Page 4 of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Exile

“How about a nice long walk?”

Darcy nodded, and they departed from the house together to walk along the hushed streets.

“What do you plan to do?” Richard asked.

“I shall return to Smyrna.” Darcy loved his former home, the friends he had made, and the satisfying work he accomplished. But hearing his decision aloud failed to produce the comfort he sought.

“Smyrna?! What does Smyrna have that you cannot find here?”

“My life.” Sunshine. Warmth. Friends who knew him.

“Your life is here now.”

“There is nothing for me here.”

“Nothing here?! What about Pemberley? All the families who depend on your estate? What about me?”

That last question stung. Richard had written to him every week for a year after Darcy had left England… until he had changed his name and disappeared. “Pemberley could not have a better master than you.”

“I do not want Pemberley! I want you to stay!”

Darcy glanced at him askance. There was a great deal Richard did not know, nor did Darcy know where to start.

“Pemberley needs you! After so many years of travel, are you not ready to find a nice lady with whom to settle?”

As though he had a choice in the matter! He listened to Richard list his reasons—mostly irrational—why Darcy must stay in England, manage a place that had brought him equal measures of love and misery, and fulfill his duty by the family from which he had fled.

When one argument ran into another and Darcy’s patience had reached its limit, he interrupted. “Father disinherited me.”

“Balderdash!” Richard shot back.

“Have you ever known my father to make empty threats?”

“No, but this is about Pemberley. Your inheritance! His legacy!” Still, Richard did not believe him.

“He arranged my marriage, and I refused to comply.”

“He wou—what? He did what?” Richard sputtered and fell silent.

“When I was sixteen years old, still at school”—a shiver ran through Darcy at the memory of that awful place—”my father saw a little girl do something he considered brave in the park. After investigating the family thoroughly and deeming them satisfactory, he decided that I must marry her in order to inherit.”

“That is preposterous! Uncle George would never⁠—”

“It is, and he did it anyway.”

“Good heavens! What on earth did this girl do?”

“She confronted a gentleman who was acting cruelly toward someone weak and defenseless.”

“That is all?!”

“That is all I know. I was not there.”

“You did not get details?! I need details, man!”

“I was too irate when I learned about it.”

“What sixteen-year-old young man would not be!?”