She wandered among the elegant vehicles, pausing from time to time to peer in at soft, hand-stitched leather seats and ran her fingers over shining red and black lacquer and delicately carved sills. At the end of the aisle she stopped before a graceful burgundy traveling coach with glass windows etched in elaborate floral patterns and an interior of spotless dove-gray suede.

“I pick this one,” she announced.

“My personal favorite!” said Darcy sounding pleased. “This coach belonged to the very first mistress of Pemberley Farms—”

Eliza clapped her hands. “Rose, your great-great-whatever-grandmother!”

“The very same,” he said, opening the door with a flourish to admit her to the roomy interior of the coach. “Climb in and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Stepping up into the high passenger compartment, Eliza sank luxuriantly into the feather-soft cushions of the forward-facing rear seat and closed her eyes. “Now I know how Cinderella felt,” she uttered into the darkness. “But I’m warning you. I could get used to this.”

When no response was forthcoming she peered out into the barn through the open door, looking for some sign of him. “Hello?”

Darcy suddenly appeared at the window on the opposite side of the coach. He opened the door and climbed in, taking the seat facing hers. In his hands were an open bottle of champagne and two fragile wine glasses.

“Here you are,” he said, handing her a glass.

Eliza watched as he deftly filled first her glass and then his own and placed the bottle on a small wooden shelf. “Are you sure this isn’t a decadent prelude to some wild romance novel hanky-panky?” she asked, gazing at the golden effervescent wine.

“On my honor as a gentleman,” he pledged, touching his glass to hers with a musical ring. “I just thought you might enjoy a little authentic nineteenth-century atmosphere to go along with my tale.”

“A dashing gentleman, champagne and candlelight!” Eliza sipped the chilled golden wine, found it delicious and sipped again. “Every woman’s dream.”

His raised eyebrow made her blush at the exuberance of her reaction to the romantic gesture but his warm smile made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Needing to be in control, she sat up a little straighter in her seat, cocked her head and searched his chiseled features. “Fitz, may I ask you a personal question?”

“Eliza,” he replied, “so far you don’t seem to have asked any questions that haven’t been intensely personal.” There was a pause that made her fear he might say no. “But yes, you may go ahead.”

“Were you falling in love with Jane?”

Darcy’s eyes lit up with a sudden surge of hope that tugged at Eliza’s heart. “Does that question mean you believe my story?” he asked.

“Let’s just say I’m beginning to believe that you believe it,” she answered, struggling to keep the warring emotions that she was feeling out of her voice. “But you were falling in love with her, weren’t you?”

“I’m not sure I can truthfully answer that question,” he replied. “It’s easy to fall in love in a dream. And that’s what it all seemed like to me then.”

Darcy took another slow sip of his wine and closed his eyes, remembering. “As I was saying when we were interrupted earlier, Jane and I weren’t able to speak alone again, so as she was leaving Edward’s house that night…”

Volume Three

Chapter 25

The stately Edinburgh grandfather clock in the marble foyer of Chawton Great House was striking half past ten as Jane and Cassandra stood outside beneath the portico with several other guests, waiting for their carriages to arrive.

There was a chill in the night air and Jane was searching through her bag by the flickering light of the pitch torches affixed to wrought iron sconces at either side of the porch. The tension caused by Darcy’s earlier demands for a private meeting had been wearing on her and she had successfully avoided him only by remaining close to members of her family for the remainder of the evening.

Now the evening was at an end and Jane wished only to flee to the cozy safety of Chawton Cottage, there to reflect on what to do about the brash American. “My gloves, my green gloves,” she exclaimed, rummaging through her bag in frustration. “I am certain I put them in here…”

At that moment Darcy emerged from the house, a pair of ladies gloves in his hand. “Miss Austen, are these yours?” he politely inquired.

“Oh, yes,” Jane said, her eyes flashing with a fury that was not reflected in her voice. “I am grateful to you, Mr. Darcy,” she said for the benefit of Cassandra, “for these are my favorite pair. A gift from my brother Frank.”

Jane reached for the gloves. But as she did, Darcy stepped close and pressed them into her hand, along with something else. She looked down and saw a small square of paper lying in her upturned palm.

