Prologue
Pemberley Estate, Derbyshire
September 1798
The September morning hung heavy with mist as Fitzwilliam Darcy walked beside Mr Wickham’s cart towards Pemberley for the last time.
The black wool hung loose about his growing frame. When first tailored two months past, it had fitted well enough. Now the sleeves revealed his bony wrists, the shoulders pinched when he moved, and the fabric held the lingering scent of the cottage that no longer sheltered him. His hands, already rough from helping his father with estate work, shook as he gripped his father’s old cap—the same threadbare thing his father had worn whilst teaching him to read correspondence and calculate rent tallies.
“Your father was much esteemed by the master,” Mr Wickham said from his perch atop the cart, weathered face kind but formal. The older man’s voice carried deference. “Mr Havisham spoke often of his sound judgement in matters of business. Said he’d never known a man with a finer head for figures or a better understanding of the land that old Mr Darcy.”
Darcy nodded, his throat too tight for words. Behind them lay the steward’s cottage where he had passed his childhood. The small garden his mother had tended so carefully now stood abandoned, her herb patches showed autumn’s neglect despite his father’s best attempted to keep them alive. Ahead loomed Pemberley proper, its ancient stone facade rising from manicured grounds like a fortress built for giants.
He had visited the great house many times with his father, but always as the steward’s son, always carrying messages, always understanding his place.
Today, everything had altered. Today he walked as an orphan who no longer belonged anywhere.
What would become of him and Georgiana now? Would they be sent to the workhouse, or perhaps to distant relatives who might take them in out of grudging duty? His mother had no family, but his father had a distant cousin he’d met once or twice. Darcy’s stomach twisted as they approached the servants’ entrance. Through the doorway, he glimpsed housemaids hurrying past with silver tea services, their movements swift and practised. The morning routine of a great house—a world that would continue without them.
A footman, Peters, appeared at the entrance—tall and imposing in the deep blue livery that marked Pemberley’s servants, brass buttons gleaming despite the grey light. Today, Peters’ expression held gentle sympathy as Mr Wickham gave him one last nod before sitting on a stone bench outside. Darcy would take these last steps alone.
“Come along then, young master,” Peters said quietly. “Lady Anne is waiting for you in the morning room.”
The corridors seemed endless as they walked, lined with portraits of long-dead Havishams who gazed down from ornate gilt frames. Their painted eyes followed his progress—stern-faced men in powdered wigs and elaborate cravats, elegant ladies in silk gowns with jewels at their throats.
Was he being summoned to receive his final dismissal? To be told when he and Georgiana must leave the cottage for good?
His reflection caught in a tall mirror as they passed. The mourning clothes hung too loose, his pale face marked by grief and uncertainty, eyes that had seen too much sorrow for his thirteen years. He looked small and lost among the magnificent surroundings—a boy who no longer had any claim to be here.
The drawing room struck him with its delicate beauty when Peters finally led him through tall double doors.
A marble fireplace dominated one wall, cherub carvings dancing in the flickering flames. Above it hung a portrait of the current Mr Havisham and his wife Lady Anne on their wedding day, she in white silk and pearls, he in elegant morning dress. They looked young and hopeful, unaware that years would pass without the children they doubtless expected.
The furniture spoke of comfort as much as elegance—chairs upholstered in cream silk, a writing desk of polished mahogany inlaid with mother-of-pearl, delicate tables that held porcelain figurines and leather-bound books.
Lady Anne entered, her morning dress of lavender silk rustling softly. Perhaps thirty-odd years of age, she possessed the refined bearing of her station—shoulders held just so, chin lifted with quiet confidence. Yet when she smiled, the expression reached her eyes completely.
“Master Darcy,” she said. “I am so very sorry for your loss. Your father was a valued member of our household, and his absence is felt keenly by all who knew him.”
Darcy attempted what he hoped resembled a proper bow, but grief and nerves had stiffened his limbs, and he stumbled slightly over his own feet. Lady Anne gave no sign of having noticed as she gestured towards a chair positioned near the fire.
“Please, do sit. I imagine you must be quite weary after such a morning, and there is much we should discuss.”
The side table held delicate china painted with tiny roses and rimmed in gold leaf, each piece perfectly matched and clearly part of a service that had likely been in the family for generations. Lady Anne poured tea from a pot that gleamed with silver polish. She offered the first cup, as if serving tea to steward’s children was perfectly normal behaviour.
Seed cake followed, arranged on a silver plate alongside macaroons dusted with powdered sugar and raspberry tarts that gleamed like jewels. These were delicacies from another world entirely—the world of morning calls and elegant entertaining, of ladies who spent their days in drawing rooms rather than worrying about winter provisions.
Darcy accepted the cup with both hands. The fine china felt impossibly fragile beneath his calloused fingers. The tea was perfectly prepared, sweetened with sugar that came in neat white lumps rather than the coarse brown crystals his family had been able to afford. He thought suddenly of his mother’s simple oat cakes, sweetened with honey from their own beehive and shared at their rough wooden table whilst his father read aloud from estate correspondence.
The memory struck hard. It had been two years since she died of childbed fever. The baby, another boy, had died with her. Since then, his father had cared for him and little Georgie alone. They had managed. The Havishams were generous, after all, and his father a skilled steward. But now he too was gone. Taken by a falling tree that was being cut down by trespassers.
His hands trembled so badly that the teacup rattled against its saucer.
“The adjustment has been difficult, I expect,” Lady Anne observed, settling into the chair opposite him. Her movements were unhurried, as if they possessed all the time in the world rather than a few precious minutes carved from a great lady’s many social obligations. “Such losses so close together are never easy to bear, particularly for one so young.”
She tracked his reactions—the way he flinched when a door slammed somewhere within the house, how his eyes darted towards the entrance, how his shoulders remained rigid with tension despite the comfortable surroundings. There was something motherly in her attention that both comforted and unnerved him.
“Mrs Reynolds tells me your sister is finding it particularly difficult,” she said. The housekeeper had visited them daily, helping Mr Wickham look after them.
