“Sir Reginald, I appreciate the honour Their Majesties offer Elizabeth by extending this invitation,” Papa said quietly. “However, you will understand that this news comes as quite a shock, and Elizabeth will need time to consider her choice.”
“Of course,” Sir Reginald replied smoothly. “I must begin my journey back north in a week.”
And with a bow and a crisp turn, he was gone.
One week.In one week, she would either travel to Thurnia to begin a new life as a princess, or she would remain at Longbourn and watch Sir Reginald depart, taking with him any chance to meet her father’s family.
And introduce Jane to a duke, of course.
“Well,” Mamma said finally, breaking the silence. “A princess. Our Lizzy, a real princess.”
“I have always been a real princess, Mamma,” Elizabeth said quietly. “That has not changed.”
“But now you couldlivelike one!” Mamma exclaimed. “Think of it, Lizzy! Your own apartments, your own servants, beautiful gowns, jewels, dancing with princes and dukes!”
Elizabeth tried to imagine herself in a ballroom filled with strangers, making polite conversation with eligible princes while calculating the political connections each alliance might create. It made her feel slightly ill.
“And think of us!” Mamma continued, warming to her theme. “With a princess in the family, we could expect invitations to the finest houses, the best society! Your sisters would have opportunities they could never dream of otherwise!”
Elizabeth looked about the familiar parlour: Papa’s worn chair with its threadbare arms, the hearthrug with a little scorch mark no one would admit to causing, the table by the window that leaned ever so slightly to the left. Everything appeared as it had an hour ago, yet somehow everything was different.
A few days.A few days to choose between everything she had ever known and everything she had never dared to imagine.
Chapter Two
Fitzwilliam Darcy had never desired a title, least of all the one his uncle now held out before him like a poisoned chalice.
The earl’s letter lay upon his desk in the morning room at Pemberley, its heavy parchment and elaborate seal speaking to the gravity with which Lord Matlock regarded his own correspondence. It was a masterwork of familial flattery and political self-interest, each phrase calculated to appeal to what his uncle presumed were Darcy’s ambitions.
In the space of two sides of paper, Darcy was assured that it was hisdutyto England to take up the offered title of baron, hisbirthrightto serve in Parliament, and hisprivilegeto restore the family’s political standing. All this despite the inconvenient fact that the barony had been unceremoniously stripped from the Darcy family by Henry VIII, its holder executed for standing on the losing side of a rebellion. That his family had never sought to reclaim it in the intervening centuries seemed, in Lord Matlock’s estimation, merely an oversight to be corrected by the present generation.
After all, why dwell on the insult to the Darcys when there was the chance to wear the ceremonial robes of Parliament while he nodded offduring a five-hour speech on whether rotten boroughs ought to be eliminated?
He disliked debating things that had obvious answers.
Darcy knew why his uncle was pressing this now. The peerage of England was currently expanding into the peerage of the United Kingdom, bringing many new aristocrats and their titles into the fold, and his uncle wished to make the most of the moment by resurrecting the Darcy’s ancient standing.
He stared at the letter, written in his uncle’s smooth political language—the latest in three years of increasingly pointed suggestions.
The Barony of Ashworth carries with it not merely honour, but influence. In these times of change, when the very fabric of our society faces challenges from those who would tear down all that our fathers built, men of sense and property must take their rightful place in the governance of the nation. Your father, God rest his soul, was ever a man of quiet virtue, content to manage his estates and care for his tenants. But you, my dear nephew, have the opportunity, nay, the obligation, to serve England in a greater capacity.
He read these lines with mounting irritation. His father had indeed been a man of quiet virtue, and Darcy could think of no finer epitaph for any gentleman. That Lord Matlock chose to frame such virtues as somehow insufficient spoke volumes about his uncle’s own character and very little about his father’s.
Lord Matlock was not a malicious man, but he was an ambitious one. His eldest son and heir had been pushed into a match to secure a political alliance, and when Richard, his younger son, had refused to resign his armycommission and submit to similar management, their uncle had turned his attention to his sister’s children.
Darcy sighed.
The campaign had begun in earnest at the reading of his father’s will three years prior, when Lord Matlock learned that Darcy and his own second son, Colonel Fitzwilliam, had been named co-guardians of Georgiana, and therefore he would not be arranging her future. What had started with wounded dignity and veiled criticisms of Darcy’s and Richard’s youth had evolved into orchestrated introductions to “suitable” young ladies, pointed remarks about family duty, and now, a resurrected barony.
Darcy knew his uncle’s manoeuvring had made him a more sceptical, suspicious man. But it was better to be constantly on his guard than for one of his uncle’s schemes to take him by surprise.
The letter continued with detailed descriptions of the political advantages the barony would afford, the connections it would provide, and the respect it would command. It was, his uncle implied with barely concealed triumph, the opportunity of a lifetime.
Darcy was inclined to agree, though his interpretation of opportunity differed markedly from his uncle’s. A title, in his view, was not a prize to be claimed but a chain willingly fastened about one’s own neck, a chain that bound a man to endless obligations and forced him to spend his days in the stifling chambers of the House of Lords. What could possibly be more delightful than listening to a week of speeches about amending an amendment to an amendment without acting on anything at all?
The letter would have been consigned to the fire at once, were his attention not drawn to a second missive, a smaller one, written in a more precise hand.
The contents were equally unwelcome. Miss Lancome, the headmistress of Georgiana’s small seminary in London, had written with the carefuldelicacy of a woman accustomed to delivering unwelcome news to protective relations.