Page 26 of Better Luck Next Time (First Impressions #3)

Chapter Twenty-Six

H e stood near the edge of the ballroom, where the candlelight struck the gilded walls in golden waves and the string quartet played something lilting and strange. The air smelled of roses and jasmine. Somewhere behind him, a footman murmured something about refreshments, but Darcy hardly heard.

She was there.

Not across the room. Not tucked behind some gaggle of giggling girls. No—she stood alone, one gloved hand resting on the curve of a chair, the other playing idly with the flowing satin at her waist. Her gown was a molten gold that gave warmth to her cheeks and shimmered like a treasure chest beneath the chandeliers, and her smile—he swore it could cut through the fog of London itself.

Then she looked up, and the smile tilted.

Teasing. Knowing.

Darcy’s throat went dry.

He meant to say something. He stepped toward her—just one step—and her laughter came like a bell, light and clear, and—

“Mr. Darcy,” she whispered. “Sir—I need you.”

He stepped closer—her eyes bright, her fingers poised as if to catch his sleeve. “Lady Elizabeth,” he murmured. “Rather forward, do you not think?”

“Mr. Darcy,” she breathed. “I must tell you something.”

He stilled. Her voice wrapped around his name like a ribbon. “You may tell me anything.”

But she shook her head. “Darcy! Blast you, wake up .”

His brow furrowed. The music dimmed. Her face flickered. “I beg your pardon?”

“Darcy! Please!”

The room around him tilted. The candlelight shuddered. He blinked—

And flinched.

Breath caught in his throat as the dream broke apart, fragments dissolving before he could hold them still. A dull ache bloomed at the base of his skull, and for a moment, he did not know where he was.

Not the ballroom.

Not London.

Just the cottage. Cold air. Damp stone. The scent of must and soot and something vaguely like sheep. Rough wool beneath his cheek. The thin, uneven padding of a cot beneath his back.

“Darcy, I swear if you do not wake up, I will steal your pistols and fire a warning shot myself!”

Well, that was certainly no dream.

He opened his eyes—and she was leaning over him, her face drawn tight with worry.

“E… Elizabeth?”

Her fingers gripped his arm, her voice barely above breath. “I heard something.”

He blinked. “What—?”

“Outside.” She looked over her shoulder. “It was sharp. Like a snap. A branch, I think. Someone is out there.”

Now fully awake, Darcy shoved upright. His limbs screamed in protest, stiff from too little rest and too much tension. But the fog was gone. The sharp chill of the stone walls. The scent of damp earth. The tremor in Elizabeth’s voice. All of it sharpened his focus.

His eyes swept the room, quick and precise. “Where were you when you heard it?” he whispered, already reaching for his coat and the pistol buried inside.

“By the hearth. I was watching.” Her eyes shone with fear, but her voice was not panicked. She was perfectly rational. “It was nothing at first. Just rustling. But then—it was sharp. Close. I had to crawl halfway across the room to wake you without making noise.”

He was already moving. He grabbed his second pistol from the saddlebag and checked the load. Then he turned to her, his voice low and urgent. “Those two floor boards there are loose. Pull them up and climb under them. Get out of sight and stay there until I come back.”

She bristled. “I am not hiding. What’s the point if they kill you first? They will just come for me, anyway.”

He stared at her.

“I can be useful!” she hissed fiercely.

A muscle in his jaw jumped—but he did not argue. He simply glanced around the room, spotted the iron poker by the hearth, and nodded toward it.

She followed his gaze, caught the meaning, and retrieved the poker silently. It looked absurd in her hand, but her grip was solid.

Darcy gave her one last look—steady, silent, full of the words he did not have time to say—and slipped out the door.

The air was still. The woods thick with early summer green.

He moved in a crouch, eyes scanning the thicket. Each breath was tightly wrapped in control. Every sound sharpened. No wind. No movement. He rounded the edge of the cottage, pistol raised—

—and stopped.

A shape shifted beside the woodpile.

For one breathless moment, he thought it a man. Large, slow-moving, head bowed.

Then it turned, slowly, and stared at him.

