he thought. “Nevertheless, I would like to buy the letters from you all the same.” He raised the silver pen meaningfully. “You need only tell me how much you want, so that I can fill out the check.”

The arrogance of this man, who was obviously used to getting whatever he wanted simply by paying for it, irritated her and she snapped back, “My letters are not for sale and you haven’t answered my question: was your ancestor Jane Austen’s lover?”

The determination he saw on her face and in her eyes made it clear that she had no intention of selling him the letters or relinquishing this line of inquiry. Their eyes locked and she watched as the arrogance drained away, replaced by a palpable disappointment. Not sorry that she may have caused the change, she persevered, “Well?”

Darcy slipped the pen back into its holder and closed the checkbook, and with downcast eyes and in a voice barely above a whisper said, “No.”

More than a little surprised and unable to keep the skepticism out of her voice, she asked, “Are you telling me it’s just a coincidence that you share the same name?”

Getting irritated himself at what he perceived as an invasion of his privacy, he shot back, “I’m not telling you anything; I simply said that he wasn’t my ancestor.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do.” He offered nothing else as an uneasy silence descended on the room.

“That’s it, I don’t get any kind of explanation?” Her abrasive challenge reflected her growing annoyance with his evasions.

She was surprised to see his handsome features now filled with his own frustration and barely suppressed anger. “Although I can’t see that it’s any of your business, I can guarantee that you would not understand the only explanation I have and you certainly wouldn’t accept it.”

Shocked at what she considered an insult, she said, “So you think I’m too stupid to understand.”

Her statement brought back the memory of another woman saying almost those exact words.

His attention was obviously elsewhere, so Eliza accepted that the interview was over, gathered her things and stood up. Sarcastically she spat, “Well, thank you very much, I’m sorry I took up so much of your time.” She walked to the door, opened it and turned to him. “If you would arrange for someone to take me back to my car, I’ll leave you to the rest of your weekend.”

“Miss Knight…Eliza, please wait.” Halted by what seemed to be remorse in his voice, she closed the door and turned back to him.

Darcy stood behind his desk and gazed down at the single letter he owned. “It is very important to me personally to obtain your letters,” he said quietly. He hesitated, and for an instant Eliza was almost certain that he was going to weep. “Especially the unopened one,” he added in a humble tone.

Taking a few steps back toward the desk, “Then Jane’s Darcy was your ancestor!” Eliza said, realizing that she was actually beginning to feel some sympathy for him. “Well, I’m very sorry, but…”

“Dammit! That letter from Jane was meant for me!” he shouted in a voice filled with frustration.

Eliza’s mouth fell open and she simply gaped at him. “You are crazy!” Eliza accused. “I knew it the first time you e-mailed me.”

Anger flared like summer lightning in the depths of Darcy’s eyes. “You!” he shouted accusingly. “I should have known!”

Before Eliza could retreat he strode across the lush, rose-colored oriental carpet and pulled off her glasses. “You were the one at the library exhibit last week!” he said, glaring into her frightened eyes as she took a cautious step backward. “I thought there was something familiar about you!”

Darcy moved closer, his handsome features contorted with rage. “Did Thelma Klein put you up to this?”

He towered over her, so close she could feel the heat of his breath on her cheek. Eliza felt her knees weaken. Resolutely, although her hand was trembling, she snatched her glasses out of his hand. “I am getting out of here. Do not try to stop me.”

Clutching her portfolio to her side, she turned, threw the door open and fled down a long white corridor decorated with classical Greek statuary.

Darcy slammed the study door after her and struck it with his clenched fist, then leaned his head against the highly polished carved mahogany. How could he have been so stupid? Alienating the one person who, more than likely, held the key to his three-year search for affirmation.

Heaving a sigh at the lost opportunity, Darcy pulled himself together and went out to join his guests on the lawn of Pemberley House.

Chapter 15

The Browns and Harringtons were still lounging at their table on the lawn. Their heads swiveled in unison as the front door of the Great House flew open and they watched Eliza run down the steps. She paused on the drive for a moment, then saw them all looking at her as she turned and hurried away in the direction of the distant gatehouse.

“Well,” Faith observed with undisguised glee, “it appears that the business meeting has adjourned.”

“Lucky break for you, Sis.” Harv gave her a mock congratulatory wink. “You didn’t even have to arrange for her to fall from the tower.”

Far too pleased to be seriously annoyed by her brother’s taunt, Faith smiled angelically and traced the rim of her glass with a blood-red fingernail. “That’s right, Harv,” she replied sweetly, “now I can devote myself full time to arranging your little accident. Tell me, dear, have you checked the brakes on that old Jag of yours lately?”

Ignoring the semiserious rhetoric of the perpetually warring Harringtons, Jenny shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted after Eliza’s quickly diminishing figure. “That poor girl’s never going to make it all the way back to the gates on foot,” she said sympathetically. “Artie darling, see that she gets a ride, will you? And find out how I’m to get my dress back,” she reminded him.

Artemis obediently started to rise but Harv jumped up from the table and placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Stay right where you are, Artie, old pal,” he ordered. “I will personally handle this. Distraught young ladies happen to be a specialty of mine.”

Artemis shrugged and resumed his seat. Jenny looked slightly alarmed.

Faith’s angelic smile broadened. “Now don’t you fret, Jenny darling,” she exclaimed, patting Jenny’s arm. “Never let it be said that I do not give credit where credit is due. My baby brother does indeed happen to be expert in these matters. There is no doubt in my mind that he will have that old Yankee girl out of your dress in no time.”

Jenny rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Faith, honey,” she said, “Artie and I have an ironclad rule never to take a drink before sundown. But we’re going to break it just this once, for you.”

She looked over at Artemis who was already getting up and heading for the beverage cart. “Make mine a martini, darling,” she ordered. “A double!”

Eliza trudged wearily along the endless drive, attempting to reconstruct the details of her strange visit to Pemberley Farms. But she could make no sense of any of it. Why, she wondered, did Darcy want her letters when he seemed to have little interest in the one he already had? And what was it he had said about the unopened one? That it was meant for him. Sheer madness!

Of course, she glumly reflected, she should have known from the outset that Darcy was too good to be true. Dashing men as rich, handsome and charming as she had at first thought the tall Virginian to be existed only in the pages of romance novels, not in reality.

Calming down, mostly from the exhaustion of the walk, Eliza took a deep breath. She chuckled to herself; he actually was rich, handsome and charming. But there was something else, more, a gentleness, a melancholy; she couldn’t quite put her finger on it but it made him extremely compelling, the insanity aside.

She stopped and leaned against a tree, sighing and smiling to herself, reflecting on the way his eyes seemed to caress her at every glance. Returning to the reality of the afternoon, she pushed herself away from the silent strength of the tree and continued the trek to her car. Saying out loud as she continued down the dirt drive, “I haven’t gotten this much exercise since…forever.”

Still muttering to herself, Eliza heard the brisk clip-clop of hooves on the road behind her. Stepping quickly to the edge of the drive, lest she be trampled twice in the same day, she turned to see Darcy’s handsome friend grinning down at her from an open carriage.

The carriage drew smoothly to a stop beside her and the man stood and bowed gallantly. “Pardon me, ma’am,” said its occupant, “may I offer you a lift down to the gatehouse?”

“I don’t know,” she said warily. “Are you insane, too?”

“Sadly, yes,” Harv Harrington replied with a twinkle in his blue eyes, “but fortunately the homicidal streak in my family skips every third generation, so I believe you’re relatively safe.”

For the first time in hours, and despite her aching feet, Eliza found herself laughing. “In that case, I’ll take a chance,” she said, accepting his outstretched hand and climbing wearily into the carriage. She sank back gratefully into the soft leather cushions, wriggled out of her shoes and sighed. “This is heavenly.”

“Fitz never did properly introduce us,” he said as the carriage began to roll again. “I am Harv Harrington of Staunton, Virginia. And you are…?”

“Eliza Knight of New York, New York,” she replied.

“Well, Eliza Knight of New York, I must confess that I was longing for you to stay for the ball,” he said. “The local belles that Fitz invites are always so…provincial.”

“I’m sorry to have to disappoint you, Harv,” she replied with a grin, “but I forgot to bring my dancing slippers.” Eliza wrinkled her brow. “Besides,” she added, “your friend Fitz is a bit…eccentric for my tastes.”

Harv nodded his reluctant agreement. “Yeah, well, I’ll admit that poor old Fitz has been just a tad strange ever since that odd business over in England a few years ago.”

Eliza looked at him quizzically. “Odd business?”

Harv nodded. “Surely you remember. It was in all the papers at the time.” Harv paused to consider his last statement. “At least for a few days. It seems that Fitz went out riding one morning on a two-million-dollar hunter named Lord Nelson and disappeared for nearly a week. Naturally, everyone thought he’d been kidnapped, including Scotland Yard.”

“And had he?” Eliza asked, suddenly very interested in Harv’s story. “Been kidnapped, I mean?”

Harv slowly shook his head. “Evidently not,” he said. “In fact, nobody’s exactly sure what happened. But Fitz finally showed up days later, wearing some kind of old-fashioned costume.”

The jaunty young man looked around furtively and lowered his voice. “Of course,” he continued, “that part never got into the media. In fact, the entire affair got hushed up very quickly, as such things are apt to among very rich folk.”

“What did Fitz say had happened?” Eliza queried, her interest in this strange, new revelation about the mysterious Mr. Darcy slowly turning to fascination.

“Now that’s the strangest part of the whole story,” Harv replied, sounding genuinely puzzled. “You see, Fitz never would talk about it. Not even to his closest friends. Course,” he added, exaggerating his soft Virginia accent, “all us Southern gentlemen are trained from birth not to question the peculiarities of our wealthier friends.”

He paused and shook his blond head thoughtfully. “It was soon afterward that Fitz started haunting antique book and document auctions, buying up whole collections of old letters and journals from the early nineteenth century…almost as if there was something he needed desperately to find.”

Shortly after Eliza’s abrupt departure from the house Darcy went outside intending to send a carriage to find and take his visitor back to her car. Having been gleefully informed by Faith that Harv was already attending to Eliza, he instead poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down with the others, ostensibly to discuss arrangements for the next day.

“What a shame that your little damsel couldn’t stay for the ball, Fitz.” Unable to leave well enough alone, Faith pressed her Cupid’s lips together and made a small, sympathetic sound. “She made such a decorative accent to your riding outfit this morning.”

Darcy stared past her to a distant point where the drive disappeared beneath a canopy of trees, lost in private reflection. Far from having the intended effect, Faith’s comment served only to heighten the painful realization that he had handled his encounter with Eliza Knight exceedingly badly.

“Well,” Faith continued in her gay chatter, completely unaware of the smile that lit his face, “I guess that will leave you and me together again, just like old times—”

“Excuse me a moment, Faith.”

Never glancing at her, Darcy suddenly got to his feet and walked away. Confused, Faith looked over her shoulder to see him striding toward the front of the house to meet the returning carriage.

“What is she doing back here!” the blonde hissed, jumping to her feet.

“Oh, oh!” Jenny exclaimed in a stage whisper intended only for Artemis.

Her laconic husband followed Jenny’s startled gaze to the carriage, which was just rolling to a stop. Artemis moaned theatrically and sank lower into his chair. “Oh hell!” he said. “Somebody better call 9-1-1.”

“We’re out in the country, dear,” Jenny reminded him. “I’m afraid there is no one we can call,” she said, taking a large gulp of her drink.

Eliza and Harv were laughing at something he had just said as the carriage came to a stop before the steps of the mansion. Harv spotted Darcy walking toward them and waved. “I brought her back, bag and baggage, Fitz. She’s agreed to stay the weekend,” he proudly reported.

Mildly astonished by Harv’s announcement, Darcy smiled up at them and shook his head. “Harv,” he said, “it is obvious that I have grossly underestimated the raw power of your Southern charm.”

He stepped up to the carriage and extended his hand to Eliza. “I am very glad you changed your mind,” he said.

Eliza took his hand and stepped out of the carriage with a nervous smile. “I warned him I’ve got nothing more formal to wear than jeans and T-shirts,” she said, nodding toward Harv, who was busy gathering up the two small bags they’d retrieved from her rented Toyota.

“There is vintage clothing in the wardrobe room,” Darcy assured her, “so I’m sure you can find something appropriate to wear.”

His smile faded and his expression turned suddenly serious. “I was afraid I’d frightened you away for good. I hope you’ll forgive my earlier outburst. It was very wrong of me to assume that you came here to sell your letters.” He fixed her in his haunting green-eyed gaze. “I must confess that I’m very surprised to see you back,” he continued. “My behavior was unforgivable.”

“I guess that makes us even, then,” Eliza said. “I’d already been feeling pretty awful about how I treated you on the Internet, so I probably overreacted myself.”

She looked around to see if Harv was listening and saw that he was engaged in turning over her luggage to a portly, middle-aged woman who had come down from the house.

“I really came back to hear why you said that Jane’s letter was meant for you,” she frankly admitted to Darcy. “That is, if you’re willing to tell me.”

Darcy’s smile returned and he nodded. “Mrs. Temple,” he called to the woman with Harv, “would you see that the Rose Bedroom is prepared for Miss Knight? I’m going to take her down to see the horses now.” With that he took Eliza’s arm and led her away.

Harv watched them walk across the lawn toward the end of the house, then he turned to Mrs. Temple, whose mouth had fallen open. “You heard the gentleman,” he said. “The lady will be staying in the Rose Bedroom.”

The astonished housekeeper followed his gaze to Eliza and Darcy. “He’s putting her in the Rose Bedroom!” she exclaimed breathily. “Who on earth is she?”

Harv shrugged and gave Mrs. Temple a boyish grin. “Evidently an honored guest of your employer,” he replied.

Knowing better than to expect any further help or information from Harv, the housekeeper clucked her tongue three times to register her disapproval of the unanticipated situation. Then she wiped her red hands on her apron in resignation, hefted Eliza’s bags and disappeared into the house with them.

“I cannot believe that woman is going to be staying in the Rose Bedroom!” she said.

“Oh, hello, Faith!” Harv turned to look at his sister, who had crept up to eavesdrop while he was speaking with the housekeeper, and then he glanced at his watch and frowned. “It took you close to sixty seconds to get up here from the lawn,” he informed Faith. “That’s nowhere near your best time.”

“What does that witch want with Fitz?” Faith demanded, craning her long, smooth neck to peer in the direction the couple had gone.

“Best I could make out is that she has some old letters that he wants to buy,” he replied. Seeing Faith’s always-suspicious eyes narrow in a way that promised big trouble was not far off, he added, “You know how Fitz is about that kind of thing these days…”

To Harv’s great relief his last remark seemed to have had the desired effect on his combative sister—because her suspicious frown lessened noticeably and her pushed-out lower lip receded by several millimeters. “Old letters! And she’s holding out on the price,” Faith knowingly proclaimed.

“Well now that I can understand. I thought it was something serious.”

Chapter 16

As Eliza walked with Darcy past the house she saw that the broad gravel drive in front of the property branched into a narrower lane. They followed the pleasant road down a slight hill toward a complex of low brick buildings trimmed in green and ringed with white rail fences. Several of the fenced enclosures adjoining the lane contained horses, which came trotting expectantly to the rails to watch the couple passing by.

Looking at the converging scenery of lush countryside and distant mountains, Eliza was reminded of Jane Austen’s description of Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice. What was it? Something about how man had not interfered with what nature had done. That’s how Fitz’s farm seemed to her and she remarked, “I’d love to paint here sometime,” and meant it.

“You’re an artist,” Darcy replied, sounding pleased that she approved of his property. “But then, I suppose I should have figured that out from your online screen name. Smartist, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she laughed, wondering just how smart she was being in having agreed to spend the weekend as the guest of the strangely obsessed horseman. “I paint idealized country landscapes.”

Darcy raised his eyebrows. “In Manhattan?”

