These Three Remain by Pamela Aidan Page B

tree, the alarm he had experienced at the import of his own words returned. He might as well have declared himself then and there; a more transparent intimation of a shared future was hardly possible! Darcy stalked back several yards down the path toward Hunsford and then returned, only to repeat the exercise. The look of surprise on her face had confirmed to him that she had, indeed, taken his meaning and that a retreat from the position his emotions had led him to was immediately necessary. It was too soon. He had not weighed things to his satisfaction as yet! At the same time, he dared not trifle with her feelings or expectations! So, what had he done to retrieve himself ? He had plucked up a newspaper to mask his confusion and then asked her about being pleased with Kent!
    Good Lord, what a blundering, caper-witted ass! Darcy stopped his pacing, a scowl upon his face, and rapped the malacca into his palm with stinging force. If the lady of the house and her sister had not returned soon after, there was no telling in what further ways he might have made a cake of himself! In self-disgust, he collapsed against a tree, but his gaze was drawn back down the path he had come. What, in the end, was the result of his morning’s foray?
She is entirely receptive, open to your attentions. She may very well expect them to continue after your rash words!
It remained only that he come to the point for her to be his, for the sweetness he longed for to become truth. But, for the life of him, he could not as yet follow through. The social impediments remained; and they were mountainous, the familial ones hardly less so. All their claims fell upon him, and he felt keenly the justice of their reproaches. For what did he not owe to his name, his relations, and his posterity? Such an unequal match contracted merely to satisfy his appetites! Could the happiness it held out to him survive the opprobrium he would face the rest of his days? “No more!” Darcy groaned. He knew himself to be incapable of bringing peace to the warring parties within him. Both reason and emotion had failed him; there was nothing for it but to let fate run its course. “No more,” he repeated, no longer a plea but this time a command. “Proceed as you have begun, and trust to God that fate will intervene, that something will happen to end this!”
    “Fitz! Fitz, is something the matter?” Richard’s voice echoed from among the trees in the direction opposite that which Darcy had taken to Hunsford. In moments Fitzwilliam was before him, his breath coming in puffs.
    Coloring briefly, Darcy hastened to assure him, “Richard! No, nothing is amiss!”
    “Then why the blazes were you yelling?” His cousin looked at him accusingly. “I thought you were being attacked or had fallen or something!” He looked to his coat and waistcoat, giving them a tug back into place.
    “Nothing of the sort,” Darcy answered, “but I thank you for the heroic charge to my defense. I fear that I was thinking aloud.”
    “Thinking! All that racket was thinking?”
    “Aloud, yes.”
    “Thinking.” Fitzwilliam’s dubious regard almost put him to the blush again, but he stood firm. “Fletcher told me that you had gone out for a walk and was mum as the dead on where this walk was to take you. Now I know it was not in that direction.” He pointed behind him. “For that is the way I took until it was obvious that you had not chosen it. Which leaves only that direction.” He pointed beyond Darcy. “Unless you went blazing a new path.” The Colonel eyed his cousin narrowly. “It appears to my admittedly simple military brain that you are dressed uncommonly fine to be cutting new paths through Her Ladyship’s grove, leaving me to conclude that you have been to Hunsford already this morning!”
    “Yes, that is true,” Darcy confessed but said no more.
    “And the ladies were at home and in good health this fine morning, Cuz?” Richard cocked a brow at him.
    “Yes, all are