It was a sheep.

A bedraggled, matted old ram, wool overgrown and wild as moss. The creature stared back at him with blank, mildly curious eyes, then nosed the ground and returned to its grazing.

Darcy stared. Then let out a breath that nearly unbuckled his knees.

He watched the animal wander off into the trees, shaking its overgrown fleece with a stupid sort of majesty. Then he turned back toward the cottage.

Elizabeth met him at the door, poker still raised.

He holstered the pistol with a sigh. “A sheep,” he said flatly. “Possibly the dumbest one in England.”

She blinked. “A sheep?”

“Enormous. Filthy. Utterly disinterested in us.”

Elizabeth’s shoulders relaxed—but only slightly.

Darcy rubbed a hand over his face. “I should have expected it. Selwyn said the fences here were barely standing.”

She looked out into the trees. “Still… better to check.”

“Yes,” he said. “Better to check. And a bloody good thing it was just a sheep, because between you trying to rouse me and the squeaking of that door hinge, it is a wonder all of Cambridge did not hear us.”

He gestured for her to go inside first. And once the door shut behind them, neither of them reached for sleep again.

E lizabeth sliced through the dried sausage with a dull penknife, the motion jerky from fatigue. A heel of black bread followed, divided as evenly as she could manage on a flat tin plate. She crossed the room in her stocking feet and set the meal in front of Darcy, who was crouched near the door, oiling the hinges with something he had pulled from a battered kit under the cot.

“Eat,” she said simply, nudging the plate toward him.

He glanced up, surprised. Then nodded once and pulled the food toward him without a word.

She did not sit. Instead, she crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “So. What now? Where to?”

Darcy chewed slowly, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand—a necessity she was certain must have pained his sense of propriety. “ You are not going anywhere.”

“I know that,” she said. “I meant you.”

“I can hardly leave you here alone, can I?”

“So we are simply to sit here until we run out of food?”

He gave a long, tired exhale. “If I am to find Maddox… if we mean to catch any of them… yes. I will have to do… something else.”

“But you might not,” she said quickly.

Darcy looked up, brow furrowed. “What?”

“We might already be setting a trap.” She tilted her head toward the cottage window. “We might have been followed.”

He froze for just a beat. Then he set the bread down. “If we have been followed, it means I failed to cover our trail.”

“Not necessarily,” she said. “You are not the only one trying to outwit the enemy, remember. Someone may have been watching Longbourn for days.”

He rubbed his eyes. “I had hoped the decoy letter would suffice to scatter them. But after that scene in Meryton yesterday… Well. At least it gave us enough time to get out. If they were that close, they would have had any number of chances to shoot us before now.”

Elizabeth swallowed. “I knew going to that festival was a bad idea.”

“ Not going to it would have been a bad idea as well,“ Darcy sighed tiredly. “I should have dragged you to Scotland and hidden you under a frost heave. Perhaps nobody would have found you then.”

A smile threatened to tug on her mouth. “I also know you well enough to expect you have formed a backup plan by now.”

He arched his brows tiredly as he chewed. “I asked Bingley to send a message to Richard. A coded express, last night. If all went as planned, Richard should already know where we are. Ten pounds says he is on his way already.”

She smiled weakly. “You do not have ten pounds.”

He lifted one shoulder. “Then it is a good thing I feel confident in the wager.”

Elizabeth dropped onto a footstool beside him with a long exhale, her limbs still aching from the night’s ride. She reached for the tin plate without thinking, tore a corner from the heel of bread, and took a bite—only to find Darcy watching her, one brow raised and the barest hint of a crooked grin at the corner of his mouth.

“Oh… oh, that was yours.” She swallowed. “Surely, I… there is a bit more. Let me—”

He nudged the plate toward her without comment.

She narrowed her eyes at him but accepted the offering, chewing the rest in silence before pushing the final bite back his way.

“For all this,” she muttered, brushing crumbs from her fingers, “I hope someone, somewhere, is pleased with the results. The whole of England is rumbling, and what do we have to show for it? Stale bread, dried-up sausages, and an assassin’s bounty on my head.”