“I guess that does sound a little odd,” Eliza said, though she had never thought of her way of working as particularly odd until he had implied it. “Though they’re based on actual places I’ve visited, most of the landscapes I paint are imaginary,” she explained. “I often compose them entirely in my mind beforehand, so I suppose you could say they’re really fantasies.”

Darcy thought about that for a long moment. “That could turn out to be an advantage,” he said, “when I try to explain to you about the letter.”

She cast a questioning glance his way but he kept walking, so she said nothing and waited for him to go on.

“What I meant was that it may be helpful that you work with your imagination,” he continued. “Because I’m absolutely positive that what I’m about to tell you would be automatically rejected by anyone without a receptive mind.”

“About why you said Jane’s letter was meant for you?” she asked.

Darcy nodded. “I’ve never discussed the reasons for my interest in Jane Austen with anyone.”

Eliza wasn’t quite sure if another response was expected from her. So when Darcy did not say anything further for several more seconds she nudged him. “Well, I’m all ears,” she said.

“Perhaps, but it’s difficult to know where to begin, considering the fact that you obviously already think I’m deranged,” he responded, looking grave.

“I’m so sorry about what I said to you before!” she apologized, determined not to provoke him again, at least not until she had heard him out. “I have such a big mouth,” she added. “I’m afraid tact has never been one of my virtues.”

Darcy raised a hand to preclude any further admissions of guilt on her part. “Please don’t apologize,” he said. “In fact, there was a long period of time when I wondered myself whether I was merely delusional, or if…”

He left the thought hanging as the enormous black stallion he had been riding earlier extended its head over the fence and whinnied for his attention. Stepping off the road, Darcy walked over to the enclosure, patted the animal’s nose and fished in his pocket for a handful of something. Eliza came over and leaned on the rails beside him and watched the horse gratefully nuzzling the treat from his open palm.

“Before I begin my story,” Darcy said, turning to look at her, “you should probably know that my family has been breeding champion hunters and jumpers on this same land for generations.”

Deprived of Darcy’s full attention, the black horse fixed a jealous eye on Eliza, then tossed its noble head impatiently in an obvious plea for more of whatever the treat had been.

“I saw the plaque on your gates,” Eliza said, keeping a wary eye on the magnificent animal, which still frightened her, mostly because of its size. “The idea that it’s been in your family since—is it 1789?—is amazing.”

Darcy nodded. “We’ve always been proud of our heritage. And we’ve been buying and selling horses across the Atlantic since the late 1800s,” he told her. “So my visit to England three years ago began as an ordinary business trip.” He hesitated for a moment. “It wasn’t really ordinary, I suppose. You see I had gone to England specifically to attend a breeder’s auction at which a particular horse was to be sold. A champion among champions.” He rubbed the velvety nose of the big black stallion again. “Lord Nelson, meet Eliza Knight.”

Darcy looked over at her and smiled. She couldn’t help but return the smile.

Turning back to the horse, he hesitated, wondering just how much to tell her. The memory of the auction excited his senses but the exhilarating images dimmed as Darcy also remembered the cloying closeness of Faith Harrington that long-ago afternoon. She had been hanging on his arm all day, the sweet smell of too much champagne on her breath as she screamed encouragement into his ear every time the blue lighted numbers on the electronic auction board went up and up…

Over Darcy’s objections, Harv had insisted his sister accompany them to England. Darcy, however, had been concerned that a trip abroard with him would simply fuel the tabloid reports of their impending engagement; reports, which seemed to be more and more frequent. He often wondered, in spite of her declaration of innocence, if Faith wasn’t the source of the reports. She often allowed her fantasies to get the better of her and he didn’t want to add to them. But, as was often the case with Harv, he had acquiesed and so she had joined them.

Shaking off the unpleasant thoughts he said, “I wanted that horse very badly.” Darcy resumed his narrative, suddenly remembering that Eliza was still there, “primarily to improve the bloodlines of my stable.” He shook his head ruefully. “The only question was whether or not I could really afford him.”

There had been an Arab princeling in a box opposite Darcy’s, the third or fourth son of the royal house of some oil-rich Gulf dynasty. With no appreciable chance of ever attaining his country’s throne, and with unlimited money to spend, the handsome young prince had become a notorious international playboy and womanizer, and a renowned horseman as well. That particular afternoon, surrounded by a bevy of pale English film actresses and his huge retinue of bulky bodyguards and simpering retainers in well-cut suits, the flamboyant prince had been Darcy’s only serious competitor for the black horse.

The bid had escalated well past the million-pound mark—Darcy’s absolute upper limit—when, thankfully, the youthful potentate had suddenly lost interest in the proceedings and dropped out.

“In the end,” Darcy told Eliza without elaborating, “I won the bid and the horse was mine, but for far more than I had planned on spending. I immediately had Lord Nelson transported down to a friend’s country place in Hampshire, about fifty miles out of London, to be stabled there until I could arrange to have him flown back to the States.

“That night,” Darcy continued, “my friends rather unwisely decided that a victory celebration was in order. I’m afraid there was a great deal of drinking and general carousing…”

His voice trailed off again as he prudently edited his story, leaving out the details of the drunken evening that had ensued in the echoing drawing room of the vast Edwardian manor house his friends the Cliftons had rented for the summer. Also leaving out the fact that the evening had ended very late as he tottered up the stairs, with Faith still hanging on his arm.

Throughout his halting preamble Eliza had been closely watching Darcy, certain from his long pauses and hesitant delivery that he was modifying the story for her benefit as he went, but uncertain what any of it had to do with Jane Austen, or her letters.

Now he caught her quizzical expression and flushed with embarrassment.

“Well, I suppose you’re wondering what all of this rambling about a horse auction and a country house has to do with the Jane Austen letters?” he asked, as though he’d been reading her mind.

Eliza grinned and pointed her chin westward. “The sun will be going down in a few hours,” she noted.

The small joke seemed to relax Darcy slightly. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I warned you that I’d never discussed this with anyone before. I had no idea it was going to be so difficult.”

“I get the impression that you’re trying to be selective in what you’re telling me,” Eliza replied, trying to put him more at ease. “Maybe if you just told me everything that happened and left out all the long, reflective pauses.”

Darcy nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s just that some of what took place is a bit personal in nature.”

Eliza solemnly raised her right hand. “I promise not to tell another soul,” she said.

“Okay,” he agreed. “The only point of the story so far is that three years ago I went to England to buy a very expensive horse and ended up with him at a friend’s country place in Hampshire.”

Eliza nodded. “Fair enough.”

“One more thing I should explain before I go ahead,” he said. “Some of what I’m about to tell you—things I didn’t know as they were happening—was related to me afterwards…” Darcy hesitated, choosing his words carefully, “…by someone else who was there.”

Eliza nodded her understanding.

Darcy gazed off into the distance again. “Though it had been a very late night, I awoke before dawn the morning following the auction,” he began.

He closed his eyes, remembering how he had slowly come awake in the big, ornately carved and canopied bed in one of the many guest rooms of the friend’s country house and found Faith sprawled unattractively in a tangle of sheets beside him.

Shakily getting out of the bed, Darcy had gone to a window and looked out over the gray, fog-shrouded Hampshire countryside.

“I had a splitting headache,” he told Eliza. “I wanted to be outside in the cold morning air…”

He looked back at the bed; he had been afraid Faith’s traveling with him would send her the wrong message and now too much drink and his own arrogance had created what would surely become an untenable situation. In another time he would have been considered a cad, taking advantage of a woman who had had too much to drink, using her. He was heartily ashamed of himself and feared that he would pay the consequences of his impetuous and stupid actions many times over. His eyes returned to the window and the mist-covered meadow beyond the grounds of the house; at that moment he wanted nothing more than to be away from her.

Darcy paused, deciding that there was no reason to tell this stranger how seeing Faith in his bed made him cringe, adding only, “I wanted to get out and ride Lord Nelson, to feel him underneath me, to see what he could do.” Darcy smiled. “I also think I needed to convince myself that I hadn’t made a very expensive mistake. After all, I’d never before spent two million dollars on a single animal.

“So,” he continued, “I got dressed in some proper English riding clothes, went down to the stables, woke up one of the grooms and had him saddle Lord Nelson.”

“Wow!” Eliza breathed. “Two million dollars’ worth of horse! And you just got up with a hangover and decided to take him out for a little prebreakfast gallop.”

“It was an incredibly stupid thing to do,” Darcy admitted. “The sun wasn’t even up yet and I was completely unfamiliar with the surrounding countryside.”

Darcy began to speak freely then, describing to Eliza the momentary feel of the horse’s warm breath on the back of his hand as he took the reins from the sleepy groom, the emptiness of the silent, gray English landscape as he had vaulted up into the saddle and started across a stubbled field in the direction of the gradually lightening sky.

Then suddenly, as he spoke, he was back in that meadow on that gray English morning, urging the willing horse forward, feeling the cold, damp wind in his face.

And, just as the great animal’s muscles had seemed to loosen and stretch with the sheer joy and freedom of the run on that long-ago day, so the story that Fitzwilliam Darcy had kept to himself for three long years began to spill from his lips in an unstoppable torrent of words.

Enthralled and mystified by the intensity of his narrative, Eliza listened in silence, not daring to interrupt, lest she break the spell.

Chapter 17

Riding farther and farther from the house, lost completely in the speed of the run and the nearly mystical agility of Lord Nelson, Darcy was unsure how much time had passed as he rode. But at some point he noticed that the sky was rapidly brightening ahead of them and the heavy veils of mist were slowly beginning to part.

Then, directly in their path at the far end of a long meadow, he spied a wall of stacked field stones overhung with the intertwined branches of two tall trees.

As man and horse drew nearer, the rising sun began to climb into the steeply arched frame formed by wall and trees. The illusion of a natural doorway of stone and living wood was so perfect that Darcy suddenly took it into his head to jump the wall, which was low and did not appear to be particularly wide.

Certainly, he thought as they hurtled onward, the low stone barrier presented no serious obstacle for a champion jumper as accomplished as Lord Nelson.

Leaning forward for the hurdle, Darcy pushed the eager horse to its limit, smiling in anticipation of the instant when Lord Nelson’s fleet hooves would leave the ground and they would be momentarily flying.

Then, a heartbeat before they reached the wall, the great red orb of the dawning sun rose higher, all at once clearing the tree-filled horizon and flooding the natural archway with a blaze of dazzling light.

In that same split second Darcy realized his mistake, for he could see nothing of the terrain that lay ahead of them in the next meadow. He considered trying to stop Lord Nelson but it was far too late. For the horse was already lunging up and over the wall, into the blinding window of sunlight.

Then, with a sudden, bone-jarring jolt Darcy was flying alone, flying headfirst over the horse toward a hard, uncontrollable impact with a patch of muddy ground on the far side of the stone wall.

Vaguely he heard the frightened horse’s scream, followed by the receding sound of its hoofbeats.

Then, nothing.

“I think he’s dead.”

“No. See, he’s breathing. Quick, run for help!”

The voices were high and musical, like angel voices, he thought. Whether minutes or hours had passed Darcy could not be sure. His eyelids slowly fluttered open and he blinked into strong sunlight.

He seemed to be lying on his stomach, his head turned awkwardly to one side, half-resting on his shoulder. Automatically he started to rise, but his limbs would not obey.

Strange, he thought.

Directly in his field of vision lay an outstretched arm—his own, he realized with a start. He could clearly see the hands of his watch glinting in the dazzle of sunlight, slowly ticking off the passing seconds.

A shadow blotted out the sun and Darcy found himself looking up into a small, worried face. Again he thought of angels, for the apple-bright cheeks and wide blue eyes of the tiny blonde girl regarding him might have belonged to a cherub.

The beautiful child cocked her little head and spoke. “Oh you are alive, sir!” A heartbreaking smile of relief curved the perfect bow of her pink lips and she knelt beside him on the dew-damp ground, reaching out to dab at his bloodied forehead with the hem of her long, ragged dress.

Darcy opened his mouth to speak but only a soft moan escaped his lips. The worried child leaned closer to whisper in his ear as he felt himself plunging downward into unconsciousness, her sweet, plaintive cry echoing as through a vast, dark tunnel. “Please, sir, don’t die!”

More time passed before he struggled up into the light again. Now his head was throbbing with gouts of liquid fire and he felt the pull of rough, work-hardened hands flipping him over onto his back like a beached sea creature.

“Well, he’s a gentleman, that’s for certain,” said a stranger’s deep voice. “Look at his hands.” The speaker had an unfamiliar country accent and he was methodically feeling and prodding his way through Darcy’s pockets.

“Queer, though, them boots,” said a second man. “And what’s that on his arm?”

As the words were spoken Darcy felt his right arm being lifted. He opened his eyes to see two men in shapeless woolen caps, muddy boots and filthy leather breeches examining the gold watch on his wrist.

“It’s a cunning little pocket watch, that,” observed the first speaker, his voice filled with sudden awe. “Smallest one I ever seen. Oh, he’s a gent for sure, this one.”

Darcy briefly lifted his head, and then he fell back into the dark tunnel again.

He awoke once more, certain this time that he must be dreaming. For there were green tree branches passing over his head, interspersed with patches of bright blue sky speckled with cottony puffs of cloud, and the sound of creaking wagon wheels somewhere beneath him.

Looking down past his own chest, Darcy caught a glimpse of Lord Nelson, his reins looped to a wooden post on the lurching farm wagon, following placidly along behind his prone master.

“I say we take him up to Chawton Great House,” said the deep voice of the man who had been examining Darcy’s watch. “We’re like to get a bigger reward up there, from the master.”

“Don’t be daft,” argued the second man. “The cottage is closer. And there’ll be no reward for the likes of us if the poor gent expires in the back of this here cart.”

Once more Darcy tried to lift his head, for the two men he could hear so calmly discussing his possible demise in the back of their wagon were somewhere beyond the range of his vision. And, once more, raising his head proved to be a serious mistake. Darcy was swept by a dizzying wave of nausea and he felt himself sliding inexorably back into the dreaded echoing tunnel of darkness.

When consciousness next arrived he was being carried on a board into a large stone house. The voice he heard this time was that of a cultured Englishwoman. Without attempting to raise his aching head Darcy opened his eyes and saw her standing off to one side, issuing stern orders to the two men.

“Take him upstairs to the first room. Careful! Mind the steps.”

She was slender and, he thought, somewhat pretty, though her fine features seemed drawn with worry. But he noticed that the two rough men, who seemed to be taking great pains to follow her instructions, were also handling him far more gently than they had earlier.

Before he could get a better look at the woman she disappeared from his field of view. Then the board was tilted at a sharp angle and Darcy was being carried up a flight of broad stairs. But he could still hear her on the floor below, giving orders to another woman.

“Maggie, send to the village for Mr. Hudson,” she said with just a touch of panic in her voice. “Say that he is most urgently required here.”

“Yes, Miss Jane!” The woman called Maggie must have responded quickly, because a hurried shuffling of feet and the slamming of a door almost immediately followed her reply.

Darcy was carried into a pleasant upstairs room and laid on a feather-soft bed that smelled faintly of roses. It was the dark-haired woman’s own bed, he guessed, remembering that her name was Jane. He idly wondered if her skin smelled of roses as well. A moment later her face moved into his field of view and he looked up into her luminous brown eyes.

From this vantage point he discovered that she was much prettier than he had previously thought, with a firm but sensuous mouth, regular features framed by beautiful dark brown hair that gleamed with highlights of sunshine from the open window.

But her best feature, he thought, was her large brown eyes, which sparkled in the light and seemed to contain infinite depths of intelligence and understanding.

Darcy smiled weakly at her and was rewarded with a lovely smile in return.

“I feel a bit foolish about all of this,” he said, finding his voice at last. Momentarily forgetting his earlier experiences with gravity, he attempted to boost himself up onto one elbow. The effect was immediate and severe, as a jagged spear of pain impacted like a Scud missile just above his right eyebrow.

