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The solicitor’s face flooded with relief at the sight of the tall figure passing him. “Mr. Darcy. What propitious timing. You received my express, then. I shall leave you to—that is, the family has been informed, and I believe my work here is done.”

“You will remain, sir,” Mrs. Bennet shrieked, rising from her seat with surprising agility for a woman of her nerves. “This concerns you too! This concerns all of us!”

But Sowerby merely tipped his hat and continued out the door.

“He sent you an express.” Elizabeth glared at Darcy before she had even curtsied. “But of course, he wrote to you, Mr. Darcy, so that you might prepare your response while the heiress is ambushed.”

“Miss Elizabeth Bennet.” Darcy bowed with the correctness that made her want to throw a mince pie in his face. He was dressed for riding, his boots still caked with road mud, his greatcoat thrown carelessly over one arm. A gentleman in a hurry, but not a gentleman flustered. “I see the terms of the will have been explained.”

“Explained? They have been detonated, Mr. Darcy. Like a series of charges set beneath the floorboards, each worse than the last.” She gestured at the room behind her—her mother breaking her fan in two, her sisters in various states of outrage, and her father watching from the corner with an expression that had finally lost its amusement. “But I suppose you knew all of this already. Mr. Sowerby was kind enough to warn you. Tell me, how fast did you ride from London? Faster, I hope, than you did when you walked out in the middle of a dance, if I recall. I should hate for you to miss the vows.”

His brows lowered, as if he had anything to be angry about. Fine. Let him feel one fraction of what she had felt when she learned that her uncle’s final act of love had been to chain her to the most insufferable man in England.

“I apologize for the intrusion, Mr. Bennet, Mrs. Bennet, Miss Elizabeth, but I have come to say my piece.”

“As if we wish to hear your opinion, Mr. Darcy.” Elizabeth heard her own voice, bright and hard as a struck coin.

“Lizzy—” Jane warned. “Perhaps we shall repair to the drawing room, and I shall call for tea.”

“That will not be necessary,” Mr. Darcy said.

“No, definitely not.” Elizabeth was irked to agree. “Claiming my hand and eighty thousand pounds requires no tea.”

“I have not come to claim anything, Miss Elizabeth.” His voice was measured, unhurried, and maddeningly calm. “I have come to refuse it. Though I confess your uncle’s sense of humor was more refined than I had credited.”

“You are refusing?” Mrs. Bennet surged forward. “But Mr. Darcy—ten thousand a year! Pemberley! You cannot mean to refuse such a match! Lizzy is—well, she is not Jane, but she is tolerably pretty, and she reads, and she plays the pianoforte most⁠—”

“Mamma.” Elizabeth was mortified. “Please allow Mr. Darcy to continue.”

“I do not require a wife at present.” Darcy had not moved from the doorway, as though he intended his visit to be brief enough that entering fully would be unnecessary. “I certainly do not want a wife who has made her contempt so charmingly public. I want only to decline the arrangement and be on my way.”

Elizabeth would have liked nothing more than a broom to sweep the arrogant prig from their entryway.

“How convenient my uncle’s humor was for you,” she said, “You refuse me—noble, principled, above the sordid business of marrying for money and a wife who disdains you—and in three weeks, the entire fortune falls into your lap anyway. You must be very pleased with my uncle’s arrangements.”

“On the contrary. I find them bizarre in the extreme.” Darcy’s brow furrowed. “I did not know him in the least. When Mr. Sowerby informed me, I was at a loss that a man such as your uncle would⁠—”

“A man such as my uncle?” Elizabeth jutted her chin. “Do you mean one whose station is decidedly below yours? Someone who dealt with trade. Surely, no one with such dirty hands would have crossed your path.”

“I am not in the habit of commenting on the business practices of gentlemen I do not know, Miss Elizabeth.”

“Yet he named you in his will. A man who disdains the company of country families and leaves balls. A man who would rather suffer death than dance with me. Why would such a man be the beneficiary of my uncle’s fortune?”

“Perhaps because he knew you would refuse me,” Darcy said. “He found amusement in the prospect of eighty thousand pounds falling into my hands instead of yours. Your uncle appears to be a man who enjoyed a jest.”

“No, Mr. Darcy,” Lydia said, surging forward. “He must have hated you and wished you to have Lizzy as wife.”

“Or he knew something about you,” Kitty added. “Didn’t that militia officer tell us about your business dealings?’

“Girls, girls.” Mrs. Bennet bustled. “We must have tea. Hill! The good tea, please, Mr. Darcy, if you will. We have much to discuss. Much.”

At this, her mother’s eyes grew to improbable proportions, darting pointedly toward the drawing room, while even her father, usually unmoved, took a step forward.

“Well now, Mr. Darcy, since you are named by my dear departed brother as a provision to his will, perhaps we can talk this out like gentlemen.”

“I am obliged to you, sir,” Mr. Darcy said, “but I do not intend to stay long enough to trouble your housekeeper.”

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Bennet said. “Hill has already gone. Lydia, if you speak once more, I shall send you upstairs before a guest, and you may consider whether you like it.”