Darcy said nothing, but his jaw twitched. He turned to the door hinge again and gave it another careful turn of the cloth.

Elizabeth stretched out on her stool. “We ought to go to America,” she said brightly. “Disappear entirely. I have heard they outlawed nobility, rejected kings, and run about happily without a single overfed marquess or bobbing old earl to tell them what to do.”

That earned her a glance—faint amusement flickering in his eyes. “Is that so?”

“It is,” she declared. “No dukes. No viscounts or knights of the realm. No scheming courtiers or secret fixers with hippocampus rings. Just endless wilderness and bears and… and maize. I am sure Mr. Bennet told me his cousin boasted about this vegetable they call maize. I hear it is terribly wonderful.”

Darcy huffed a quiet laugh. “ I have heard they scorch their tea and cannot tie a proper cravat to save their lives.”

“Savages!” she cried, grinning. “That settles it—we cannot possibly flee to there.”

He shook his head, turning back to the hinge, but not before she saw the smile still playing at the corner of his mouth.

She leaned in conspiratorially. “I suppose I might bear the cravat-less men, but I draw the line at over-steeped tea. What would we even drink? Coffee?”

Darcy affected a shudder. “I would rather face Maddox with both hands tied.”

Elizabeth gasped. “And here I thought you were brave.”

“I have my limits.”

“Then it is settled,” she said solemnly. “We shall remain in hiding in this noble and drafty cottage until the end of time. You may pass the days oiling hinges, and I shall perfect the art of moping. There. I think I have affected a passable frown, what do you say?” She pulled a pout and rested her chin on her hand, wiggling her eyebrows at him.

He laughed then—unexpected and full, the sound startling even himself.

“A laugh!” she crowed. “I knew you could still do it.”

His smile softened as he looked at her. “You make it difficult not to.”

“I do try, you know. I absolutely cannot abide the idea of frowning all the time, and you are just starting to make a passable companion. If we go elsewhere, I shall have to start all over on another project gentleman.”

He laughed again—freely, this time. But it faded too quickly. His smile dimmed as some shadow crossed behind his eyes. His fingers stilled on the hinge, and his eyes fell.

“What, what is this?” she asked.

His chest rose on an indrawn breath, and his mouth shaped to frame words. “I…” But then he stopped and rose from his crouch abruptly to begin working on the upper hinge of the door.

Elizabeth’s eyes rose with him, and dash it all if it was not uncomfortable to be squatting at his feet on a stool, so she sighed and clambered back to her feet on weary legs.

Darcy acted like he was ignoring her, jaw tight as he worked the pin through the joint to oil it. The movement was calculated, methodical—too methodical for a man who had just been laughing. Elizabeth watched his hands move, then his shoulders shift as he leaned into the task.

She cleared her throat softly. “Mr. Darcy?”

He did not answer right away.

She picked the empty plate up off the floor to set it on a nearby table, and returned to stop a few feet behind him. “Sir, I think it is time you told me whatever it is you are keeping from me.”

That drew his attention. He turned, slowly, his brow lifting with practiced neutrality. “What do you think I am keeping from you?”

“Oh, come,” she said, folding her arms. “What about the scandal that drove us out of Meryton yesterday? You might at least admit what it was.”

His gaze fell away. “Surely you heard everything.”

“Actually, I did not,” she said with a huff of a laugh. “I was not near Mr. Collins when he received that letter. I saw the effect—but not the cause. Once I saw the faces in the crowd, I knew we would have to leave at once, so I moved quickly to the carriage. Mr. Bennet, Mary, and Jane joined me—and none of them seemed inclined to speak so much as a single syllable. So… I truly have no notion what it was yesterday that turned you into a pariah in a town that once thought well of you.”

He looked back at her sharply.

“I did know there was a scandal,” she said, softer now. “That something terrible happened to your father when you were a young man. Mr. Bingley told me only that much. He did not feel at liberty to say more.”

Darcy’s mouth pressed until his lips were almost invisible. He returned his focus to the hinge, testing the door at last. It swung silently.