“Please remain still,” she pleaded, placing a strong but gentle hand on his shoulder and pushing him onto the pillows. “I have sent for a doctor.”

Groaning, Darcy allowed his head to loll back, then turned it slightly to the side to gaze past her into the room. To his surprise, he saw the two shaggy men who had rescued him still standing beside the open doorway, woolen hats clutched nervously in their dirty hands.

“What happened?” he asked self-consciously. “I feel like I’ve just been slammed by an express train.”

The men at the door exchanged confused glances but said nothing. The dark-eyed woman, however, noticed the movement and turned to them. “Thank you,” she said, addressing them as if they were particularly good children. “You have both done very well. Now please go up to the manor house as fast as you can and summon my brother.”

Jane paused for a moment, then added with a smile, “And you may tell him I said you are to have a reward.”

Rather than being insulted at what seemed to Darcy to be her condescending tone, the two rough-and-dirty men both beamed and touched their foreheads respectfully. “Yes, Miss Jane. Thankee, miss,” they chorused, backing awkwardly out of the bedroom.

Darcy heard their clumping footsteps on the stair as Jane returned her attention to him.

“You were thrown from your horse,” she said in response to his earlier question. “Do you not remember that?”

All in a rush it came back to him. “Lord Nelson!” Darcy exclaimed. “Oh damn, how could I have been so stupid.”

“I beg your pardon! Did you say Lord Nelson?” Jane was regarding him very strangely now and he saw her drawing back from the bed in shock.

“My horse?” Darcy anxiously inquired. “Where is he?”

“The horse is uninjured,” she said uneasily, her bright brown eyes darting to the empty doorway. “Those men brought him here with you.”

“Thank God!” Darcy’s sense of relief was palpable as he considered all of the horrible things that could have happened to the extremely valuable animal as the result of his ill-advised sortie.

“Please try to rest now,” his attractive guardian urged, cautiously coming a little closer to the bed again. “The doctor will be here soon.”

Darcy’s eyes were darting nervously about the room, taking in for the first time the candlestick on the night stand by the bed, the antique furnishings everywhere and the woman’s high-waisted, floor-length gown that exaggerated the enticing swell of her breasts. “What is this place anyway?” he asked. “Some kind of historical theme park?”

The intelligent dark eyes followed his as he continued to scan the quaint furnishings of the bedroom, and again her expression was strange. “You are at Chawton Cottage,” Jane replied at length. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Could you possibly phone the people I’m staying with?” he asked. “They may be getting worried about me.”

“Fone?” She repeated the word with a puzzled look.

“Yes, the Cliftons,” Darcy said. “They’re leasing that gigantic old Edwardian brick pile a mile or so to the west of where I fell.”

Darcy smiled ruefully, thinking of the ribbing he was going to get when Faith and the others turned up in the Land Rover and discovered the mess he’d gotten himself into.

“My name is Fitzwilliam Darcy,” he told Jane, who continued to stand there staring at him. “Just ask the Cliftons to get over here with a horse trailer, and tell them I’m okay,” he requested.

“Okay?” She was still staring at him with that strange, slightly disbelieving look in her eyes. “I am very sorry,” she said slowly. “But I do not believe that I comprehend your precise meaning, Mr. Darcy.”

Convinced that for some reason of her own she didn’t want to make the telephone call for him, Darcy sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

“Oh please, do not try to move,” Jane pleaded, rushing forward with obvious alarm.

“I think I’m okay now,” Darcy said, trying to get his feet under him. “If you’ll just show me where your phone is, I’ll call the Cliftons myself…”

He got unsteadily to his feet, stood tottering beside the bed for a moment, then suddenly toppled to the floor like a bag of dropped cement.

Jane fell to her knees beside him. “Mr. Darcy!”

Like the tiny cherub before her, Darcy heard her cry of alarm echoing from a long way off. “Maggie,” she called, “come here! I need you.”

Maggie, the red-faced housekeeper, hurried into the bedroom and stared in confusion at the unconscious man lying on the floor.

“Don’t just stand there,” said Jane, bending over him. “The gentleman has fainted. Help me get him back into bed.”

Together the two women managed to haul Darcy back onto the bed. When it was done, they both stood panting from the effort. Maggie fanned herself with her apron for a few moments. Then she went around to the foot of the bed and started removing Darcy’s boots.

Jane watched her, then reached over and unbuttoned his waistcoat and shirt, revealing a chain holding a gold medallion emblazoned with the Darcy family crest. She curiously lifted the pendant in her hand, looking at the detail in the design, then returned to the business of unfastening his shirt.

“Now you leave all that to me, Miss Jane,” fussed Maggie, placing Darcy’s boots in a corner and returning to the bed. “I’ll look after the gentleman properlike.”

“Nonsense, Maggie,” Jane replied. “I grew up with six brothers. So I believe I am perfectly capable of managing one unconscious gentleman. Now do go down to the kitchen and put on the kettle for Mr. Hudson. He’ll want hot water, basins and clean muslin for this wound when he arrives.”

Frowning and muttering at the impropriety of her mistress dirtying her hands on the muddy stranger, Maggie nevertheless scurried off, as she had been ordered to do.

When the fretful housekeeper was gone Jane lifted Darcy’s gold medallion from his chest and examined it more closely. Then she covered him with a blanket.

She stepped back from the bed, and noticed a glint of light from something on the floor where Darcy had fallen in his attempt to stand. Her curiosity aroused, Jane picked up a small, rectangular object no larger than a gentleman’s calling card. She frowned and looked closely at it, scarcely believing her eyes. With the strange card held high in her hand, she walked straight to the window and extended it into the bright shaft of midmorning light pouring into the room.

“Such a thing as this cannot be!” Jane gasped as a perfect, three-dimensional hologram of a prancing horse danced and wheeled in the sunlight before her disbelieving eyes. Squinting to better see the magical picture, she saw behind the tiny horse the same golden crest that she had observed just moments before on Darcy’s medallion.

Jane read aloud the words “‘Fitzwilliam Darcy, Pemberley Farms,’” impressed in graceful black type below the hologram on the clear plastic business card—a box of which had been a gift to Darcy from Faith Harrington the previous Christmas.

Jane scanned the senseless jumble of e-mail, fax and telephone numbers beneath Darcy’s name, unable to decipher their meaning. Then she ran her fingertips over the flat surface of the hologram once more, confirming for herself the reality of the thing.

Turning, she stared at Darcy, who lay unmoving on the bed. “Who are you, sir, to possess such a wondrous, nay, impossible object?” she whispered to the helpless stranger. “And what will others think of you when they see such an astonishing thing?”

She was startled out of her rumination by the sound of carriage wheels on the drive below. Looking out the window she saw Mr. Hudson’s modest black surrey pulling to a stop before her gate. To Jane’s surprise, her sister, Cassandra, whom he must have met along the way, was riding beside the white-haired doctor. She heard the urgent sound of their voices as they hurried into the house and started up the stairs.

Wracked with indecision, Jane looked from the impossible card in her hand to the unconscious man on the bed. Footsteps were sounding outside the bedroom door as she stole another look at the clear plastic card, then tucked it into her gown.

Chapter 18

It was midafternoon before Darcy again awoke. This time there was an intense, steady throb in his head and a strange tingling sensation in his right arm. He opened his eyes and blinked up at a high ceiling finished in swirls of dazzling white plaster. Grimacing at the pain, he tried to recall the strange dream he had just had. He vaguely remembered falling from his horse and being brought to some sort of theme park where the employees all wore old-fashioned costumes.

Turning his head, Darcy looked at his right arm, curious to discover the cause of the itchy, tingling sensation. He was horrified to see three glistening black leeches, each the size of his thumb, greedily sucking at the soft flesh on the inside of his forearm, which was suspended over a porcelain basin containing several more of the engorged nightmare creatures.

Darcy’s scream of terror immediately brought a white-haired gentleman wearing a bloody apron to his bedside. “There, there, sir!” said the startled old gentleman. “Steady now. As your physician I must caution you against any abrupt—”

“What the hell are those things doing on me?” Darcy shouted, struggling to rise.

“Sir, you were badly in need of bleeding to reduce the dangerous humours occasioned by your injury,” the doctor patiently explained.

Finding that he was too weak to sit up, Darcy again interrupted the man by screaming, “Get them off of me! Now!” His eyes darted wildly about the room, seeking someone to help him, but he saw that he was alone with the demented old man. “Get them off!” he again ordered.

Obviously distressed by the vehemence of his patient’s outburst the doctor quickly removed the leeches from Darcy’s arm and retreated, muttering, with his horrible basin to the far corner of the room.

At that moment the bedroom door flew open and a handsome, middle-aged man entered. He was wearing a splendid tailcoat of wine-colored velvet over spotless doeskin breeches tucked into a pair of gleaming knee-high boots. Peering through the doorway behind the new arrival Darcy glimpsed Jane, the pretty brunette, and a taller, slightly older blonde woman.

“Everything all right, Hudson?” The man in the velvet coat had a pleasant, cheerful voice and the tenor of his question suggested he might have been asking if the tea was satisfactory.

“No! Everything is not all right!” Darcy shouted. He pointed his finger accusingly at the elderly man in the bloody apron, who was protectively cradling his basin of wriggling leeches. “I woke up to find this…witch doctor sticking those things on me—”

Darcy broke off his complaint to take a closer look at the odd assemblage in their long dresses and funny suits. They were all staring at him as if he was mad. “Who are you people anyway?” he demanded.

“Sir, I beg you to remain calm,” said the handsome gentleman in the tailcoat. He stepped forward and bowed slightly at the waist. “My name is Edward Austen,” he continued, “and upon my word as a gentleman, Mr. Hudson is an eminent member of the Royal Academy of Medicine.”

Stepping over to the white-haired man, Edward Austen placed an approving hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Hudson has for years been entrusted with the care of my own dear family and is of the highest repute,” he assured Darcy.

“Your confusion of the moment is understandable for you have suffered a severe blow to the brain, which has temporarily addled you, sir. But for your own welfare you must remain calm.”

Darcy struggled to sit up in the soft featherbed but Mr. Hudson rushed over and placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Please, sir!” he cautioned. “The bleeding will have made you quite lightheaded. Now, if you will just lie back quietly while I stitch up your wound with cat’s gut—”

His eyes widening, Darcy feebly pushed the old man away. “Cat’s gut!” he moaned. “Are you insane? Let me up!” He rose a few inches from the pillows, and then fell back, unconscious.

The other occupants of the room gaped as Mr. Hudson walked quickly to a small table and returned with a large, curved sailor’s needle and a length of twisted suture material and began expertly sewing up the large gash in Darcy’s forehead.

“My word!” Edward exclaimed, peering over the doctor’s shoulder. “He is indeed completely out of his head, is he not, Hudson?”

“Not unusual following an injury of this sort, sir,” the elderly gentleman replied as he continued to stitch with swift, practiced movements. “Complete rest and quiet is what he wants now.”

Hudson paused to fish a new piece of cat’s gut from the silk waistcoat beneath his apron. He wet the end with his tongue and threaded it into the needle.

“He’s a lucky fellow,” Hudson chuckled as he resumed his needlework on Darcy’s head. “Fainted before I came to the stitching, you see.”

Averting her eyes from the doctor’s gruesome task, Cassandra raised her voice to ask a timid question. “Do you think he will recover, then, Mr. Hudson?”

“Oh, I should think so,” Hudson replied. He bent to bite off the end of the last suture, then crossed the room to dip his bloody hands in a basin of water. “He’s a strong, healthy fellow,” the doctor continued.

He winked at Cassandra. “Someone will have to keep an eye on him, though, lest he decide to go walking. Great care should be taken to keep him abed until the bleeding has stopped.”

“You may rely on it, Hudson,” Edward volunteered, stepping forward. “We have not yet located the friends he mentioned, but the moment Jane told me his name and the place he comes from I knew who this man Darcy was.”

Hudson folded his bloody apron away and raised his bushy white eyebrows in surprise. “Indeed, sir?”

While this conversation was taking place, Darcy, who had been drifting in and out of consciousness, and who was by now more than half-convinced he was trapped in a bizarre nightmare from which he would soon awake, opened his eyes. He touched the freshly sutured gash on his forehead and winced in pain. At the sound of his name he turned to look at the others who were gathered by the door, unaware that he was listening in on them.

“Fitzwilliam Darcy is a wealthy American with a great estate in Virginia,” Edward was telling the doctor. “I know this because my younger brother’s bank, in which I have a considerable personal investment, has, I recall, transacted letters of credit for a client who each year purchases several fine horses from this Darcy’s farm, for use on his own plantation.”

“An American? How extraordinary!” exclaimed the doctor. The old gentleman turned to glance back over at the bed where Darcy lay listening with his eyes tightly shut, so the others would believe him to still be unconscious.

“The man’s being an American would explain his rather odd clothing and that peculiar timepiece he wears on his arm,” Mr. Hudson observed with a chuckle. “I daresay we haven’t been treated to many Yankee fashions since the ingrates rebelled back in 1776.”

Bewildered by this talk of the year 1776, which Hudson’s tone seemed to indicate had been fairly recent, Darcy peered through slitted eyes at his gold wristwatch, which seemed to fascinate these people. Then he covertly scanned the bedroom again, searching for electrical outlets or fixtures, or some other sign of modern times, but could find none. He quickly resumed his unconscious act as footsteps approached the bed.

Edward Austen stopped at the footboard and leaned over for a better look at his helpless guest. “American or not,” he told Hudson, “this fellow Fitzwilliam Darcy is a wealthy and powerful man. And he shall receive nothing but the most considerate treatment at my hands.”

“Commendable, sir,” the doctor harrumphed. “Quite good of you.”

“I should like to move the man to larger, more comfortable accommodations at my manor house as soon as possible,” Edward suggested.

Mr. Hudson frowned at that. “Considering the gentleman’s present state of unconsciousness, I would prefer to wait and see how he fares through the night,” he said.

The physician cast a glance at Jane and Cassandra, who were still hovering near the door. “That is, of course,” he told Edward, “if your sisters do not object to his remaining here until he may be safely moved.”

Without waiting for Edward’s reply, Jane stepped forward. “Certainly we could entertain no thought of turning out a rich and powerful gentleman,” she said, smiling at her brother, “especially one who might possibly become a favored client of our dear brother’s new bank.”

Jane turned to Cassandra for affirmation of her statement. “Could we, Cass?”

Cassandra smiled and shook her head. “Certainly not,” she replied. “Poor Mr. Darcy shall be welcome in our home for as long as need be.”

“Then it is settled,” Jane told the two men. “Cassandra and I will watch over our American guest with the greatest of care.”

“Splendid!” said Mr. Hudson. “I shall come and see him morning and evening until he is better. And of course you must send for me at any hour if his condition changes for the worse.”

Digging into his worn leather satchel, Hudson pressed a small vial into Jane’s hand. “Give him this draught in a little wine if he grows agitated, but just a little, mind, for it is very powerful.”

“We shall take care,” said Jane, closing her palm on the vial of alcohol laced with opium.

“I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Hudson.” Edward escorted the elderly doctor to the bedroom door and slipped a gold sovereign into his hand.

“Your servant, sir.” With a broad smile at the unexpectedly large fee, Hudson bowed deeply from the waist and took his leave.

When the doctor had gone Edward kissed Jane on the cheek. “Dear Jane, you are, as always, all kindness and understanding,” he effused.

Turning, he gave Cassandra a kiss as well. “And having a handsome and wealthy invalid to attend may not be without its compensations, eh Cassandra?” he teased.

Cassandra, whose temperament Edward believed tended exclusively toward somberness and melancholy, reacted predictably to his affectionate jibe. “Brother, the way you speak!” she exclaimed, blushing deeply. “Until he is strong enough to be moved we shall look after poor Mr. Darcy with no motives beyond our duty as good Christians.”

