Fifteen thousand a year. Properties, bonds, and securities. And a benefactor she had yet to meet.
Who was Lady Sophia Mottistone? And more pressingly—how did a woman Elizabeth had never heard of suddenly own her future?
CHAPTER TWO
THE LAST MAN IN THE WORLD
You arethe last man in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry.
Darcy had been riding for hours, which was not sufficient to outpace those words.
His proposal at Hunsford—a masterpiece in… well, something… was certainly not in the art of winning a lady’s affections. How could he have misjudged so thoroughly? He had entered that parsonage with the confidence of a man who had been told since childhood that his very presence was a gift to those of lesser rank.
His father’s words rang in his ears.Remember, Fitzwilliam, even daughters of peers need love. Darcys aim high. Your mother was a daughter of an earl, but with your carriage and good looks, you should settle for nothing less than a daughter of a duke.
As for Elizabeth Bennet—she was barely a daughter of… anything. A lowly country gentleman hanging onto the rungs of gentry by the skin of his teeth. No dowry, no connections of note… in fact, her sole London acquaintances were tradesmen and other upstarts.
How could he explain to his esteemed ancestors that the only son of George Darcy, husband of Lady Anne, had strode into that modest parsonage intent on making this Elizabeth Bennet his bride, to elevate her with his magnanimous offer, and had been thoroughly and roundly rejected?
The woman had the temerity to consider his proposal a declaration of war, requiring the defense of her entire familial line, flea-bitten dog included.
Did she truly not understand the vast gulf? He was Fitzwilliam Darcy. He had offered her a life that most women would sell their souls to glimpse through a carriage window. And she had compared his proposal to fleas and rain puddles.
Even more mortifying was that long letter he’d pushed into her hands the next morning.
Had she even read it? The one where he’d poured his reputation, and his sister’s, onto the page—explaining how she’d misjudged him. Instead of the expected contrition, this Elizabeth Bennet and her tiny canine were still bristling over his candid admission—that loving her was an affliction he was unable to remedy—even now, especially now.
It pained him to realize that she and her family lacked any comprehension or appreciation for the social graces so essential in the finest circles.
It was beyond galling. It was profoundly unfair.
That a Darcy from the first circles, esteemed by theton,should be so denigrated by a country miss who deemed himthe last man in the world.Not the second-to-last, nor a man she might have been persuaded to consider under different circumstances, but the very last—after every other man on earth had been weighed and found less objectionable.
His father would be rolling in his grave at the notion of a Darcy holding such a distinction.
Why could he not banish thoughts of her? Hadn’t he vowed never to address her again with those sentiments she had found so repugnant? And now, adding insult to injury, he had been wounded not only by her sharp tongue but also by the sharp teeth of her mischievous rat terrier.
The footman at Number Thirty-Three Grosvenor Street, admitting him at half-past eight, took one look at the dust on his coat, the set of his jaw, and the ragged tear in his broadcloth, and elected to say nothing beyond, “Lady Sophia is in the study, sir. She did not expect you tonight.”
“No. She would not have.”
The study door stood open, a hearty fire crackling within. Lady Sophia believed in keeping fires lit in every room she occupied from October to June, a practice she considered not extravagance or eccentricity, but good sense. The lady herself was positioned at her desk, a book in one hand and her customary glass of Madeira in the other, appearing as though she had not moved since he departed at dawn.
“Fitzwilliam.” She glanced over her spectacles. “Good heavens. I anticipated a note, not the man himself. Do sit down before you collapse; you look as though you’ve been dragged through a hedgerow backward through four counties.”
“Only one, I assure you, and I managed to remain upright for the majority of the journey.”
Lady Sophia’s eye twinkled. “Shall I ring for tea, or will you require something substantially stronger?”
“Tea will do.”
“It shall hardly suffice, but we shall maintain the pretense.” She rang the bell.
Darcy sank into the familiar leather wingback chair to the left of the fire—a seat he had come to regard as his own over countless evenings spent reviewing canal shares and debating the respective merits of Madeira versus sherry. Tonight, the usually comforting chair felt less like a refuge than a witness box.
“Now then.” Lady Sophia paused as the maid entered with the tea tray and waited until she had withdrawn. “You left at dawn to deliver documents to a young woman in Hertfordshire. A journey of what, four, perhaps five hours at a reasonable pace? I would have thought, with the good news you were bearing, that you would have been received with tolerable civility, perhaps accept the family’s hospitality for dinner, and take a room at the inn for the night.”
“I did not wish to tarry.” Darcy accepted the tea with regret that it wasn’t brandy. “Mr. Bennet has the documents, and your solicitor is expected in the morrow.”