Before she could speak, Darcy stepped back and bowed. “I hope we will meet again very soon,” he said with a broad smile.

Across the portico Jane saw Edward and Frank engaged in conversation with one of her many cousins. Shooting Darcy a final hostile look she closed her fist over the scrap of paper and stiffly acknowledged his formal bow with an abrupt inclination of her chin.

A moment later Edward’s carriage rolled to a stop before the steps. Simmons, the groom, helped Jane and Cassandra into the closed landau and then climbed up to the driver’s seat. With a cluck to the horses the coach rumbled away. Jane looked back to see Darcy slowly waving to her from the portico.

“Obnoxious man!” she hissed under her breath. “I do not think I have ever known a more arrogant and disagreeable person than Mr. Darcy.”

“Do you not, Jane?”

Jane looked up to see Cassandra regarding her with a stony countenance. “Surely you cannot believe I was deceived by that pitiful charade of the gloves,” Cassandra said.

“I cannot imagine what you mean,” Jane replied, fidgeting with her bag.

Cassandra sighed tolerantly. “Jane, I saw Darcy put that note into your hand a moment ago.”

When no reply was forthcoming Cassandra pointed to her sister’s tightly closed fist. “Well,” she demanded, “are you going to read it?”

Defeated, Jane unfolded the note and held it up to the dim light of a carriage lamp to read the few hurriedly scrawled lines. “The insufferable Mr. Darcy writes that he wishes urgently to see me. At midnight,” she reported to her stunned sister. “Further, he specifies that he will be waiting in the small wood behind Chawton Cottage, and that I am to come to him alone.”

“The wood? Alone at midnight!” Cassandra’s utter disbelief at what she was hearing was reflected in her hoarse whisper. “Surely the man is demented.”

Jane considered her sister’s shocked statement for several seconds and it slowly dawned on her that Cass mistakenly believed that Darcy’s intentions toward her were of a romantic nature.

“Yes, he must be mad,” she replied with an enigmatic smile. “For the grass is certain to be damp at that hour of the night and I shall probably catch my death.”

The already scandalized Cass nearly choked. “Jane, have you, too, taken leave of your senses?” she gasped. “You cannot actually be thinking of going out to meet him.”

“I can and I must,” Jane declared, and wondering idly what Darcy’s lips would feel like pressed to her own, she felt her pulse beginning to race as Cass spluttered indignantly.

“But why, Jane? You have said yourself that you despise this man.”

Jane, who was by now playing to her sister’s obvious discomfort, waved her off with an angry flick of her gloves. “Oh, Cass,” she said irritably, “do not ask me any more about it. I shall explain everything to you later. Tonight, though, I must meet with the cocksure Mr. Darcy.”

Obviously injured by this abrupt rebuff, and certain that her younger sister was plotting a dangerous liaison with the handsome American, Cass herself turned irritable. “Well, I think you are behaving very stupidly indeed,” she proclaimed, sniffing loudly. “Such romantic foolhardiness as you intend may occasionally be overlooked in very young girls who are not yet sensible of the world, but you have long since passed that age.”

Jane nodded in acknowledgment of the harshly stated fact and turned her face to the shadowy landscape rolling past the window. For even in girlhood she had experienced precious few romantic adventures. “Of that you need not remind me, sister,” she said regretfully.

“And what of your reputation?” Cassandra pressed on, more intent now on pointing out the sheer folly of a clandestine tryst with Darcy than she was sympathetic to Jane’s emotional state.

Jane laughed bitterly. “Cass, an unmarried woman’s reputation is valued only by her prospective husbands,” she retorted bitterly. “And, as I have no such prospects, my reputation can be neither improved nor greatly damaged by meeting with Mr. Darcy.”

Looking out at the clear, star-filled sky, Jane gradually became aware of the small smile that was creeping across her scowling features. For, despite the circumstances under which the despicable Mr. Darcy had intimidated her into accepting the terms of his outrageous meeting, she suddenly realized that she was quite enjoying Cass’s mistaken conviction that she and the presumptuous American were about to become lovers.

“At least there’s a good moon out tonight,” she cheerfully observed, this last bold remark deliberately calculated to further her poor sister’s scandalous impression.