Then he stepped back and turned, wiping his hands on a cloth from the floor. His eyes scanned the room as though hoping for a distraction—any distraction—but found none.

At last, he exhaled.

“You may as well hear it, then. There is no escaping it now.”

He paced once, stopped, then paced again before dragging a hand through his hair. “I confess… I half-believed you already knew. That someone would have told you, in London, before you ever met me. I thought surely the gossip had reached even your circles. Your father had to have known, of a certainty, and you are clever enough… I kept waiting for you to say something, but you never did. I never dared to hope you were truly ignorant of everything.”

She shook her head slowly, watching him.

Darcy moved away from the door at last and crossed to the hearth, but he did not sit. His hands braced on the back of the nearest chair, head bowed. The stillness of him was disquieting.

“When I was fifteen,” he began, his voice trembling faintly—the first time she had ever heard that— “my father was still the Eighth Earl of Pemberley. A title centuries old. Revered, in some corners. Envied, in others. Pemberley itself—our estate in Derbyshire—was the jewel of our line. My father took pride in that. In our tenants, our land, our name.”

He paused, lips parting as if to continue—but the words stalled. When he spoke again, it was even more shaken.

“We had a steward, Mr. Wickham. A man of uncommon acumen. He kept our accounts in perfect order. Saw to the farms. Negotiated leases. Even kept a weather eye on the law when local disputes arose. I remember my father praising him often. Saying we were fortunate to have him.”

Darcy straightened but did not look at her.

“He was ambitious. Loyal, outwardly. But beneath that…” He exhaled. “Jealous. His own son—George—was clever, if spoiled. He had everything I did—ponies when we were boys. The best tutors. A gentleman’s education. But no matter how bright he was, how much he was given, he would never inherit Pemberley. He would never be me, is the sum of it. And his father—his father could not abide it.”

He paced a few steps, not looking at her. “I was at Eton when it began. Home only during holidays. I did not see it unravel, not with my own eyes. But I remember the tone of my father’s letters changing. His weariness. There were whispers. Rumors about strange absences—unsubstantiated, but that did not matter. He wrote once that the local magistrate had begun inquiring after impropriety—without naming the charge. He told me at the time he did not know the source of the rumors.”

Darcy turned and looked at her now, the pupils of his eyes now grown dark.

“And then, one day, it was made plain. Accusations. Two sworn statements. A coachman. A scullery boy. Claims of… conduct unbecoming. Involving my father.”

Elizabeth’s mouth parted. “I… I do not…”

“They called him… a sodomite. Said he kept unnatural company, hosted deviant gatherings. Mr. Wickham went on record at last, saying he had once caught my father in the act.”

“ Oh ,“ she breathed. Her ears burned to scalding. So that was why he had been so uncomfortable speaking of it.

“He denied everything. Of course he did, because there was not even a grain of truth in it. Innocent moments twisted to look nefarious. The kindness of a true gentleman in the intimacy of his own home, but never that . But by the time the King’s couriers arrived—by the time the accusation reached the Crown—the scandal had grown. Whether anyone truly believed it scarcely mattered. A nobleman accused of such things… it was easier to silence the embarrassment than question its origin.”

His hands flexed once, then closed into fists—slowly, deliberately, as if to keep something darker from escaping.

“The title was revoked. The estate was meant to be absorbed by the Crown. But in a turn so inexplicable that it could only have been the deliberate work of a criminal upon a mad king, His Majesty granted our land, our holdings… to the steward. To Wickham.”

Her eyes widened, not in horror, but in disbelief—like someone told the sky had fallen and expected to see it lying neatly in pieces on the floor. “To… the man who accused him? But… how? ”

Darcy gave a bitter laugh. “He said it was to ‘preserve the local order.’ That the steward had managed the land for years, and would see it done properly. I was seventeen. I returned from school to find the gates of my childhood home locked against me.”

“And your friend the heir in your place,” she murmured.

“He was never my friend. George made my life a living hell whenever he could. Taunting me, living in dissolution and making me pick up the pieces to keep from shaming our fathers… If only I had known how little his own father cared about shame!” He swallowed. “My father died three years later. Alone. With nothing.”

