"And instead?" asked Georgiana.
"Instead I found myself invited to spend a fortnight at Chaffley Hall by a lady I have never met."
He laid the invitation upon Darcy's desk. "Lady Hortensia Settle."
Darcy looked briefly at the letter. "The name is familiar."
"It ought to be. My mother talked of Lady Hortensia often enough. She maintained there had never been a house party to compare with hers, though she always had a wistful look in hereye when she mentioned it. I always thought it must have been the scene of some youthful romantic escapade."
Richard settled back in his chair, warming now to his story. "Lady Hortensia had the most extraordinary notion some decades back that the only sensible way to introduce young ladies and gentlemen was to make them compete with one another. There were races, debates, archery, music, treasure hunts—anything she could devise that proved the superiority of one sex over the other. From what I have heard she enjoyed weighting the competition in favour of the ladies."
Georgiana laughed. "It sounds terrifying."
"On the contrary. By all accounts it was enormous fun. The ton declared it shockingly improper, while doing everything in their power to secure an invitation."
Richard tapped the envelope lightly. "I cannot imagine what possessed the old lady. And she must be quite elderly now. My mother always said that when Sir Malcolm died, Chaffley Hall seemed to disappear from the world with him. Nobody went there any longer and Lady Settle retired from society. I wonder…"
Richard reached idly towards the neat pile of unopened letters on Darcy’s desk and started rifling through them.
"Richard," Darcy said, a hint of warning in his tone.
"I am only looking," he replied with no contrition whatsoever.
"You are meddling," Darcy growled, reaching over to stay his cousin’s hands.
Colonel Fitzwilliam simply batted him away. He grabbed a pile of envelopes from the table and walked to the other side of the room, where he threw any correspondence that did not interest him into an untidy pile on the floor. "Lord, Darcy, you really do live a dull existence."
Darcy repeated his cousin’s name and was decidedly ignored. He stood, wondering if it was appropriate to bodily remove his meddlesome cousin from the room with Georgiana present.
"Aha!" shouted the colonel, dropping the rest of the pile and holding up one letter in triumph. "Well, well, well… that makes things much more interesting. Unless Pemberley receives an extraordinary number of invitations from elderly ladies named Hortensia..."
Darcy crossed the room and snatched the envelope from him. It was the same heavy cream paper, the same deep green seal, the same bold hand that Richard had brought into the library only moments before.
"Are you invited, brother?" said Georgiana, clapping her hands together in glee.
"I thought you said it sounded terrifying," shot back Darcy, now in no mood for teasing.
"Well, terrifying for me. But you and Richard are much braver than I, and you shall return with the most wonderful stories!"
Richard's grin returned at once. "My dear Darcy, it appears you are coming with me to join in the fun. And I know how dearly you love fun."
Darcy sank into the chair behind his desk and lowered his forehead to the cool wood while his sister and cousin continued discussing the Challenge with so much enthusiasm that his silence went entirely unnoticed.
Chapter Three
Aweek later found Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam travelling together in Darcy’s carriage. Pemberley lay in the north of Derbyshire, while Chaffley Hall was close to its southernmost border and the journey would take several hours. The roads were dry after many days of fine weather and the carriage made good progress, rolling steadily through the countryside while the hedgerows shimmered beneath hazy morning light. Richard had thrown himself comfortably into a corner, one boot propped haphazardly against the door frame. Darcy, by contrast, sat stiffly on the opposite squab, a volume of Plutarch open on his lap.
For a few miles they travelled in companionable silence, broken only by the steady rhythm of the horses' hooves and the occasional rattle as the carriage found an imperfection in the road.
At length Richard folded his newspaper and smacked it against Darcy’s thigh. "I still cannot quite believe you allowed yourself to be persuaded."
Darcy looked out of the window towards a flock of sheep grazing upon a distant hillside. "Neither can I," he grumbled.
Richard smiled to himself. "It was Georgiana in the end, was it not?"
There seemed little point in denying it. "She reminded me of something I had never known, though she later remembered seeing it in my mother’s journal."
"That your parents met at Chaffley Hall?"