Moving to the window, Cassandra pointed down to the front garden where Lord Nelson was tied to the gate, calmly munching on a bunch of daisies. “Pray do however take the gentleman’s horse away to your stables,” she entreated, “before the beast consumes everything in our garden.”

Edward looked out the window at the black horse. “Yes, yes, of course I shall,” he laughed. “My word! What a splendid creature it is.”

Late that night, long after Darcy had fallen into an exhausted sleep, Jane sat at her mirrored vanity table by the fireplace. Removing a sheet of paper from the center drawer, she dipped her pen in the inkpot and began to write, as was her usual occupation each evening.

Hardly had she begun, however, when she was disturbed by the sound of a low murmuring from the bed behind her.

Picking up the single candle by which she worked, Jane got softly to her feet and walked over to look down at Darcy. She saw his lips moving, as if he was speaking, and as she leaned closer she heard him giving orders to some unseen employee.

“We’ll move the horse back to Virginia on the seventeenth,” Darcy was saying, “if you can arrange a flight. We can have him home in five hours by private jet…”

Imagining his nonsensical ramblings to be the result of one of the mysterious fevers that invariably accompanied any open wound, Jane placed a hand on Darcy’s cheek and found it hot.

“I am going to insist on heavy security,” he continued in his sleep, “because I do not want any television…”

Darcy’s speech died away, leaving Jane staring at him in complete puzzlement. For though she was able to derive little meaning from his actual words, neither did they sound to her like the rantings of one who is deranged. It was altogether quite mysterious.

While Jane was pondering the mystery of Darcy’s peculiar mutterings, the bedroom door quietly opened and Cassandra stepped into the room. Dressed in her nightgown and carrying a candle of her own, she came over to the bed and stood beside her sister.

“Is he any better?” Cassandra whispered.

“He is very feverish, I fear,” Jane told her.

“Poor man,” Cassandra sighed. “Has he spoken again?”

Jane hesitated before replying. Then, without knowing exactly why, she shook her head. “No,” she lied, “he has said nothing more.”

Cassandra looked around the dimly lit bedroom. “It must be most inconvenient having this stranger occupying your bedroom,” she sympathized. “Shall I stay and sit a while with you?”

Jane kissed her sister’s cheek. “No, thank you, dear Cass. I shall work on First Impressions a while longer,” she said.

Cass’s eyes lit up at the mention of the novel, an older work that Jane had lately begun to rewrite. “Oh, I’m so glad you’ve decided to get back to that one,” Cass whispered, “it’s always been my favorite of all your works. Tell me, have you yet decided the fate of all the Misses Bennet?”

Jane smiled, for her sister was the one person in the world with whom she felt completely at ease in discussing her writing. “I have decided that I want both of the elder Bennet sisters in my book to be happily married in the same ceremony,” she confided to Cass. “Do you think that will seem too contrived?”

Cassandra laughed delightedly. For, despite Edward’s brotherly view of her as a somber old maid without a trace of passion in her soul, Cass never tired of discussing Jane’s wildly romantic stories. “A double wedding will make a perfect ending,” she said. “And I never care if an event in a novel is slightly contrived, as long as the contrivance leads to a blissfully happy ending.”

Cass paused for a moment, then continued. “But I still do not like the title First Impressions,” she informed Jane. “I think you should call it Improper Pride. For that is what the story is really about.”

“It is about pride, yes,” Jane grudgingly conceded. “But more than that, my novel is about the prejudices that often unfairly attach to persons merely because of circumstance beyond their control.

“However,” she promised Cass, “I shall think about a new title if it will make you happy. Now go to bed,” Jane ordered. “I will come to your room and sleep later. After you have rested.”

Cassandra nodded her agreement but she remained standing beside Jane’s bed, looking down at the tall man. “Mr. Darcy is very handsome, is he not?” she asked quietly.

“Yes,” Jane agreed. “Very.” By the candle’s glow she saw a tear glistening in the corner of Cassandra’s eye, and from it she knew that her sister was thinking of her late fiancé, a dashing young naval officer who had died of fever in the Indies, just months before he and Cass were to have been wed. Though nearly two decades had passed since the young man’s tragic death, theirs had been a deeply passionate and loving relationship, and one from which the beautiful Cassandra had never recovered.

At least, Jane reasoned as she read the grief on Cass’s face, there had been one great love, however brief, in her dear sister’s life. And, though she would never have dared mention it to Cass, Jane sometimes envied her that.

Long after Cassandra had gone to bed, Jane stood silently regarding Darcy’s face. Presently, she retrieved from the bodice of her gown the transparent card that looked like glass but was not. She marveled again at the cunning portrait of the tiny prancing horse frozen in the depths of the soft glass by some unimaginable magical process.

“I cannot believe, Mr. Darcy,” she said aloud to the still figure on her bed, “that you are what my brother thinks you are. But whatever else you may be, you are by far the most fascinating personage this house has ever entertained. And my honor as well as my own curiosity about you demands that I keep your secrets until you are able to explain them for yourself.”

Jane smiled down at Darcy, reaching out to lay a soft hand against his cheek. “Cass is right on one count, though,” she told him. “You are a very handsome rogue.”

She left him then, walking across the room to a tall wardrobe and removing her nightgown from it. Casting a self-conscious glance at the masculine form on her bed and feeling slightly foolish, she stepped behind a thin screen of sheer muslin and began to disrobe.

Darcy, had in fact been wide awake for all but a few moments of the evening, when he had dreamed he was giving orders to his trainer about Lord Nelson. Now he opened his eyes and silently studied the slender feminine form, which was clearly silhouetted by the firelight, enchanted by the image.

Chapter 19

“So I lay there in the darkness of that strange room,” Darcy said, “unable to move and afraid to speak to her…” He was still leaning on the fence, talking.

Eliza, who had listened silently to his story until now, could not resist interrupting. “Afraid…of her?”

Slowly Darcy turned at the sound of Eliza’s voice, as if he was emerging from a dream. “Yes,” he replied without evident embarrassment. “You see, I was wholly convinced that my head injury had triggered some sort of delusional state and that I would snap out of it at any moment and find myself in an ordinary hospital room, babbling to some poor bewildered nurse.”

“But you were really somewhere back in the nineteenth century…with Jane Austen.” Eliza could not keep the cynicism out of her voice.

“May of 1810, I soon discovered,” Darcy responded matter-of-factly. “But there were far too many other things concerning me at that moment to have immediately connected her with the Jane Austen. In fact, Jane’s first novel had not yet been published in the year 1810.”

Eliza was still dubiously shaking her head. “You’ll forgive me if I find all of this extremely hard to believe,” she said.

“Miss Knight, you insisted on knowing why I said that Jane’s letter was meant for me,” Darcy brusquely reminded her. “I had very little expectation that you would believe my explanation. Which is also why I’ve never told anyone else what happened.”

“Then why tell me?” Eliza countered argumentatively.

“Because,” Darcy responded with rising frustration, “you have something that I desperately want. And I am not ashamed to confess that I will do anything I can if there is even the slightest chance of convincing you to let me have that letter.”

“Ah, yes! I forgot,” she shot back. “A letter from a lover you abandoned two hundred years ago. Well, it is a wildly romantic concept.”

Darcy’s cheeks were flushed with anger. “You don’t understand at all!” he said vehemently.

“What doesn’t she understand, Fitz?”

They both turned to see Faith Harrington walking down the lane toward them. Darcy cast a warning glance at Eliza, then smiled at the new arrival. “Eliza doesn’t understand the many difficulties of breeding champion jumpers, Faith.”

Playing along with his deception, Eliza looked down at the ground and kicked at a clump of grass. “I guess I’m just a dumb old city girl,” she admitted. Then, raising her eyes to Darcy’s, she put on what she hoped was her dumbest expression. “Now it’s the mares that have the foals, right?”

“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt poor Eliza’s equestrian education, Fitz,” Faith abruptly cut in, “but the caterer from Richmond is in the ballroom, screaming about your ban on electricity for tomorrow. The poor man insists it’s not possible to serve hot guinea fowl to two hundred guests without his precious microwaves.”

Darcy sighed and pushed away from the fence. “I’ll take care of it,” he told the blonde.

“Perhaps,” he suggested, turning back to Eliza, “you’d like to go up and see your room now. I’ll ask Jenny to show you the way.” He paused and then added, “We can continue our discussion later, if you still want to continue…”

Eliza’s eyes sparkled mischievously and she gave him an enthusiastic nod. “Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

They all started walking back toward the house. But before they had proceeded ten paces Faith linked her arm possessively in Darcy’s and led him out ahead of Eliza, pointedly excluding the visitor from all further conversation.

“The florist is here looking for pots or something,” Faith rattled on to Darcy. “She says you promised they’d be ready.”

“I told that woman yesterday that Lucas would have the planters at the gatehouse.” Darcy sounded genuinely annoyed. “Will you point the florist down there while I see to the caterer?”

“Poor darling,” Faith crooned. “Of course I will. Anything I can do to help.”

After a few seconds of eavesdropping, Eliza tuned out the mundane discussion and followed silently behind them. As she walked she attempted to accord some level of credence to any part of Darcy’s bizarre tale. But aside from the seeming sincerity of his delivery and his own professions of bafflement over what had actually happened to him, she could think of nothing solid on which to ground a belief that he could have simply blundered into another century.

“Hope you like roses.”

At the end of a richly carpeted upstairs corridor hung with dark ancestral portraits Jenny Brown flung open a door and stepped aside. Looking into the large, antique-filled room beyond, Eliza saw that the decor was entirely themed around roses. From the rose-patterned wallpaper and carpet to the curtains at the windows and the intricately carved roses on the wooden bedposts, everything was roses.

Stepping into the Rose Bedroom Eliza saw that her bags had been placed on a blanket chest at the foot of the bed with its embroidered rose-colored satin coverlet. “Incredible!” she gasped, overwhelmed by the scene, which vaguely reminded her of the bedroom set from Gone With the Wind.

“Yeah, kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?” Jenny was grinning as she walked to a pair of tall French doors. She opened them to reveal a broad balcony overlooking the lawns and fields of Pemberley Farms. “You can see most of the estate from up here,” she reported.

“They say Fitz’s great-great-great-grandmother, Rose, used to sit here and watch for her man to come riding across those hills.” Turning back to the amazing bedroom Jenny switched on a small bronze lamp, illuminating a deep alcove that Eliza had not yet noticed.

Hanging on the wall of the alcove, above an ornate copper bathtub, was a lifelike painting of a slender, dark-haired woman, her full, sensuous lips seemingly on the verge of smiling.

Eliza thought that the subject of the portrait was the most exquisitely beautiful female she had ever seen, especially dressed as she was in a marvelously revealing gown of rose-colored silk. “Is that her?” she asked in awe.

“The grand lady herself,” Jenny confirmed. “They say when the master’s horse was sighted Rose would step into a bath filled with rose petals.” The handsome black woman smiled and pointed. “She’d be sitting naked right there in that tub, waiting for him when he reached her door.”

“Hmmm, sounds kinda kinky!” Eliza laughed.

Jenny joined in with her laughter. “I think that all depends on your point of view,” she said. “You see, my great-great-great-grandmother was the one who had to pick all those damn rose petals. But the times do change, don’t they?” Jenny continued. “Now Artie and I are guests here at Pemberley, and we stay in whatever room we choose.”

“Do you ever choose this room?” Eliza asked, smiling.

Jenny shuddered theatrically. “Honey, I get the hives when I walk into this room. You’re welcome to it.” She threw herself backwards onto the satin bed coverlet and crossed her ankles. “You’ll have to pick your own damn rose petals, though.”

“Point me to them gardens,” Eliza laughed, falling onto the bed beside her. “This is so bizarre,” she giggled, looking around at the roses that surrounded her on every side. “I came down here to talk about some old letters and I feel like I’ve fallen through the looking glass.”

“This room will do that to you, sure enough,” Jenny chuckled. “They say you should stop to smell the roses, but this bedroom is a definite case of overkill.”

“What do you recommend we do now?” Eliza asked between spasms of laughter.

“Well, Alice,” Jenny giggled, “if you’re up to it, this might be a good time for us to go find something for you to wear to the ball tomorrow night.”

“The ball,” Eliza gasped, choking on her own laughter. “Do you know I’ve never even been to a single ball in my life?”

“Girl, you have been deprived!” squealed Jenny.

Twenty minutes later, their giggling finally under control, Jenny and Eliza stood together in a huge, air-conditioned and cedar-paneled attic room, looking through long racks of neatly labeled antique clothing of all types.

“This is incredible,” Eliza said, indicating the contents of the vast wardrobe room with a sweeping gesture of her arms. “Did the Darcys save every piece of clothing they ever owned?”

“No, these things didn’t belong to the Darcys, the vast majority didn’t anyway,” Jenny replied. “Sometime back around 1960 Fitz’s grandmother discovered a trunk filled with antique gowns. She decided to see if she could restore them to their original condition so they wouldn’t be lost to history. When she succeeded, the word got around. Folks started bringing her other old things, men’s clothing included. And before she knew what was happening she had a collection.”

Jenny rolled out a rack of exquisite ball gowns from the early nineteenth century, all looking as fresh as if they had been newly made. “After his grandmother died Fitz’s mother kept the restorations going,” she explained. “When she passed away, the collection went into moth balls. A few years ago Fitz set up and funded a foundation for the ongoing preservation of the collection. He had this room built, hired a full-time curator and two seamstresses just to keep all this up, as an homage to his mother and grandmother. Mostly the clothes are lent out to museums and schools now,” Jenny added, holding up a shimmering blue silk gown and passing it to Eliza for inspection.

Eliza examined the dress appreciatively, once more slightly revising her early opinion of the enigmatic Fitzwilliam Darcy. She realized with a start how he had happened to know so much about Regency-era clothing that first day when they had met at the library.

“Mr…. I mean Fitz, seems to be quite an extraordinary person,” Eliza said, hoping to draw an unguarded opinion from Jenny. “Is it really possible for one man to be rich, handsome and as genuinely nice as he appears to be?”

Jenny put down the gown she was holding and her voice turned suddenly serious. “I have known Fitz my entire life,” she said without a moment’s hesitation. “And he’s probably the best man I’ve ever known.”

Eliza raised her eyebrows at this seeming exaggeration of a good friend’s character, but Jenny wasn’t finished yet.

“The times might have changed,” observed the beautiful black woman, “but you still don’t find that many Southern aristocrats hobnobbing with the descendants of the family slaves. And besides his other work and contributions to a number of causes, Fitz puts on this charity Rose Ball at his own expense every year, just so the poor kids around here—many of them from former slave families like mine—can go to college.”

Jenny was obviously speaking on a favorite theme and she reached her conclusion with near religious fervor, “The man is a saint in my book.”

“Yet he seems to be somewhat…obsessed, too,” Eliza timidly observed.

“Oh, you mean the Jane Austen thing?” said Jenny. “Isn’t that why you’re here after all?”

“Well, yes,” Eliza admitted.

“I can’t honestly claim to be a big fan of that Austen lady,” Jenny said, “considering the fact that she was bemoaning the problems of the not-quite-rich-enough back in England while my people were chopping cotton and being sold by the pound. Though to be fair,” Jenny went on, “Miss Austen did from time to time write a few things disapproving of slavery.” Jenny lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I have my own private theory as to why Fitz is so hung up on Miss Jane Austen.”

Eliza leaned forward eagerly.

“First,” Jenny explained, “you have to understand that this place almost came apart two hundred years ago, when Rose Darcy read that woman’s book naming her man and a place he owned called Pemberley. I suspect that if Rose hadn’t known that no Darcy had set foot in England for forty years or more, the rose-petal baths would have come to a screeching halt.”

Eliza stared at the other woman. “Are you saying that Fitz’s ancestor wasn’t in England around the time that Jane Austen was writing?”

