“A monstrous slow journey by coach.”

“Given the season, the wet weather and the state of the roads, coach it must be. However, I’ll use six light draughts, so will Bingley. We should do sixty miles a day, perhaps more.”

The note tucked in his greatcoat pocket, Ned departed.

Darcy got up, frowning, to stand for a moment with his eyes riveted sightlessly on the leather-bound rows of his parliamentary Hansards. The old besom was dead at last. It is a vile thing, he thought, to marry beneath one’s station, no matter how great the love or how tormenting the urge to consummate that love. And it has not been worth the pain. My beautiful, queenly Elizabeth is as pinched a spinster as her sister Mary. I have one sickly, womanish boy and four wretched girls. One in the eye for me, Mrs. Bennet! May the devil take you and all your glorious daughters, the price has been too high.

Having but five miles to cover, the Darcy coach-and-six pulled into the courtyard of the Crown and Garter before the Bingley contingent; Bingley Hall was twenty-five miles away. Hands tucked warmly in a muff, Elizabeth settled in the private parlour to wait until the rendezvous was completed.

Her only son, head buried in a volume of Gibbon’s Decline, used his left hand to grope for a chair seat without once lifting his gaze from the print. Light reading, he had explained to her with his sweet smile. Nature had given him her own fine features and a colouring more chestnut than gold; the lashes of his downcast lids were dark like his father’s, as were the soft brows above.

At least his health had improved, now that Fitz had yielded to the inevitable and abandoned his remorseless campaign to turn Charlie into a satisfactory son. Oh, the chills that had followed some bruising ride in bad weather! The fevers that had lain him low for weeks after shooting parties or expeditions to London! None of it had deflected Charlie from his scholarly bent, transformed him into a suitable son for Darcy of Pemberley.