“Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law…”

The click of boot heels and rattle of a sword in its sheath echoed in the vastness behind him, distracting Darcy from the text. In the next moment, he was forcefully nudged down the pew by a scarlet-clad shoulder.

“Good Lord, it is wretched weather! Thought you might stay home this morning. Need to speak to you,” Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam whispered loudly into his cousin’s ear.

“Quiet!” Darcy whispered back tersely, half amused, half annoyed at Fitzwilliam’s characteristic irreverence. He skewered a corner of his book into his cousin’s arm until he surrendered and reached for it. “Here…read!”

“…if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself…”

“Ouch! Fitz. Is that bloody ‘loving thy neighbor’?” Fitzwilliam looked at him reproachfully as he rubbed his arm.

“Richard, your language!” Darcy murmured back. “Just read…here.” He pointed to the place, and Fitzwilliam bent his head to the text, a large grin on his face.

“…let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness…”

“That leaves out the Army,” Fitzwilliam quipped out of the side of his mouth. “Navy, too.”

“…not in chambering and wantonness…”

“Down goes the peerage.”

“Richard!” Darcy breathed menacingly.

“…not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.”

“Finished off the entire ton with that one.” Fitzwilliam glanced over his shoulder. “But none of them are about, so here endeth the lesson.”