“Lord, no!” Jenny snorted. “The Darcy family were American patriots back in 1776, and not a one of them ever went back to England again until well after the end of the Civil War.”

Jenny suddenly hesitated, almost as though she feared revealing embarrassing family secrets that had come to light yesterday, rather than two centuries earlier. “But after Pride and Prejudice was published here in the U.S.,” she said in a low voice, “there was scandalous gossip that the first Fitzwilliam Darcy, the man who built Pemberley Farms, must have been Jane Austen’s lover, else why would she have used his name in her book?”

“Good question,” said Eliza, remembering the haunted look in Darcy’s verdant eyes as he had related his extraordinary tale to her. “Why do you think Jane Austen used those names?” she asked Jenny. “I mean, the mere fact that she linked two rather odd names like Fitzwilliam Darcy and Pemberley together would seem to rule out coincidence.”

Jenny laughed. “Well, if the same thing happened today,” she said, “my first guess would have been that she must have picked them out of the phone book…or off the Internet. But where or how she might have run across them two hundred years ago is anybody’s guess.

“All I know,” Jenny said, “is that because of Pride and Prejudice there were no Austen lovers in the Darcy family. And though Fitz doesn’t talk about it, I think his obsession with Austen’s letters and papers may have something to do with proving once and for all that there was never any connection. You know, family honor and all of that.”

Jenny paused and her eyes lit up as she pulled another gown from the rack. “Oh, my! Look what I just found for you!” she breathed, holding up an emerald green velvet Regency-era ball gown that was strikingly similar to the one that Eliza had seen and discussed with Darcy at the library exhibit.

Eliza took the gown from her, turned to a full-length mirror on the wall and tried to imagine how she would look in the shocking garment. “Well, it might fit me,” she reluctantly admitted, “but I have it on good authority that Jane Austen would never have worn anything this revealing.”

“Maybe not,” Jenny grinned, “but then she didn’t have access to the Wonder Bra either. You have just got to try it on,” she insisted, standing back and scrutinizing Eliza. “And we need to do something with your hair.”

Having minutes before calmed the frantic caterer, Darcy was now standing out on the front lawn, facing the Great House. As was his custom each year before the ball, he was going over last-minute details with the two dozen employees and volunteers who had assembled on the drive. It would be their responsibility to transport arriving guests by carriage from the gatehouse parking area to the house.

The men, most of whom were local grooms and trainers, would be transformed for one evening into liveried carriage drivers, footmen and attendants, and many of them were nervous or uncertain about their roles in the grand costumed drama of the Rose Ball.

Eliza stepped out onto the balcony wearing the green Regency dress, her hair swept up, with soft tendrils framing her face. She stood there for a moment and watched Fitz on the lawn with his employees, joking and having a good time. She smiled at his seeming ability to fit into any situation with ease.

“Now, as the guests arrive tomorrow night,” Darcy said, pointing to two younger men near the front of the group, “Jimmy and Larry here will help them from their carriages as quickly as possible. Speed is very important,” Darcy stressed, “because we only have a limited number of carriages and they must be turned around and sent immediately back down to the gatehouse to…”

Attracted by a flash of movement, Darcy let his eyes wander up to the second story of the house. He stopped talking at the site of Eliza at the balcony railing. She looked like a snapshot out of time. Their eyes met, they stared at each other, bewitched. Eliza recovered first and quickly vanished into the bedroom.

Darcy remained frozen to the spot, gazing up at the balcony as if he’d seen a ghost. Several of the men turned to see what had distracted him, but there was nothing to be seen. Jimmy, one of the two young stable hands whom Darcy had been addressing a moment before, cleared his throat for his employer’s attention.

“Uh, Fitz, are we footmen supposed to escort the guests up to the steps, or what?” Jimmy asked.

Darcy slowly lowered his eyes to the group of men patiently waiting for him to resume speaking. “What?”

“After we get them out of the carriages,” Jimmy began again, “do we walk them over to the steps?”

“Sorry, Jimmy. No,” Darcy replied, trying to remember exactly what he had been saying before Eliza’s ghostly appearance. “One of the hostesses will be waiting to escort each group into the house,” he resumed. “It’s your job to get those carriages turned around as fast as you can.”

“Fitz, what about these here costumes?” whined another young hand. “Do I really gotta wear them tight fancy pants they give us?”

Darcy smiled at the predictable question that was always prompted by the men’s first sight of the red satin breeches that went with their bright green coats of Pemberley livery. “Ben, this is your first year in costume,” he replied. “But the other guys here can all tell you that once your girlfriend sees you in those tight red pants she’ll never let you go back to wearing overalls again.”

Ben nodded miserably. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he groaned, prompting a good-natured outburst of laughter from the other men standing on the drive.

Inside Rose Darcy’s bedroom Eliza leaned against the beveled glass of the French doors trying to catch her breath. God, the way he looked at her, the butterflies were going crazy in her stomach.

Walking to the bed she sat down and looked around the room, taking note of the lush rolling hills outside the window. Sitting here in this exquisite old house, wearing a ridiculous but beautiful vintage gown she really did feel like Alice in Wonderland. Were there mushrooms in the salad? Laughing at herself she decided that this would be a good time to see more of the estate. With Jenny gone off on some Rose Ball business she was alone and free to walk the beautiful grounds of Pemberley.

Chapter 20

The sun was sinking behind the stables as Faith and Darcy watched a team of gardeners placing ornamental pots filled with crimson roses along the drive. Though Darcy had intended to return immediately to Eliza after taking care of a few pressing matters related to the ball, several hours had passed during which Faith had professed that no detail could possibly proceed without his personal approval.

Eliza had changed into jeans and a T-shirt after finally collecting herself. She had to keep her wits about her; fresh air and a change of scene would help. She had told Darcy that she wanted to paint some of the vistas he’d shown her and this might be the perfect time to take advantage of the opportunity to commit some of Pemberley’s magnificent views to paper; she took her sketch pad from the leather portfolio and headed downstairs and out into the warm afternoon air.

Wandering the magnificent estate Eliza tried in vain to reconcile Jenny’s logical theory of Darcy’s obsession with his own bizarre tale of time travel. Jenny’s idea was far more rational but Fitz’s story seemed to have the ring of truth to it, although maybe she was just being swept away by the romance of the whole thing. Trying to keep her wits about her, she walked down to the lake at the bottom of the broad lawn.

Smiling to herself at the absurdity of the situation, she lay down in the soft grass on the shore of the small lake and watched puffy clouds float above her in the hot summer sky. She realized that she welcomed the temporary respite from the intensity of Darcy’s narrative, the incredible details of which continued to swirl through her mind, embellished by her own vivid imagination.

Though she found it quite impossible to take seriously her soft-spoken host’s account of his accidental trip into the past and his subsequent encounter with Jane Austen, Eliza was nevertheless intrigued by the handsome millionaire.

She felt a sudden flush of heat rising to her cheeks as she recalled the intensity with which Darcy had gazed up at her when she had stepped onto the balcony of the Rose Bedroom.

She smiled inwardly; Jerry wouldn’t have been capable of such a smoldering look. And yet, with Darcy, that look of barely restrained passion had seemed almost natural. It must be the way, she imagined, that he looked at all women and was perhaps the reason poor Faith found him so irresistible. For certainly nothing had passed between him and Eliza to indicate that it was a look reserved exclusively for her.

She reflected that, his strange obsession aside, Fitzwilliam Darcy was possibly the most fascinating and attractive man she had ever met. “Careful now,” Eliza cautioned herself as she found a comfortable place to sit by the lake, “you’re already beginning to sound like Jenny. Fitz Darcy may be a hunk and an extremely nice one at that, but the bottom line seems to be that the poor guy is just slightly out of his tree. Besides, this is real life, not a romance novel.”

Romance wasn’t likely to happen here anyway. There was an aloofness, a standoffishness in him that Eliza suspected was often taken for arrogance. Jenny had theorized that the loss of the three people he was closest to—his grandmother, father and mother—before he was eighteen had made him wary of intimate relationships. The pain of loving and losing again was simply not worth the risk. That was something with which Eliza could easily understand and sympathize.

She had determined after the death of her father that she would never again love anyone that much and realized now it was the reason that the only relationships she’d allowed herself had been like the one with Jerry. Completely unsatisfying. But now, as Darcy’s face drifted through the clouds, she questioned that decision. Maybe happiness with someone you love, who loves you in return, was worth the risk of pain.

Shaking off the daydreams Eliza plunged her feet into the still water of the lake and started drawing.

While Eliza was thus engaged, Jenny, who had taken an immediate liking to the high-spirited New York artist, had already decided it would be good for Darcy to develop a relationship with her. She suspected that Eliza might just be the right woman to bring him out of the shell he’d inexplicably slipped into three years ago. Having made up her mind, Jenny, who despite her Southern Baptist upbringing had the soul of a Jewish yenta, set out to promote the relationship in any way she could.

Faith’s painfully obvious maneuvers to keep the couple separated throughout the afternoon had resulted in the artist going off by herself while Faith had ensnared Darcy in a series of increasingly mundane tasks. Now, as the gardeners finished aligning the planters along the drive, Jenny stood nearby, determined to block Faith’s next move.

The blonde socialite was ticking off items on a clipboard for Darcy as Jenny edged closer to listen in.

“The driveway roses are done,” Faith was saying. She blew a stray wisp of hair from her carefully made-up face and adopted a martyred look. “Of course,” she added wearily, “I’ve got a thousand things left to do.”

“You’re doing just great,” Darcy said, consulting her clipboard and pointing out two more items for her to check off. “We’ve now got all the carriages rolling and ready for tomorrow, and Lucas and his men are setting up a trough and feed supplies for the horses at the gatehouse.”

He paused and looked around, suddenly aware of the lengthening shadows falling across the lawns. “Have you seen Miss Knight?” he asked.

Fearful of resorting to outright lying, especially when it was likely that she would be immediately found out, Faith reluctantly pointed toward the small lake at the bottom of the lawn. “I believe I saw your little guest walking down to the lake a while ago,” she peevishly allowed.

Darcy scanned the lakeshore and spotted Eliza sitting by herself on a cluster of rocks at the water’s edge.

“She looks like such a solitary soul,” Faith observed in a mock pitying tone. “To tell you the truth, Fitz, I don’t think that girl cares for company at all.”

Ignoring the remark, Darcy turned and started walking toward the lake. “I’ll just go down and see if she needs anything,” he said.

Faith hurriedly fell into step beside him. “I’ll go with you, then,” she offered as sweetly as she knew how. “After all, we wouldn’t want poor little Eliza to feel neglected.”

Darcy started to protest but he was interrupted by Jenny, who suddenly came running down from the house. “Oh, Faith, there you are!” she called with evident relief in her voice. “I have been looking everywhere.”

Faith screwed up her pink, doll-like features into an approximation of a disbelieving scowl. “For me?” she asked suspiciously.

Jenny nodded urgently. “There’s a crisis with the seating chart for tomorrow night’s dinner and I don’t trust anyone’s opinion but yours,” she lied. “It’s a matter of etiquette,” Jenny explained, setting the hook firmly.

Faith, who had long before set herself up as the final authority on all matters mannerly, especially as they related to the Rose Ball, was trapped. “Can’t it wait a little while?” she pleaded.

“We’re doing the place cards now!” Jenny insisted, taking her firmly by the elbow and guiding her toward the house. Looking like a pup that’s just been plucked from its litter, Faith reluctantly allowed herself to be led away.

Darcy grinned as Jenny glanced back over her shoulder and winked at him.

He found Eliza sitting on a large flat rock with her jeans rolled up and her bare feet in the placid green water. She was holding a pad in her lap and intently drawing with pastels. He stood unnoticed, watching her work. The image of her on the balcony only a short time before flooded his memory. She was breathtaking; he wondered at the strong emotions this woman seemed to evoke in him. Once again raven-haired beauty came to mind, as the sunlight played among the highlights in her hair, much like the candlelight had at the library exhibit. Sighing deeply, he smiled at the pleasant warmth that permeated his body.

Stepping closer, Darcy asked, as he sat down beside her on the rock, “May I see your drawing?”

Eliza grimaced, then handed over the pad. He looked at it and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

Without immediately answering he closely examined her brilliantly colored rendering of himself astride the black horse. To Darcy’s utter amazement this complete stranger had perfectly captured the precise moment when he and Lord Nelson had leaped over the stone wall into the blinding dazzle of sunlight.

“Very much,” he said after a long pause, “but not at all what I was expecting.” Darcy’s mind was working furiously in an attempt to derive some meaning from the fact that his visitor had composed this startling picture based on nothing more than his verbal description of an event that had taken place three years before.

Eliza took back her pad with a smile. “I told you,” she said before he could form the question he longed to ask, “my specialty is fantasy.”

Her reply sounded enough like a taunt to make Darcy’s face suddenly redden. “Meaning?” he asked defensively.

“Meaning,” she answered with no hint of mockery in her tone, “that I’d like to hear the rest of your story now.”

Sighing, Darcy gazed down at her reflection in the shimmering surface of the lake. On the one hand he felt like jumping to his feet and screaming at her to go back to New York and leave him in his misery. But there was something else that stopped him, some powerful message in the expectant way she scrunched her shoulders forward, waiting for him to begin, that told him Eliza Knight was willing to be convinced.

“I remained in Jane’s bedroom at Chawton Cottage for the next three days,” he said, “eavesdropping on her conversations and pretending to be asleep or unconscious.”

Darcy closed his eyes, remembering the smell and feel of the soft, rose-scented featherbed, the same intoxicating scent that he had come to associate with Jane herself.

“Very gradually I reached the impossible but inescapable conclusion that I was neither dreaming nor insane,” he continued, forming a new picture in his mind of Jane’s gentle countenance and lively, sparkling eyes. “By then, of course, I had also realized who she was.”

Darcy smiled. “God knows I had heard enough while I was growing up about Jane Austen, the great English novelist who had nearly ruined the distinguished Darcy family name. But where had she gotten the name in the first place? The family always naturally assumed that she had somehow heard of my ancestor and liked the sounds of his name and estate. But there I was, lying in her bed. The implications of that were maddening, especially since it seemed evident that she had never heard the name Darcy until my arrival at Chawton.

“Anyway,” he said, “for three days Jane and her sister, Cassandra, took turns sitting with me. And whenever they left me alone for a few minutes I would get up and take a few halting steps around the room, praying I would become strong enough to escape before the kindly Mr. Hudson subjected me to fresh medical horrors.”

Chapter 21

As he had done morning and evening for the past three days, the bombastic Mr. Hudson stood over Darcy’s bed, thoughtfully examining the forehead of his apparently unconscious patient. “His wound is healing splendidly,” the physician pronounced, running his none-too-clean fingers over the tender, pink tissues of the wound on Darcy’s scalp.

Hudson turned to Jane who was standing apprehensively beside the fireplace, watching. “The scar will be completely hidden by his hair,” the old doctor happily predicted. Then, with a worried frown for what her august brother might think if a cure was not soon effectuated, he asked, “But you say he hasn’t spoken again?”

Jane shook her head. “He has said not a word since the first night,” she affirmed, this time having no need to lie. For it was true that the handsome American lying in her bed had uttered not a sound since she had heard him murmuring in his fever three nights earlier.

She did not mention to Hudson that late at night, when she was alone at her writing, she sometimes experienced an eerie sensation that the stranger’s eyes were upon her, watching and secretly scrutinizing her every move. Once or twice the feeling had grown so strong that she had actually whirled about to look at him.

But always she had found Darcy’s eyes tightly shut, his breathing deep and regular. Odd, she thought. So very odd.

Distracted as she was by those thoughts, it took a moment before Jane realized that Mr. Hudson was again speaking to her. She returned her attention to the old doctor and found him leaning over Darcy.

