Privately, Fitz understood something with painful clarity:
He no longer wished to become his father.
Not in any particular.
Not if greatness required coldness.
Not if authority demanded neglect.
And certainly not if manhood meant teaching children they were burdens to be endured rather than loved, and giving preference to those who were less than deserving.
∞∞∞
August 1804—Cambridge
“Darcy,” Professor Pembroke exclaimed warmly during Fitz’s first week back, “At last. I had hoped the Continent had not swallowed you entirely.”
Fitz inclined his head politely. “Not permanently, sir.”
Professor Pembroke studied him with open approval. “You look older.”
“I believe that is generally considered the natural order of things.”
The professor laughed. “Still dry as ever. Your dissertation regarding Roman provincial governance remains among the finest I have read from any student in years.”
Fitz inclined his head politely. “You are too generous, sir.”
“No. Merely truthful.” The older man peered at him over his spectacles. “And have your travels convinced you what subject you intend to pursue?”
“Yes, sir.” Fitz paused briefly. “History.”
Professor Pembroke smiled faintly. “Ah. Trying to understand the rise of civilization?”
Fitz looked toward the leaded windows overlooking the gray autumn court.
“No,” he said quietly. “Its collapse.”
That answer seemed to please the professor enormously, and it followed him for years afterward.
Because it was true.
The ruins of Greece and Rome had settled permanently inside him. He could not forget them—the shattered temples, abandoned forums, broken statues half-buried beneath centuries of dust. Entire civilizations once powerful enough to command the known world reduced eventually to fragments studied by strangers.
How did such greatness fail?
How did men permit decay while believing themselves invincible?
How did men entrusted with stewardship fail to notice collapse until it was irreversible?
So, Fitz buried himself in study once more, though from genuine hunger or mere escape, he couldn’t tell. He spent long hours in libraries surrounded by ancient histories, military records, political philosophy, and accounts of fallen empires.
Because Pemberley, Fitz increasingly feared, was suffering from a quieter form of the same disease.
Soon, letters from his father began to arrive, demanding Fitz’s presence in town for various “important social obligations.”
Fitz learned quickly what those obligations truly meant.
Marriage markets.
