The shelves of Hatchards were dangerous territory. One moment, you were looking for a dry political memoir for a conservative Earl, and the next, you were ambushed by sentiment.
Georgiana had drifted a few feet away, her gloved fingers trailing over a stack of sheet music bound in blue paper. She looked peaceful for the moment, so Darcy allowed his guard to drop.
He wandered towards the fiction tables. He told himself it was to find a present for Robert—Robert, who read philosophy but also devoured Gothic romances with his port.
Darcy picked up a volume.The Lady of the Lake. No. Too Scottish.
He reached for another.Sense and Sensibility? A new publication. "By a Lady." He frowned. He generally preferred his authors to have names.
Then, his hand landed on a spine that felt familiar.
Cecilia. By Fanny Burney.
He froze.
It wasn't that the book was rare. It was popular. But he had seen this book inherhands. It had been a rainy afternoon at Netherfield. Elizabeth had been sitting on the sofa, seemingly engrossed in the volume. He had asked her an inane question about the weather or the roads, just to hear her voice.
She had lowered the book, marking her place with a slender finger."Do you not think, Mr Darcy, that books are a perfect way to avoid conversations one has no wish to have?"
She had been teasing him. She was always teasing him. And he, fool that he was, had taken it as a rebuke instead of an invitation.
Darcy stood in the middle of the crowded bookshop, the noise of London fading into a dull buzz. He held the book as if it were a holy relic. He opened the cover, staring at the print, but he wasn't reading the words. He was remembering the way a loose curl had fallen over her ear as she read. He was remembering the intelligence in her gaze. He was remembering that he had walked away from the only woman who had ever made him feel like he was in danger of losing his mind.
He stroked the leather binding with his thumb, a look of profound, hazy longing softening his usually severe features. He looked less like the Master of Pemberley and more like a man who had been hit over the head with a very heavy realization.
"It is a good book," he whispered to no one. "She liked this book."
He felt a sudden, desperate urge to buy every copy in the store. To build a fort out ofCeciliasand live inside it.
"William?" Georgiana's voice came from his left. "Did you find a book for Robert?"
Darcy didn't answer immediately. He couldn't look away from the page. "I found... something."
"Is it a novel?" Georgiana sounded surprised. "Who is it for? You never read novels. You say they are full of improbable coincidences and people behaving irrationally."
"Peopledobehave irrationally," Darcy murmured, closing the book but clutching it tightly to his chest. "They behave with absolute madness."
He was aware he was standing in public, hugging a romance novel. He did not care. For a moment, holding it felt like holding a connection to Hertfordshire.
And then, the universe, which had been waiting for this precise moment of vulnerability, decided to strike.
"Well, I'll be damned."
The voice was smooth, cultured, and laced with an intolerable amount of amusement.
Darcy stiffened. His spine snapped straight, though he did not—could not—relinquish his death grip onCecilia. He closed his eyes briefly, praying to any deity listening that it was a hallucination.
It was not.
He turned slowly to find Robert Fitzwilliam, Viscount Keathley, standing at theend of the aisle.
Robert was thirty-three, possessed of a lazy grace that Darcy envied, and was currently dressed in a coat that fit him scandalously well. He leaned against a bookshelf, looking for all the world like he owned the place, or at least had a controlling interest in the alphabet.
"Robert," Darcy said, his voice dropping three octaves into his 'Master of Pemberley' register.
"Fitzwilliam," Robert replied, his eyes dancing. He pushed off the shelf and sauntered over. "And fair Georgiana. You look charming, Cousin. That shade of grey suggests a delightful melancholy."
"Hello, Robert," Georgiana said, managing a genuine smile. "We are shopping for gifts."
