“I have a warrior’s knowledge of the fragility of human hearts,” Frank Austen loudly proclaimed in a voice that was once more devoid of emotion. “Did you know, Darcy, that a well-placed thrust can cleave a man’s heart in two so cleanly that both halves will go on beating for many seconds, as though nothing at all had happened?”

“Captain Austen, I must insist—” Darcy’s feeble protest ended in a croaking gasp as Austen lunged forward without warning. Missing the American’s exposed neck by a fraction of an inch, the gleaming steel blade slid past him with surgical precision and was effortlessly buried to the hilt in a bale of hay.

Despite his drunken state the captain deftly retrieved the saber from the bale and raised it to his own chin in a mocking salute. “I don’t know who you are, Darcy,” he growled, “but know you that the killing of men is my main business and I have spent a lifetime at it. If I learn that you have meddled with my sister,” he vowed, “I shall track you down like a mad dog and take your guts for garters.”

His murderous declaration at an end, Frank Austen stood there, swaying drunkenly from side to side in the light of the glowing lantern.

Darcy stared at him for a long, breathless moment, then he slowly turned on his heel and walked away, fully expecting to feel at any instant the deadly kiss of cold steel sliding up between his shoulder blades.

But Frank Austen did not move. Instead, when Darcy was perhaps twenty paces from him, the other raised his sword high and screamed after him.

“You have been fairly warned, sir!”


Two miles away from Chawton Great House, Jane sat at the mirrored table in her bedroom; before her on the polished wooden surface lay a tall stack of manuscript pages.

By the light of the blazing fireplace she was furiously working on her novel, dipping her pen into the inkwell, impulsively scratching out entire passages, substituting new ones that had the unaffected ring of genuine experience to them, adding one name to the book, over and over again.

She looked up impatiently at the sound of a knock on the door and Cassandra’s worried voice entreating her. “Jane, please let me in. Why have you locked your door?”

Ignoring her sister’s pleading, Jane returned to her careful, crucial work, murmuring to herself as she wrote the thrilling words that she imagined her dream lover might speak when next they met: “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you…”

Lifting her eyes from the page, Jane regarded herself in the mirror. Though she still found it hard to believe, he had said that she was beautiful. Her cheeks flushed with a pleasure she had never before known, she closed her eyes and imagined she was still with him in the wood.

“Yes, dear Darcy,” she whispered with a contented smile, “do tell me that I am beautiful. Then kiss me once more, so I’ll have another dream to sleep on.”

Even as Jane was dreaming of being with him in the wood, Darcy was standing nervously behind the draperies at a second-story window in her brother’s manor house.

On the drive below, Captain Francis Austen was yelling and reeling about drunkenly as two frightened servants in nightclothes attempted to help him up the steps.


“I waited for the dawn, expecting him to come for me. And that whole time all I could think about was Jane and what her brother had said about her fragile heart.” Darcy raised his eyes to Eliza’s. “Because, even in his drunken state, I wondered if Frank hadn’t been right in wanting to protect her from me.”

They were sitting at the end of the small dock on the shore of the lake at Pemberley Farms, where he had earlier found her sketching. Turning away from Eliza, Darcy looked out over the black waters while she steadily continued to gaze at him.

“So are you saying that you didn’t really love her?” she asked in a tremulous voice.

“Oh I could have loved her with no effort.” He laughed bitterly. “Maybe I even did. Then. But to what end? I couldn’t stay and she couldn’t leave…”

“How do you know that?”

Darcy snapped out of his reverie and frowned at her. “What?”

“How did you know that Jane couldn’t leave?” Eliza asked. “Maybe you could have brought her back here with you.” She hesitated, then added, “Maybe you should have.”

“No,” he replied with absolute certainty. “I didn’t want to bring her to this world, to deprive her of her place in literature, her family and friends, everything familiar.”

He stared out over the glassy obsidianlike waters of the lake and his voice again grew distant. “I determined that the best thing I could do for her was to get out of her life as quickly as possible.”

Eliza laid a tentative hand against his cheek. “You really were in love with her, weren’t you?” she whispered.