Elizabeth stepped toward him, her fingers daring to stretch for his coat sleeve, but stopping short. “I do not know what to say.”

“There is nothing to say,” Darcy replied, voice ragged. “Only that I have been paying for it ever since.”

She did it this time—she reached for him, slowly.

He did not flinch. But his expression turned inward, as if refusing to accept comfort from her.

“Perhaps it is human nature to try to claim one knows where it all went wrong. To place blame on the victim, saying if they had only seen… been more aware…” He shook his head. “I have spent the last ten years trying to be nothing like him, and yet everything like him. Trying to atone for a crime he did not commit, but there is no wiping that stain from my family’s name.”

She blinked, recalling something. “Your sister… what of her?”

He gulped a long breath of air and walked away from her, leaving her hand dangling after him. “She manages. She ought to be one of the diamonds of the ton— like you — but not now. I think she rather likes being invisible. My aunt and uncle took my sister in to be one of their own daughters, though I am distressed to hear of my cousin’s… behavior towards her.”

“It was not all that terrible,” Elizabeth inserted. “She did not mock her or make her sweep the floors or anything so insulting. She just treated her as a bit of a… a novelty, I suppose. And truly, if I had a cousin living with me who could play as well as your sister does, I think I would want others to hear her as well.”

“You needn’t make excuses for my cousin Julia. I know very well who and what she is. Still…” He lifted one shoulder. “I hardly have any right to complain after everything else. The earl and countess have been kind—were it not for them, and for Richard, I would not even have been allowed to finish school. My uncle advised me to take up at the Home Office, vouched for me to secure the place, and I was able to work my way up from there. I only wish… well, I suppose there is nothing to be done now.”

“Oh, now, you cannot stop there. What do you wish?”

He glanced up once, then turned away, as if it all had become too heavy to face her. He swallowed, and was a moment in replying.

“I thought… if I could serve the Crown, if I could carry out work that mattered—quietly, effectively—then perhaps I might restore some portion of what was lost. Not the land. Not the title. Those are gone. But perhaps the honor.”

“But that…” She sucked in a breath. “Oh! I knew you had something personal—some secret that made you particularly beholden to the Prince. You—you have been trying to clear your father’s name, have you not? It makes sense now.”

He gave a bitter half-smile, facing the hearth now, not her. “I have worked rather diligently to make myself ‘useful.’ And my plan seemed to be working, too. My petition was noticed, my character and work esteemed just enough to make me a curiosity. The Prince promised me an audience shortly after he was made Regent. Suggested he might be willing to review the ruling—quietly, of course. ‘Informally.’ It was the first hope I had been given in years.”

Elizabeth wetted her lips, leaning forward and holding her breath. “And did he?”

“You saw the man. He laughs at everything. Including that promise. He dangled it in front of me like a reward, and yanked it back the moment I asked him to make good his word. Not for the first time, either.”

Her hands gripped the edge of the table, knuckles white.

“So yes,” he said, turning slowly. “That is what they meant. That is the scandal. The disgrace. That is what Lady Catherine used to cast me out of Meryton. What Mr. Collins will whisper to every parlor and pew. That my father was a sodomite, and I—the shameful heir—am likely no better.”

Elizabeth stepped toward him. “There is nothing ‘shameful’ about you, and the truth is what matters.”

He shook his head, dark eyes flickering with something like pain. “You do not understand. It does not matter what I am. Only what they believe. That scandal lives beneath every interaction, every invitation withheld. Every door quietly closed.”

She took another step. “But it is not true.”

“No,” he said simply. “But truth was never the point.”

“Well… what is ? Surely, His Highness knows the truth. Why would he keep… teasing you like this? For his own amusement?”

Darcy lifted a shoulder. “Very likely.”

She shook her head, snorting in disgust. “I do not understand. How are you supposed to appease him enough to make him keep his word? Are you supposed to… to dance a jig? Come bathe his feet for him, feed him grapes while someone strums the harp, what? What the devil does he expect you to do?”

He closed his eyes, biting his top lip between his teeth. “Ruin you.”