“Hmmm, an extraordinary case,” Hudson muttered, stroking the tuft of snowy whiskers on his chin. “Extraordinary.” He finally straightened and cocked his head. “Perhaps I should treat him with an injection of mercury or stinging wasps,” he ruminated aloud. “Well, we shall see how he looks this evening and then decide which treatment shall be better. For it is a sad fact that many patients cannot tolerate the effects of such strong systemic poisons, though they often have the beneficial effect of shocking the brain back to activity.”

Jane wisely said nothing, but waited until the doctor closed up his bag and then escorted him out of the room.

The instant the door closed behind them Darcy’s eyes popped open and he got out of bed, feeling both ridiculous and vulnerable in the long linen nightshirt he wore.

He shuffled barefoot to the window and pulled aside the lace curtains to peek outside. In the garden below he saw Cassandra standing at the gate, speaking with Hudson. Beyond them, a heavy post coach rumbled through the tiny village, scattering a cloud of squawking ducks and chickens in its wake. Then all was silent again.

“Mercury and stinging wasps!” Darcy whispered the frightening words in abject terror as his mind conjured up horrible visions of the bumbling Mr. Hudson working his medieval tortures.

Though the gash on his forehead was indeed healing nicely and hardly gave him any pain at all now, he was still unsteady on his feet. He had been hoping to become just a little stronger before seeking out his clothes and departing from Chawton Cottage under cover of darkness, hopefully to reclaim his horse and return to the spot where he had stepped into this nightmare.

But Hudson’s last pronouncement had convinced the unwilling patient that he must escape before the old doctor returned and managed to do him some lasting harm. Darcy had, over the past few days, come to understand that he had been incredibly lucky so far. Because it was clear that Mr. Hudson’s outrageous treatments with catgut and leeches actually represented the cutting edge of early nineteenth-century medical technology. However, Darcy had no confidence that he could even survive another round of bleeding, much less wasps and applications of mercury.

While he was having these thoughts and wondering where to begin looking for his clothes, Darcy heard the bedroom door opening behind him. He turned to see Jane Austen angrily regarding him.

“Just as I suspected!” she said, pointing at the bed. “Get back in that bed, sir!”

“Now just a minute…” Darcy blustered, managing to feel both guilty and foolish at the same instant.

“Immediately!” she commanded. “You may be an artful deceiver but you are still a sick man.”

With her dark eyes flashing dangerously she watched as Darcy sheepishly climbed into the bed and covered his naked legs with a quilt. “Now, sir,” she demanded, “tell me without delay who you are and how you came to be here in Hampshire.”

“My name is Fitzwilliam Darcy and I am from Virginia,” he began, reciting the carefully rehearsed story he had put together over the past three days of listening to his hosts discussing him. “I was visiting friends nearby when I—”

Jane cut him off with a disgusted look. “You have no friends in this neighborhood, sir,” she coldly informed him. “Nor is there any large house such as you described closer than twenty miles to the west of this village.”

Darcy felt his cover story disintegrating before he could get it all out. “I, uh, perhaps it was to the east, then…” he stammered, relying on his head injury to account for his seeming confusion. “Look, you’ve been very kind, but I think I should just get dressed and leave now. May I have my clothes?”

At first he thought Jane was going to let him go, for she immediately stomped over to the same tall cupboard in the far corner of the room where she kept her nightgown and flung open the door. “Yes,” she said, “let us begin with your clothes.” She turned to face him in a swirl of skirts and held up his gray knit boxer shorts. “How do you explain this!”

Confused, Darcy stared at her. “My underwear?”

As if she was handling a deadly reptile, Jane held the shorts out in front of her with two hands and stretched the elastic waistband, releasing it with a loud snap.

“Not the garment!” she said, stretching and snapping the elastic band again. “This fabric that springs and stretches like gum arabic! Never has such a thing been seen or heard of, even in London. Poor Maggie nearly fainted in the laundry.”

Darcy’s mind raced. “Oh, the elastic,” he said smiling. “Elastic, it…” the smile faded as he realized that if she was holding his underwear, then he wasn’t wearing them. He looked down at the nightshirt he’d had on since his first night in her house, her bed.

Darcy looked up at Jane, a deep blush coloring his face and more than likely his entire body. “Who undressed me?”

Jane, still holding the boxer shorts, dropped her hand to her side. Taken aback by the question she could only respond, “I beg your pardon?”

The blush receding Darcy asked again, “Undressed me, who did it?”

Jane looked at him, unable to say anything.

“Miss Austen?” he nudged.

Still not sure how to respond, she said, “I have six brothers.”

“And none of them lives here.”

She stood looking into the depths of his green eyes; she saw embarrassment and anger. He’d been brought into her house bleeding; it had seemed perfectly natural to get him out of his dirty clothes. How many times had she helped her mother do the same with one of her brothers? But now she questioned the propriety of having done so to a perfect stranger. She wasn’t prepared to admit it. But he wasn’t going to let her escape so easily.

“You did it, didn’t you?” he challenged.

Now she felt the heat rise in her own face as her cheeks went crimson. No longer able to withstand his penetrating stare she looked away, but couldn’t hide a small smile at the memory of his strong, athletic body.

For what seemed many minutes but was actually only a few seconds an embarrassed silence fell on the room. In the hope of changing the subject Jane turned to anger. “I demand that you tell me who you are and where you come from.”

“I’m not sure you’re in any position to be making demands,” was his own angry reply.

Her tone turned serious. “You must explain yourself to me now, sir, else I must think you a spy.”

Darcy stared at her. “A spy? Who would I be spying on?”

Jane’s expression did not change. “It is no secret that our two countries have many quarrels and have often been at war,” she said. “Even now American ships continue the illegal trade in slaves and supply our French enemies with cannon and munitions…”

Again Darcy felt like slapping his head at his own stupidity. This was 1810, the era of the Napoleonic Wars between Britain and France. Wars in which the new, maverick American nation had sided firmly with France.

“I am not a spy,” he said weakly. “Okay?”

A flash of anger shone in Jane’s dark eyes. “Okay!” she mimicked the strange new word. “What does that mean? I speak several languages and the word okay is not included in the vocabularies of any of them.”

Darcy suddenly swung his feet out of the bed, realizing that he was on increasingly shaky ground with this lovely but dangerous woman. He stood and held out his hand to her. “First let me have my clothes,” he demanded with as much dignity as he could muster.

Still holding his undergarment in her hand, Jane stood her ground for a moment. She wanted to know about the brass contraption that opened and closed his trousers, the buttons that looked like bone but were not, as well as the fabric he called elastic. She watched him and found that she was unwilling to revisit the uncomfortable scene regarding how she came to know about those things. Heaving a sigh she turned to the cupboard and retrieved his pants. Turning back to him, she wordlessly handed the items to him, then turned away as he slipped them on.

He sat on the bed and began pulling on his boots. “Okay is an American slang word,” he told her. “You are familiar with slang…made-up words from the people in the streets?”

“Yes, I understand your meaning,” she said, as he strode over to the cupboard and found his freshly laundered shirt folded neatly inside.

With his shirt in his hand he looked over at Jane who was still standing by the cupboard. She looked up into his haunting green eyes. He saw in her face a jumble of emotions. Although she was embarrassed by what had just passed between them, what he saw behind the anger was excitement, passion. He was enchanted once again by this wonderfully complex woman.

Finally finding his voice, he said, “Okay means all right, or fine,” he explained, pulling on more clothes and walking over to the window to look down at the empty village road junction.

“If you are a spy they could hang you.” It was a flat statement.

“I am not a spy!” he again insisted, turning back to her. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really know how I got here. As a matter of fact I’m not even sure where here is, though I’m pretty certain I’m a very long way from my own…home.”

He paused then, watching her eyes for some sign, realizing as he did how extraordinarily attractive she was, bearing not the slightest resemblance to the poorly done sketch of a frumpy sixteen-year-old that was the only known portrait of Jane Austen to have survived into his time.

“I’m very sorry that I deceived you,” he apologized again. “I was hoping to leave here quietly, recover my horse, and then try to find my way back—”

“Back to Virginia in—five hours?” Despite the obvious tone of her cynical question, Jane’s dark eyes were filled with evident curiosity.

“Oh God! Did I say that?”

She nodded slowly. “Along with many other strange and unexplainable things. Things you called phones and jets and some sort of telling vision.”

Darcy was shocked and disturbed to learn that he had managed to reveal so much in his brief unconscious state. “My God, were you taking notes?” he asked sarcastically.

“How can you explain all of these strange words and the devices that you carry with you,” she said, gesturing at his watch. “Like your watch that never needs winding. Virginia is but a few months, sailing time from England; surely such wonders could not long remain hidden from the world if they were not the tools of some secret and sinister mission…”

“Yes, you’re right,” he replied, cutting her off. Darcy paused for a minute, trying to think of some way to explain without making his position any more precarious than it was. “Very well,” he said after a moment, “I’ll try to explain if you’ll promise not to repeat what I’m going to tell you.”

Jane stiffened at the suggestion. “I shall make no such promise to protect your foul secrets,” she proclaimed.

Darcy glared at her in frustration. “Fine!” he retaliated. “Then let me tell you a few secrets about yourself, Miss Austen. At night, after you have removed your clothing and put on your nightgown, you sit at that dressing table by the fire to write. Often before you actually begin writing you carry on imaginary conversations between your characters, or wonder aloud how they might react to a lover’s intimate touch. You are presently working on a novel about five sisters who are all hoping to marry well. Two of them do in fact, but another one is seduced and deceived by an infamous scoundrel you’ve named Wickham.”

For a fraction of a second Darcy toyed with the idea of informing her that the hero of her romantic novel would be named Fitzwilliam Darcy. But he saw with grim satisfaction that his unexpected disclosures had hit home and he had no wish to reduce the effect. For Jane’s face had turned pale as he spoke and she’d stumbled a step backward, as though he had physically struck her.

“Sir,” she murmured resentfully, “you have been spying on me, and reading my most intimate private papers—”

“I have not read anything!” Darcy said coldly. “How could I when you never have more than a few sheets of your writings with you at any time and you never let them out of your sight?”

She turned away in confusion. “You…only think to confound me with more riddles,” she accused. “You cannot know what is in my book, which I am not yet finished writing.”

“But I do know,” he insisted, regretting the need to resort to such crude, bullying tactics but unable to think of any other way to keep her under control until he could find a way to escape from his dangerous situation. “We both have secrets we’d rather keep, Miss Austen, and I know some of yours. That is my only point,” he concluded.

He moved closer to her and spoke as gently as he could. “Now, if you will only listen calmly and with an open mind, I’ll try to explain myself to you. But I must have your pledge of secrecy.”

Pointedly stepping away from him, Jane walked to her vanity table and sat weakly in the chair.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but once I’ve explained, I think you’ll understand my reasons.” He tried a reassuring smile on her. “If it makes you feel any better, I also happen to know that you’re an extremely gifted writer.”

Defeated by his disclosures, Jane shook her head. “Please, just tell me who you are,” she said wearily.

Before Darcy could reply, the bedroom door opened and Edward Austen walked in unannounced. His eyes widened in surprise at the sight of Darcy awake and fully dressed.

Jane immediately rose and went to her brother’s side.

“My dear Mr. Darcy,” Edward exclaimed with evident pleasure, “I came down to look in on you because Mr. Hudson reported that you were still abed. But happily I see that you are instead greatly improved. Excellent, sir! Excellent!”

“Yes, I’m feeling much better, a bit weak but definitely better,” Darcy replied, keeping a wary eye on Jane, who stood like a statue coldly regarding him from the sanctuary of her brother’s side. Darcy continued to Edward, “I was just thanking your sister for her great kindness in looking after me.”

To Darcy’s relief Jane curtseyed slightly in his direction. “You are most welcome, sir,” she murmured.

Edward was all smiles. “Well then, Darcy, you must move up to Chawton Great House. I insist upon it.” He moved to a window at the far end of the room and pointed out across the fields to a forest of chimneys and the top of a mansard roof rising above a line of distant trees. “My house is only a short journey away on the other side of the meadows that you see beyond that small wood,” he said proudly. “There you may complete your recovery in greater comfort whilst we continue our efforts to locate those friends of yours.”

Darcy’s eyes darted to Jane, who was watching him with a grim little smile that seemed to say, Let’s see you get yourself out of this one, pal.

“Oh, my friends!” Darcy stammered. “Yes, well, it’s rather embarrassing, but as I have just explained to Miss Austen, that knock on the head really confused me.”

He looked at Jane and saw her triumphant smile fading. “In fact,” he continued, “I know no one in this part of the country. I was simply riding through on my way to London when my horse bolted and ran into the fields.”

“Ah, I see!” said Edward, seemingly satisfied with the American’s nebulous explanation. “I suppose that explains it, then.”

Chapter 22

A short time later they stood at the front gate of Chawton Cottage, where Edward’s carriage waited.

“Miss Austen, I am obliged to you,” Darcy said, bowing at the waist to Cassandra, as he had seen Hudson do earlier.

“Not at all, sir.” Obviously pleased to have the handsome stranger in her debt, Cassandra rewarded him with a radiant smile and returned his overly formal bow with a polite curtsey.

“I hope we’ll meet again before I return home,” Darcy told Jane, who was standing beside her sister and making no effort whatsoever to conceal her irritation.

“I would take great pleasure in such a meeting,” she said, raising her eyes to his and looking straight into them. “For I still have many unanswered questions to ask about your fascinating life in…Virginia.”

Darcy fidgeted nervously beneath her steely gaze, certain that she was about to give him away. He breathed a sigh of relief as Edward stepped forward and addressed her.

“You two shall indeed have another meeting, Jane,” Edward cheerfully informed her. “Have you forgotten that my brother Frank is arriving today at Chawton Great House? You and Cassandra are to dine with us this very evening. And several of your friends will be there as well.”

Edward suddenly broke off his cheerful discourse and cast an apologetic look Darcy’s way. “Of course,” he continued, “we had thought to delay those jolly plans because of Mr. Darcy’s incapacity, but if he is now well enough…”

Forced to make some polite reply, Darcy tried to sound enthusiastic at the unsettling prospect of dining with all the Austen clan and their friends. “I feel quite well now,” he assured Edward, quickly adding, “however, I wouldn’t want to impose on your hospitality, sir.”

In fact, Darcy wanted nothing more than to be taken to his horse so that he could flee from these people at the earliest opportunity. He most decidedly did not want to be forced into a social situation where his ignorance of early nineteenth-century customs would surely mark him as an impostor.

Edward, however, was having none of his feeble protests. “Nothing of the sort, sir,” he assured Darcy. “We shall enjoy a fine dinner of excellent fish and fowl, and then be charmingly entertained by the ladies.”

Turning to Jane and Cassandra, he said, “Shall I send my carriage at seven?”

The ladies both smiled in appreciation of their brother’s thoughtfulness. “Yes, thank you, Edward,” Cassandra replied for both.

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Darcy climbed into the open carriage with Edward and it drove away. He looked back through the etched glass backlight to see Jane waving good-bye to him, a little smirk of satisfaction pasted on her lovely face. And he realized that she was actually looking forward to his undoing.

Leaning back against the padded leather seat cushions, Darcy only half-listened to Edward, who was enthusiastically describing the local hunting conditions. Between polite nods, the anxious American covertly surveyed the passing countryside in a futile search for the low stone wall with its distinctive arch of overhanging trees.

“Sister,” Cassandra said excitedly as the carriage rolled out of sight, “I did not know that you had been so much in conversation with our guest.” The elder Miss Austen frowned to express her own disappointment. “I confess he did nothing more interesting than to sleep and groan while I sat with him.”

With a disinterested shrug Jane dismissed Cassandra’s evident desire to begin gossiping about Darcy. “We had only a little brief discussion…about his home in Virginia, after I found him awake a short while ago,” Jane lied, wondering now if she had perhaps only imagined the strange, combative conversation with the American in her bedroom.

“And yet you seem most eager to meet with him again,” Cass said with a sly smile. “Did he tell you if he has a wife at home in Virginia?”