He slowly shook his head, denying her assessment. Eliza got to her knees and turning his face to her, she kissed him softly on the lips. This time he kissed her back. They pulled apart and looked into each other’s eyes. The feeling of betrayal seized him again and he grasped her shoulders, holding her at arm’s length. “Eliza, I don’t…” he began.

Gently she placed her fingers over his lips to still his doubts. “Like Jane,” she added lightly, “I just wanted to see what it would be like to be kissed by you in the moonlight.”

A light breeze sprang up, whispering among the trees, riffling the smooth surface of the lake. Eliza rolled her shoulders and turned her neck, uncertain whether to feel relieved or upset by Darcy’s silence.

Getting to her feet and offering him her hand, she said, “Let’s go back up to the house. You can finish telling me about Jane there, where it’s more comfortable.”

Wordlessly he took her hand and stood, just as a beam of light lanced out from the shore and pinned them in a bright circle of illumination.

Eliza emitted a long-suffering sigh. “God, not again,” she groaned. For she had not yet heard the whole of Darcy’s tale and she knew she would not sleep that night until she had heard it all.

Shielding his eyes with his free hand, Darcy called brusquely to the dark figure hurrying down the wooden dock toward them. “Who’s there? Get that light out of my eyes!”

The powerful flashlight was immediately switched off and Jenny came up to them, looking embarrassed. “I’m really sorry to break in, Fitz, Eliza, but I’m afraid we got us a little problem up at the house.”

Chapter 28

At Jenny’s insistence, Darcy and Eliza had immediately rushed up from the lake with her and entered the darkened house. Sounds of shattering glass and shrill screams had brought a few sleepy servants out into the halls and they were standing about whispering worriedly to one another as Darcy and the others hurried past.

“You all go on back to bed,” Jenny ordered in a stern, no-nonsense tone that sent the help scurrying back to their respective rooms.

The crash of breaking glass was much louder as they reached the tall double doors of the grand Pemberley ballroom. Eliza shot Jenny a what-on-earth-is-going-on glance as Darcy halted before the ballroom doors, his gentle features set in a grim mask.

Taking Eliza’s elbow, Jenny held her back a few paces while Darcy swung the heavy doors open and peered into the huge, lavishly decorated chamber. In the center of the ballroom, which was eerily lit with only a few flickering candles, Faith Harrington stood hurling cut crystal punch cups against the nearest wall.

Wearing a diaphanous white nightgown that left few details of her spectacular figure to the imagination, Faith was carefully selecting the cups from a wheeled table that was covered in stacks of priceless crystal. She held each glittering piece to the light for a moment and carefully examined its sharply faceted surfaces before suddenly screaming, “Not that one!”

Then, winding up like a professional baseball pitcher, Faith sent the cup flying and picked up another.

“Nor that one!”

SMASH!

“Or that one!”

SMASH!

“Or this one!”

Harv and Artemis, who had been watching helplessly from the shadows near the doors, hurried over to the newcomers as Jenny quickly filled Darcy in on the sequence of events that had led her to come searching for him.

“She’s been at it for about ten minutes,” Jenny concluded in a hoarse whisper. “Said she wouldn’t stop till you came and personally asked her to, and then threatened to bean anybody who came close.”

Jenny flinched as another exquisite lead-crystal cup exploded against the wall. “I thought I’d better go find you while you still had some crystal left.”

Darcy silently nodded his understanding of the situation and stepped out onto the ballroom floor. “Faith!”

At the sound of his voice Faith turned, a fresh cup poised above her head ready to throw. With the piece of sparkling crystal dangling from one finger by its handle, she let her throwing arm fall limply to her side and smiled lopsidedly at Darcy.

“Fitz, darling, I thought I’d never get your attention,” she gushed. “Thank you so much for coming.”

Remaining back in the shadows with the others, Eliza was completely confused by the grotesque scene playing out on the ballroom floor. “What is going on?” she whispered to no one in particular.

Harv Harrington obligingly stepped up behind her and leaned disturbingly close, his vodka-tinged breath uncomfortable on her neck. “Nothing too unusual. My big sister is just pitching one of her infamous tantrums,” he informed Eliza in a hushed tone that made him sound like a sports announcer at a golf tournament.