WITS & WAGERS
A PRIDE AND PREJUDICE VARIATION
AMY D’ORAZIO
PROLOGUE
Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam pushed open the door to his elder brother’s bedchamber. Saye’s dog, Florizel, growled from his cushion at the side of the room, but Fitzwilliam ignored him in favour of shaking the man-shaped lump beneath the coverlets.
“Go ’way,” the lump mumbled.
“I have an idea for what we ought to do with Darcy.”
Saye told him to take his ideas and insert them directly into the place the sun never shone. Fitzwilliam replied by attempting to yank off the coverlets—an unsuccessful manoeuvre, as his brother anticipated him and held on with superhuman strength.
“Leave me alone,” Saye ordered, his eyes still squeezed tightly shut. “There is no use. Darcy will propose to Anne and live miserably ever after.”
“Anne?”
Saye at last appeared to accept that his wakefulness was required, and so opened his eyes and pushed himself to a seated position. Florizel took this as the signal to leap up beside him. “Our cousin.”
“Yes, I know who Anne is. He cannot be serious.”
“Did you at least bring me coffee?”
“Am I your valet?” Fitzwilliam sank onto the edge of his brother’s bed. “Of course I did not bring you coffee.”
Saye sighed heavily and rubbed his hands over his face. “I wish you would have. We had the Cognac out last night, and Madeira, and who knows what else, and I assure you that I feel it.”
“Took that much to get him talking?”
“Took that much for me to endure it,” Saye replied. “He is acting like a schoolgirl about Miss Bennet rejecting him. Too tedious by half. He intends to be in Kent before the week is out.”
Fitzwilliam cursed.
“I tried to persuade him to go and court his lady—make another attempt—but he said it was no use. She said something to him like…” Saye paused, seeming to search his memory. “I think something like, if the world was flooded in piss and Darcy lived in a tree, she still would not marry him.”
“In those very words, no doubt.”
“He says he must surrender to his fate.” Reaching beneath his blankets, Saye scratched himself in an area his brother chose not to contemplate.
“But why Anne? He could propose to someone else. I could name you at least ten ladies who would accept him today.”
“Because Anne is a certainty. He told me he could never again risk the rejection he suffered at Miss Bennet’s hand. Is she a shrew? Maybe he is better off.”
“She is not a shrew,” Fitzwilliam replied. “She is, in fact, perfectly delightful.”
“Delightful or not, if half of what Darcy told me is true, she can give as good as she gets.” Saye scratched again, relating what he could recall of Miss Bennet’s choicest remarks by way of Darcy’s lovelorn account of events. He concluded with, “I think I might be a bit in love with her myself.”
Fitzwilliam heard it all with no little amazement, and replied with a low whistle. “All of that and still he loves her?”
“He says he was angry at first but soon saw the justice of her words.” Saye shrugged and began to close his eyes again. “Seems a hopeless business. Perhaps we ought not to interfere.”
Fitzwilliam leant over and poked him. “Not so hasty. I have an idea. It is rather a drastic one, but I think it is the only hope. How hard did you try to persuade him to go to her?”
“With every power I had in hand. I even offered to pay him. He is a tender little sod—I should hate to see him left to the torment of our cousin and aunt.”
“And what did he say to that notion?”