Jane, who usually loved to engage in such delicious but harmless prattle with her beloved sister, was in no mood for such foolishness today. So she pretended to be shocked by Cassandra’s intimation. “Cass, what a thing to say!”

“Well, he is very handsome and, as Edward tells it, very rich, too.”

Jane sniffed irritably. “Yes, and I expect that like most rich American landowners he also keeps slaves and is thus thoroughly wicked,” she replied, silently conjecturing whether it might actually be true. “Mr. Darcy is probably the sort of man who beats his servants and loves his dogs and horses to distraction,” she concluded, turning and going into the house.

“Well, hello there, big fella. How are you doing?”

Darcy grinned with genuine delight as a young groom led Lord Nelson out of Edward’s commodious stable for his inspection.

“He’s in tip-top condition, sir,” said the groom, handing the reins over to Darcy. “Can’t say I ever seen a healthier beast.”

Edward Austen, whose fine team of matched chestnut geldings demonstrated that the man obviously had an excellent eye for horseflesh, was clearly impressed by Lord Nelson. “What a marvelous creature, Darcy!” the older man exclaimed. “Where on earth did you find him?”

“I bought him at auction…a few days ago,” Darcy warily replied. “I plan to, um, take him home…to improve the bloodline in my own breeding stable.”

To Darcy’s dismay, Edward seemed shocked by this innocent revelation. “Home? You mean to say you plan to sail to America with this magnificent horse?” he bellowed. “Good Lord, man, is that not highly risky? I mean, the army regularly moves cavalry and livestock by sea, but confining a superior animal like this for months below decks in a heaving, rat-infested ship’s hold…”

Realizing that he had stepped into another minefield, for he had forgotten that this was still the age of sail, with steamships not due to revolutionize ocean travel for another sixty years or so, Darcy quickly backtracked. “Well, I’m still only thinking about it, actually. We’ll see.”

Slightly mollified by his answer, Edward nodded in the direction of the large Jacobean mansion they had passed on the way to the stables. “Shall we go up to the house now?” he suggested. “I daresay you will want to rest before dinner.”

“Yes, thank you,” Darcy replied. “But I’d like just a little more time with the horse, if that’s all right.”

“Certainly,” Edward agreed, seeming to readily understand a man putting the welfare of his horse before his own comforts. “I shall have your rooms prepared and some fresh clothes laid out for you.”

Edward indicated the young groom who had been standing patiently by the stable door while they talked. “Young Simmons here will show you the way up when you’re ready.”

“Sir!” Simmons touched his peaked hat in acknowledgment of his master’s order.

With a nod to his guest, Edward left the stables and Darcy began to check the horse over carefully.

“Begging your leave, sir,” said the groom, coming over to stand beside Lord Nelson. “I think there’s something you should see.”

Darcy looked at the youngster. “There is?”

Taking hold of Lord Nelson’s halter, Simmons deftly rolled back the horse’s upper lip, exposing the electronic barcode symbols that had been tattooed there by the previous owner. “Look at this, sir!” the groom exclaimed. “What can it be?”

Another minefield, thought Darcy, wondering how many of these situations he was going to be able to talk his way out of before making a fatal slip.

Looking quickly around to see if anyone else was listening, Darcy placed a warning finger to his lips. “Simmons,” he said in a low, confidential tone, “you seem like a good fellow. Can you be trusted to keep your mouth shut if I let you in on a secret?”

Simmons’s plain country features lit up with pleasure. “Oh, yes indeed, sir,” he whispered.

“This is a good-luck charm that was given to me by a very noble Indian chief when I was a boy,” Darcy said, pointing to the barcode identifier, which listed the horse’s international registry number, age, country of origin, lineage and owner.

“No!” Simmons’s eyes were as large as saucers.

“I have that charm secretly tattooed on all of my horses, for luck.”

The look of awe on Simmons’s face gave Darcy an idea and he decided to embroider the ridiculous tale just a bit more. “In fact,” he told the wondering groom, “I believe that Indian charm is the only reason I wasn’t killed in the fall I took going over that wall the other day.”

“That’s amazing, sir,” Simmons breathed. “For I heard tell you took a very bad tumble indeed.”

Darcy was just on the point of congratulating himself when the youngster frowned and said, “But I thought maybe it was there so you’d know the horse was yours if he was ever stole.”

Shot down again for having underestimated his supposedly unsophisticated listener, Darcy couldn’t help laughing out loud. “Simmons, my friend,” he told the observant groom, “something tells me that you’ll go very far in this life.”

His clever plan to coax the location of the stone wall from the young man in tatters, Darcy went for broke. “Tell me, though, how can I get back to the spot where I was thrown?” he asked. I’d like to ride out there and take a look at the ground.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” said the lad, looking genuinely pained that he did not have the answer Darcy sought. “I don’t believe I’ve heard it mentioned exactly where it was they found you. Perhaps Master Edward knows.”

The sun was dropping toward the horizon as Jane sat before the mirror at her dressing table. She had been taking advantage of the waning daylight to examine the handwritten manuscript that she kept hidden under lock and key in a chest downstairs. To her great disappointment she had been able to find no evidence that either her chest or the pages stored within had been tampered with. “Oh that horrid man!” she spat, still convinced that Darcy had somehow gained access to her manuscript.

Looking into the mirror, she saw that Cassandra had quietly entered the bedroom and was standing behind her, looking very worried.

“Jane, what is the matter?” Cass inquired.

Jane turned and regarded her. “Why must we be forced to dine with that arrogant American?” she demanded to know.

Cass’s worried look changed to one of confusion. “But you said you looked forward to meeting him again,” she reminded Jane. “However, if you do not wish to see him I will send word that you are ill. Edward knows that you have not slept properly since—”

“No!” Jane interrupted, coming to a sudden decision. “We shall go to Edward’s,” she defiantly declared. “For I will not miss an opportunity to see Frank and all of our friends.” She turned back to the mirror and mischief sparkled in her eyes. “And I do genuinely wish to learn more of this Darcy.”

“Oh, sister,” whispered Cassandra, suddenly anxious to share her own thrilling speculations about the handsome stranger, “you do not think that Darcy has deceived us, do you? Perhaps he is a brigand,” she breathlessly suggested, “or an American spy, and not a gentleman at all.”

“Perhaps!” Jane said, reaching up to arrange her hair. “But if he is not a gentleman, then let the society of my brother’s drawing room be his undoing. For only a true gentleman will know how to dress and behave in company.”

Chapter 23

Chawton Great House was ablaze with light. Several fine horses stood in the traces of the carriages waiting in the drive before the huge brick mansion. The drivers and footmen of the equipages sat or stood about on the lawn, enjoying the excellent supper of roast venison that had been sent out to them from Edward’s well-stocked kitchens.

While the drivers happily ate and quaffed ale outside, up in the manor’s large, oak-paneled dining room more than a dozen Austen relations and friends were being treated to a sumptuous repast of fresh trout and roasted game birds, enhanced by a dizzying selection of soups, meat, salads and fresh fruits.

The food was being served on a gorgeous, delicately patterned china service just arrived from the East Indies courtesy of Jane’s seagoing elder brother, Captain Francis Austen.

Dressed uncomfortably in a foppish suit of Edward’s best evening clothes, into which he had barely managed to squeeze his large frame, Darcy found himself seated near the head of the long, linen-draped table, directly across from Frank—a handsome, middle-aged officer of the line, who was dressed in the splendid blue-and-white uniform of His Majesty’s Royal Navy.

To Darcy’s absolute horror, Frank had been plying him with ever-more probing questions throughout the evening. And it had been to the visitor’s great relief when Edward had mercifully broken in, insisting that his brother repeat for all the company the story of how he had brought the priceless set of china through a violent storm at sea by cushioning the fragile crockery in the bags of gunpowder stored deep in the magazine of his warship.

“The gale was blowing ninety, with waves so high they were topping our mainmast,” Frank was now telling his enthralled listeners. “We were being knocked about so badly that every article in the ship was smashing itself to pieces against the bulkheads, when here comes the gunner, his eyes as round as cannonballs.”

Frank paused dramatically, his ice-blue eyes scanning the table to be sure he had everyone’s absolute attention. “‘Cap’n, Sir,’ says the gunner,” Frank continued his story, mimicking the high-pitched voice of the frightened man, “‘everything’s bashing about so terrible below I fear the powder may spark and blow us all to kingdom come.’”

Frank paused again and a sly smile creased his deeply tanned features. “‘Well man,’ said I, ‘thank God for all that good china down there among the powder. For if it’s to kingdom come we’re bound, at least when we arrive there we’ll be able to put on a decent British tea.’”

The guests laughed and clapped appreciatively. But no sooner had the applause died down than Frank returned his attention to Darcy. “Well, sir,” he said a bit too loudly, “Edward tells me you had a close call of your own the other day. Thrown from your mount, eh?”

Darcy nodded as all eyes turned to him. “Yes,” he replied, smiling. “But I was fortunate enough to be rescued and taken to the home of your lovely sisters who nursed me back to health.” He inclined his head in a bow toward Jane and Cassandra, who were seated together a little ways down the table.

Frank, who had been drinking copious amounts of wine, raised his glass to his sisters. “My own dear Jane and Cass, God bless ’em. Are they not angelic creatures?” he asked, his gruff voice filled with genuine affection.

The sea captain winked and leaned closer to Darcy. “Yet I declare the poor lasses have not a husband between them,” he said in a loud stage whisper, “though not for want of offers. But both of them have vowed they will marry for love alone, fortune being not a matter of consequence to either.”

Jane smiled tolerantly at her brother’s good-natured teasing, but Cassandra’s fair complexion flushed bright pink. “Frank!” she exclaimed, scandalized. “Mr. Darcy will think you are in earnest if you insist on baiting us so.”

“What you say is true, brother,” Jane playfully rejoined Frank. “But you know full well that we have only vowed never to take husbands until you have brought us a shipload of pirate treasure, so that we may have fortunes large enough to marry whomever we choose.”

Frank’s broad shoulders shook with laughter and wine sloshed over the rim of his glass. “Then, dear Jane, I shall scour the world over in search of pirates,” he declared. “For sisters as genial and accomplished as you and Cassandra deserve nothing but happiness.”

Without warning the tipsy captain turned back to Darcy. “And you, sir, what think you of the married life?”

Relaxing slightly, for his adversary seemed now to be merely having fun, Darcy glanced over at Jane and pretended to ponder the question. “They say that marriage is a wonderful institution,” he finally answered. “But who wants to live in an institution?”

There was a long moment of deathly silence in the room as everyone at the table pondered the threadbare joke that Darcy had last told as a freshman in college.

Jane was the first to laugh. Then the entire company broke into loud, appreciative howls.

“Quite right!” Edward chortled uncontrollably from his winged armchair at the head of the table. “An excellent jest, sir! Excellent.”

Darcy smiled at their reaction, wondering if it was possible that his audience might have just heard the joke for the very first time. In the same instant, though, he realized that he had committed yet another serious blunder.

Frank, his blue eyes rimmed in red from the effects of the wine, was glaring at him. For a moment Darcy couldn’t imagine what he had done, then it dawned on him that he was guilty of having gotten a bigger laugh than the Austen family’s heroic favorite son.

“And what think you of the politics in France these days, Mr. Darcy?” The humor had drained from the captain’s voice and he was eyeing his victim like a hungry gull making ready to swallow a sardine.

Another uneasy silence descended upon the candlelit dining room as Darcy smiled disarmingly. “I’m afraid I know more of horses than of politics, Captain,” he replied.

“Hmmm!” Frank grumbled, unappeased. “Would that all your countrymen felt so. Even now my ships patrol the American coast in an attempt to halt the godless Yankee slave trade and quell your shipments of munitions to England’s enemies.”

Frank paused and took another long draught of wine, dribbling a few blood-red drops onto the front of his snowy shirt. “We may soon be at war with you Americans, you know,” he growled menacingly.

Glancing down the table, Darcy saw that Jane’s face was filled with alarm, and he wondered if she was now regretting her earlier promise to keep his secrets.

“Frank! I fear you are making our guest uneasy with this talk of slaves and war.” Edward was on his feet, clearly embarrassed by his brother’s rude behavior toward a potentially valuable new banking client.

To Darcy’s surprise, Frank abruptly stood and bowed stiffly to him. “My apologies, sir, if I have said anything to offend you. I fear I am not often enough in gentle society.”

Seizing upon the opportunity to put to rest the dangerous subjects of slavery and war with America, Darcy leaped to his feet and returned the bow. “No offense taken, Captain,” he said. Then, raising his glass to the assembled guests, he offered a toast. “May our two nations be forever joined in friendship and prosperity.”

Darcy could feel the tension in the room magically dissolving as all present smiled with evident relief and raised their glasses.

“Hear! Hear! Well said, sir!” Edward cried out.

Darcy looked back over at Frank, but the abrasive captain had already turned away and was conversing with a buxom young lady at his side.

From her position farther down the table Jane sat thoughtfully scrutinizing Darcy. Cassandra leaned close to her and whispered with a little smile, “What think you of Darcy now, Jane? Is he not after all a gentleman?”

“He makes a good show of it,” Jane grudgingly conceded, “but I observe that he is far too nervous in this informal atmosphere. See how his eyes dart constantly about the room. And I saw him before, rubbing at his fork with a napkin, as if he thought the thing to be unclean.”

Jane paused to watch the American a moment longer, then she slowly shook her head. “No, sister,” she concluded, “I think there is too much of the cornered fox in Darcy’s look. And he is sorely in need of a valet to tie his cravat.”

“Oh, Jane, you exaggerate as usual,” Cassandra retorted.

“Do I?” asked Jane. “Watch this, then.” She pointedly stared at Darcy until he glanced her way. When she had his attention, she touched her throat with her fingers and shook her head slightly. Darcy immediately looked down self-consciously and fumbled with the broad silk scarf tied in a clumsy bow at his collar.

Grinning delightedly at his flustered reaction, Jane inclined her head toward her sister and raised a hand to cover her mouth. “See,” she whispered.

Cassandra looked from Darcy to Jane and back again. “But whatever can it mean?” she asked.

Following supper, the members of the dinner party retired to a large drawing room on the second floor of Edward’s manse for conversation and light entertainment. Jane, who was soon coaxed and teased by the others into taking her place at the piano, played a series of increasingly difficult pieces by Mozart and Haydn, all of which she performed with admirable style.

Hoping to avoid both of the Austen brothers, but most especially the volatile Frank, Darcy sought out Cassandra, whom he discovered sitting alone at one side of the room, and took a chair beside her. “Your sister is very accomplished,” he said quietly, for he was genuinely impressed with Jane’s mastery of the instrument.

Cassandra accepted the compliment to her sister’s musical talent with evident pride. “She does play beautifully,” Cass agreed, adding, “music, I think, is Jane’s only true passion. She practices every morning at the pianoforte at home, you know.”

Before Darcy could say that he did not know that—for he could not recall having heard any music during his stay at Chawton Cottage—Jane finished her last piece to enthusiastic applause. He and Cassandra both rose as she walked over to join them.

“That was wonderful, Miss Austen,” Darcy told her, pointedly touching his poorly tied cravat. “You are full of surprises.”

Jane accorded him a little curtsey. “I thank you, sir,” she replied with laughter sparkling in her eyes. “You are all politeness.”

“Is it true that music is your only passion?” he asked with a mocking smile.

“Not at all,” she retorted sharply. “Is it true that horses are yours?”

Cassandra, who had been listening to the conversation with growing bewilderment, took advantage of the momentary lull to step back and curtsey to Darcy. “If you will excuse me, I think I must visit with my brothers now,” she said, beating a diplomatic retreat to the other side of the room.

Alone at last, Darcy and Jane both looked around to see if anyone else was within earshot. To Darcy’s dismay, he saw Frank scowling at them from his post beside the mantel.

