Page 170 of Pride and Prejudice Resolutions

"You think—she thinks—" His voice strangled itself. "She thinks I am courting her for her dowry?"

"Are you not?" Darcy asked quietly.

"No! Not at all!"

"Then what?" Elizabeth's gaze was unrelenting. "Be honest, Richard. For once."

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Because—" He stopped. "Because I do not want only her dowry. I want her. Feathers and all."

"Why?"

"Because I bloody love her!" he shouted, loud enough to rattle the porcelain on the tea tray.

Elizabeth smiled. Soft. Knowing. Infuriatingly triumphant.

"There it is." She looked so pleased, as though she had personally orchestrated the entire debacle just to hear those four words.

"Elizabeth." Richard dragged both palms down his face, "Miss Bingley now believes I have been playing a long, sordid game to secure her fortune. I need to speak to her."

"She will not see you."

"Then I will force my way in—"

"Richard." Darcy's voice cut through like a bayonet. "Forcing entry into a lady's home after she has explicitly barred you is not strategy. It is a misdemeanour with extra paperwork."

"Then what do you suggest I do?"

The three of them exchanged glances again—long, significant, conspiratorial glances that made Richard want to hurl the nearest vase through the nearest window.

"The only option," Elizabeth said, "is to sit down and devise a proper siege."

"And you have very little time," Jane added softly. "Before Easter arrives and you are shipped off to warmer pastures."

Richard stood. His mind raced faster than a carriage on the Brighton road. A little more than a fortnight to convince the most stubborn, suspicious, hairpin-wielding woman in London that he loved her—not in spite of her sharp tongue and her fortune, but because of who she was beneath them.

"I need a plan," he muttered.

"You need a miracle," Darcy corrected.

"Same thing." Richard headed for the door. "Where is she likely to be tonight?"

"We do not know," Elizabeth admitted. "She fled yesterday before we could—"

"Check the scandal sheets," Darcy interrupted. "If Miss Bingley is furious, she will make a statement. Likely one that involves feathers, fire, or both."

Richard nodded once and left, his pulse hammering. He had faced the French. He had survived sieges, ambushes, andone particularly vindictive Portuguese donkey. Surely, he could convince one furious woman that he loved her.Surely.

White's at eight o'clock on a Wednesday evening was a sanctuary for men who had made poor decisions and wished to compound them with expensive liquor.

Richard sat in a corner booth, nursing his third brandy and contemplating whether a strategic retreat to a monastery might solve his problems. The answer was no—religion would not solve his problems— but the brandy was doing its level best to make the notion feel increasingly reasonable.

Around him, the club hummed with the usual din of masculine idiocy. Cards slapped against tables. Dice clattered. Men laughed too loudly at jokes that were not funny. The air smelled of smoke, leather, and the collective boredom of the upper classes.

He stared into his glass and wondered how, precisely, he had managed to ruin everything.

Not long ago, he had a plan. A strategy. It was simple. Logical. Militarily sound. Now she thought he was a fortune hunter. And he was sitting in White's drinking brandy that tasted like liquid disappointment.