Jane read the anxiety written on Darcy’s features and asked him a little too loudly, “And how is dear Lord Nelson, your horse?”

“Please, not here,” Darcy begged her. “I believe your brother would gladly run me through with that saber he’s carrying.”

Jane accorded him an angelic smile. “Yes, I’m sure he would, given cause,” she agreed. “In which case, perhaps you had better explain yourself to me now, sir, so that I may properly consider whether I would wish to stop dear Frank if he tries.”

“Very well,” Darcy said. He glanced nervously around the crowded room. “Is there someplace we can go?”

She stared at him, not certain of his meaning. “Go?”

“Somewhere private,” he said impatiently, “where we can speak without being overheard.”

Jane wrinkled her brow at the odd request and she also looked around the drawing room. Then she slowly shook her head. “Not here in my brother’s house,” she told him. “Certainly not with Frank about.”

“Where, then?” Darcy pleaded. “It is urgent that I speak with you immediately.”

Caught off guard by this unexpected turnabout—for Jane had expected to be the one who would force him to reveal his secrets to her, and in her own good time—she could think of no suitable private meeting place.

And at any rate she was not at all certain that she wished to be alone with this mercurial and possibly dangerous man. “I do not know…” she replied, playing for time. “You must give me a moment to think.”

Darcy waited impatiently. Across the room, Captain Francis Austen was speaking in low, serious tones with Edward and Cassandra, turning around from time to time to openly glare at Darcy.

Chapter 24

“I stood there waiting for her to think of a private place where we could speak, the whole time with her brother’s suspicious eyes burning into me like lasers.”

Darcy looked up at Eliza in the growing gloom of early evening. Though she had long since taken her feet out of the water and folded them beneath her, she was still leaning eagerly toward him, as if she was afraid of missing some minor detail of his story. “So where did you go?” she asked expectantly.

“Jane couldn’t think of anywhere at the moment, and then we were interrupted by another of her many relatives,” Darcy replied. “We didn’t have another opportunity to be alone for the rest of the evening. But later, as she was leaving Edward’s house, I—”

“Fitz? Y’all down there?”

Darcy left the sentence hanging and whipped his head around as the shrill cry split the quiet evening.

“Perfect!” Eliza groaned. She tore her eyes from Darcy and saw Faith Harrington stumbling toward them across the lawn.

Darcy got up, gave Eliza his hand and helped her to her feet. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll finish this later.”

“Oh there you are!” Faith waved and hurried down to the lakeshore. She had changed from her riding outfit into a frilly pink summer dress, which somehow made her look even harder and less feminine than she had before. “Now y’all aren’t having a little secret affair, are you?” the tall blonde chirped, leering at Eliza.

Annoyed by the sudden interruption, Eliza stooped to retrieve her sketch pad and her shoes. “If we were it wouldn’t be a secret for long around here, would it?” she murmured resentfully.

“My goodness, aren’t we cranky? I just came to tell you that dinner is being served.” Faith’s manner was full of wounded innocence. “I wouldn’t have dreamed of interrupting your little soiree otherwise,” she pouted, turning and stomping back toward the house on her own. Darcy and Eliza waited a moment before following her at a safe distance.

“Do you two have a thing going?” Eliza asked him when the other was out of hearing range.

Darcy shook his head and smiled. “No, old family friend and Harv’s sister,” he told her as if to explain Faith’s presence, although he wasn’t sure why that was important. He looked up at the retreating pink figure flouncing through the dusk ahead of them. “I’m afraid that poor Faith just can’t stand not being the center of attention.”

Eliza laughed at the ridiculous explanation of the other woman’s bad manners. “You don’t really think that’s all it is, I hope.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Eliza said, pointing at Faith, “that the woman looks like a disgruntled postal worker who just got a pink slip.” She lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. “You don’t have any automatic weapons lying around, do you?”

“Well, not any that are loaded,” Darcy replied with a grin. “Shall we go up to dinner now?”

Eliza shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Sure, why not?”

Eliza, Harv, Jenny and Artemis were clustered at one end of the huge table in the echoing dining room, eating a delcious meal of crab bisque and cold fried chicken. Faith, meanwhile, had once more appropriated Darcy for herself. She had moved him to the opposite end of the table, where she had been chattering nonstop for the past half hour about some arrangement or other.

“Admit it now, aren’t you glad you stayed?” Harv Harrington was pointing a partially consumed drumstick at Eliza.

She cast a deadly glance in Faith’s direction. “Let me get back to you on that one, Harv,” she replied, attacking the savory pink soup with an antique silver spoon, the bowl of which was cunningly formed to resemble a miniature seashell.

Harv’s handsome features contorted into an expression of mock concern at her reply. “Oh, my! I do hope my big sister hasn’t been bothering you,” he said.

“No more than your average case of bubonic plague,” Eliza assured him. “What is with her anyway? I mean, it’s not like she caught Fitz and me playing doctor behind the barn.”

“Artie, I told you I liked this girl,” Jenny piped up.

Artemis looked up thoughtfully from his bisque. “Playing doctor behind the barn? I must have missed that course in med school,” he commented dryly.

Jenny leaned over and kissed his neck. “I’ll fill you in on it later, dear,” she solemnly promised. Then she turned to Harv. “Harv, why don’t you be a darling and explain to Eliza about Fitz and your sister,” she said.

Delighted at actually being invited to speak for once, Harv quickly finished demolishing his chicken drumstick and washed down the last bite with a large swallow of scotch. “Fitz and Faith,” he said at length. “Well, that’s simple enough. You see, Eliza, Faith has dreamed of becoming the mistress of Pemberley Farms since she was old enough to read a Gucci label—”

“And she learned to read from the Neiman Marcus catalog,” Artemis interjected, reaching for the chicken platter.

Harv shot the handsome doctor a pained look, then turned and refocused his attention on Eliza. “As I was saying, Faith’s most ardent wish is that Fitz will marry her. A wish Fitz isn’t likely to grant. But I suppose I should start at the beginning. Although our family—mine and Faith’s—is old and aristocratic, our wealth isn’t what it once was. So, unless one of us should ever decide, God forbid, to go to work, our only track to genteel prosperity is for me or Faith to marry somebody rich enough to keep up with our spending habits.”

“Which together roughly rival those of Argentina,” interrupted Jenny.

Artemis threw Harv a pitying glance. “The man is in a tough position,” he told Eliza. “I’m talking about using his mansion’s swimming pool to raise catfish.” Artie managed to look suitably solemn. “It’s very sad to see a once-rich-and-powerful white family reduced to such a state,” he intoned.

“Thanks, Artie, I knew you’d understand,” Harv said gratefully. “And despite what you’ve heard from the AMA, catfish contains almost no fat. It’s the beer and cornmeal batter that really puts on the pounds.”

“Now that’s a true fact!” Jenny declared.

Harv turned back to Eliza. “At any rate, Eliza,” he continued, “I have tried my level best to secure a bride who would restore the family fortunes and, incidentally, put a new roof on the summer house, but alas the only suitable candidates all rejected me, including one who actually looked like a catfish…”

“She did, too!” Jenny giggled. “It was a match made in heaven.”

Harv ignored the remark and, clearing his throat, continued in a mournful tone, “I struck out in the marriage bowl. My sister hasn’t fared any better and continues to hope that Fitz will reconsider his stand and marry her. But the only way that might happen is to get him blind drunk so he forgets how obnoxious she is long enough for us to whisk him off to Juarez or someplace where they still perform fifteen-dollar weddings without a blood test.”

By this time Eliza had caught the giggles from Jenny. “Wow! I’m sorry I asked,” she told Harv, whose nose was back in his glass. “And Fitz doesn’t have any inclination to go along with this program?”

Snorting into his drink, Harv rolled his eyes but kept drinking so Jenny attempted to interpret for him, “Absolutely not.”

Finally coming up for air Harv added, “We couldn’t actually get him that drunk.”

Eliza queried, “Doesn’t he like her?” Wondering why the woman was there at all.

Artemis joined the conversation. “Well, he liked her enough to take her to England with him.”

“She was with him?” startling herself with the quick stab of jealousy she felt.

Jenny seemed to sense Eliza’s alarm and was pleased that things were moving in that direction. “The tabloids had a field day with it but it was Harv’s idea, to keep her out of trouble here alone.”

Harv added, “Yeah, turned out she wasn’t the one we had to worry about.”

Eliza questioned the meaning of his cryptic statement, so Jenny explained, “That was when Fitz pulled his vanishing act. The tabloids had a field day with that, too.”

“Well, the tabloids got it all wrong,” intoned Harv. “I’m convinced he disappeared because he’d had just about enough of my darling sister as any sane person could take. I considered running away myself, he just beat me to it.”

Being reminded now of Fitz’s own explanation, she remembered the look on his face when he was talking about his first meetings with Jane Austen, and another small stab of jealousy surprised her.

Still in her own thoughts she mumbled aloud, “No, but he had fallen in love…” She stopped short, the three other diners turned and looked at her. Glancing at each in turn she realized that she couldn’t explain why she’d said it, so she hastily got up and excused herself. Bidding a good night to everyone at the table she retreated to the Rose Bedroom.

Later, Eliza sat cross-legged on the floor of her room, reviewing the events of her peculiar first day at Pemberley Farms. Because she always did her clearest thinking while she was working, her sketch pad was in her lap. Why had she felt jealous over a man she’d known only a few hours? Jealous of a woman he didn’t like and another who’d been dead almost two hundred years. She had to laugh at herself for the absurdity of it all.

Glancing up from time to time at the lovely portrait of Rose Darcy, Eliza drew the first mistress of the Great House precisely as Jenny had described her, standing on the balcony of the Rose Bedroom dressed in her silken gown, watching the distant fields for the return of her man.

Trying to sort out the strange thoughts swirling around her head, Eliza mentally recapped as she sketched. Darcy’s ancestor had been ruled out as a candidate for the character in Jane Austen’s romantic classic. And Jenny and the others had all marked his trip to England three years before as the beginning of Fitz’s obsession with the writer.

Eliza tried to seriously consider the possibility that her host’s incredible story might actually be true. Closing her eyes, she envisioned once more Darcy’s trancelike expression as he had seemingly relived events for her that, in his mind at least, had taken place two centuries before. Could it all possibly have happened just as he said? Eliza struggled to come up with an alternate explanation, one that could be tested with logic and reason.

She was startled out of her musings by the sound of a light knock. Eliza got up, laid her sketch pad on the bed and went to the door. “Who is it?” she asked softly.

“It’s me, Fitz.”

She opened the door to find him standing in the dark hallway with a tall silver candlestick in his hand. “Nice candle,” she said, smiling. Then, sticking her head out into the corridor, she looked up and down, halfway expecting to see Faith Harrington lurking behind a potted palm. “Where’s Lady Macbeth?” she asked.

“Locked safely away in the dungeon,” Darcy replied with a good-natured smile. “Would you care to go for a walk?”

Eliza returned his smile, realizing that it was almost impossible not to like this man. “A walk!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t this the point in one of those Gothic Romance novels where the master of the house—that’s you—is supposed to force his way into the heroine’s room—I’m the heroine—and rip her bodice?” she asked, feigning disappointment.

Darcy laughed. “Maybe,” he replied, pretending to consider the possibility. “I just usually come by and ask if they’d like to take a walk. However, if your bodice is in need of ripping I can call Harv for you.”

“That’s okay,” she grinned. “I actually only have the one bodice with me this trip anyway.”

Darcy stepped back. “As you wish,” and indicated the broad hallway with a sweeping bow. “Walk this way, then.”

Eliza stepped out into the darkened passage and followed him. “Where are we going?” she whispered.

He turned and winked at her, his finely formed features disturbingly handsome in the flickering light of the candle. “To the one place where we’re almost certain not to be disturbed,” he replied.

After several minutes of walking down narrow back staircases and through the silent house they emerged onto the lawn through a side door.

By the light of a full moon Darcy led Eliza down a worn path to a barnlike wooden structure that loomed ahead in a grove of trees. Darcy grabbed a pull handle and a large wooden door slowly opened with an appropriate horror-movie creaking of iron hinges. Eliza hesitantly followed him into a pitch-black space and stood nervously at his back while he fumbled to light a lantern he removed from a peg inside the door.

“Am I going to like this place?” she asked. “Or are there bats?”

“There might be a few bats living in here,” he replied, peering up into the pools of inky darkness filling the space between the dimly outlined rafters, “but they’re probably all out feeding at this time of night.”

“Oh, thanks,” she replied with a shudder. “Now I feel much better.”

The lantern suddenly flared, illuminating the interior of what appeared to be an ancient barn filled with large, box-like shapes. Eliza blinked in the glare and her mouth fell open as she realized what she was looking at.

For parked along the walls in two neat rows were no fewer than a dozen horse-drawn conveyances, their polished brass and painted woodwork gleaming like new in the lantern light.

“Oh, they’re beautiful!” she gasped.

“Family heirlooms one and all, and all quite comfortable,” Darcy said. He raised the lantern high and walked slowly down the aisle, past racy chaises, heavy traveling coaches, and light buggies with wheels as spindly as cobwebs. “Take your pick,” he told Eliza.

She wandered among the elegant vehicles, pausing from time to time to peer in at soft, hand-stitched leather seats and ran her fingers over shining red and black lacquer and delicately carved sills. At the end of the aisle she stopped before a graceful burgundy traveling coach with glass windows etched in elaborate floral patterns and an interior of spotless dove-gray suede.

“I pick this one,” she announced.

“My personal favorite!” said Darcy sounding pleased. “This coach belonged to the very first mistress of Pemberley Farms—”

Eliza clapped her hands. “Rose, your great-great-whatever-grandmother!”

“The very same,” he said, opening the door with a flourish to admit her to the roomy interior of the coach. “Climb in and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Stepping up into the high passenger compartment, Eliza sank luxuriantly into the feather-soft cushions of the forward-facing rear seat and closed her eyes. “Now I know how Cinderella felt,” she uttered into the darkness. “But I’m warning you. I could get used to this.”

When no response was forthcoming she peered out into the barn through the open door, looking for some sign of him. “Hello?”

Darcy suddenly appeared at the window on the opposite side of the coach. He opened the door and climbed in, taking the seat facing hers. In his hands were an open bottle of champagne and two fragile wine glasses.

“Here you are,” he said, handing her a glass.

Eliza watched as he deftly filled first her glass and then his own and placed the bottle on a small wooden shelf. “Are you sure this isn’t a decadent prelude to some wild romance novel hanky-panky?” she asked, gazing at the golden effervescent wine.

“On my honor as a gentleman,” he pledged, touching his glass to hers with a musical ring. “I just thought you might enjoy a little authentic nineteenth-century atmosphere to go along with my tale.”

“A dashing gentleman, champagne and candlelight!” Eliza sipped the chilled golden wine, found it delicious and sipped again. “Every woman’s dream.”

His raised eyebrow made her blush at the exuberance of her reaction to the romantic gesture but his warm smile made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Needing to be in control, she sat up a little straighter in her seat, cocked her head and searched his chiseled features. “Fitz, may I ask you a personal question?”

“Eliza,” he replied, “so far you don’t seem to have asked any questions that haven’t been intensely personal.” There was a pause that made her fear he might say no. “But yes, you may go ahead.”

“Were you falling in love with Jane?”

Darcy’s eyes lit up with a sudden surge of hope that tugged at Eliza’s heart. “Does that question mean you believe my story?” he asked.

“Let’s just say I’m beginning to believe that you believe it,” she answered, struggling to keep the warring emotions that she was feeling out of her voice. “But you were falling in love with her, weren’t you?”

“I’m not sure I can truthfully answer that question,” he replied. “It’s easy to fall in love in a dream. And that’s what it all seemed like to me then.”

Darcy took another slow sip of his wine and closed his eyes, remembering. “As I was saying when we were interrupted earlier, Jane and I weren’t able to speak alone again, so as she was leaving Edward’s house that night…”