Page 52 of Shields and Roses

He fell silent, looking into his own nearly empty glass. Richard waited. Darcy looked up again.

"You always told me to look more deeply and to question what I saw. You always said there was more to the story, but you never explained what that was."

"You did not want to hear it," Richard said. "Eventually I realized you had to come around to it on your own. I could not ram the information down your throat like loading a cannon. You had to be the one to ask the questions and you had to be ready to hear the answers. Are you ready now?" Again, Richard looked at his cousin searchingly. A short silence stretched between them.

"I think I am," Darcy said. "I have made something of a fool of myself, and it made me wonder how much more of a fool I have been."

"I do not think you have ever been a fool," Richard assured him. "Misguided, stubborn and occasionally dead wrong, but not a fool."

"Thank you," Darcy replied in a tone dripping with sarcasm.

"I mean it, Will. You did not have all the information you needed to counter the lies you were told as an impressionable boy, and no matter how I prompted you to look deeper, that is not entirely in your nature. I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if Father and I had said something to Uncle George sooner or let him know how much influence Aunt Catherine had gained over you. Perhaps hearing it from your father could have changed things then. As it is, we must simply deal with the situation now. How do you feel you made a fool of yourself?"

Darcy shifted in his seat and looked away. His voice was almost inaudible as he said, "Hmm, well, that has something to do with why I am in London right now, attending events of the Season even though I once swore I would not do so willingly."

Richard took a guess. "You have fallen in love," he said with amusement.

"I wish it were that simple," Darcy replied, still not meeting his cousin's eyes. "I keep losing her."

Richard burst out in surprised laughter. "Losing her?" he asked. "How is that possible?"

With a heavy sigh, Darcy sat back in his seat and finally looked up again. "You are going to think I have gone a little crazy. I know Bingley does, although he tries to be helpful." Darcy sighed again. "I think I need your help. I have tried to figure this out on my own and I am not getting anywhere I want to be."

"Tell me," Richard said, sobering again. "I will help if I can."

Darcy explained how he had seen the woman of his dreams in Hatchard's and spotted her again on the way to Pemberley. He told of attending the assembly at Lambton in hopes of meeting her.

"You went to an assembly? On your own? This must be serious," Richard said. "Was she there?'

"She was," Darcy confirmed. "Yes, she was there. There were others we know there as well, and I think that is part of the problem. At least, your father suggested it might be, but it took me a while to accept he might be right."

"What do you mean?"

"The Bennets were there. The older two daughters, at any rate. Aunt Catherine had called me to Rosings Park shortly before I left town, partly to insist I marry Anne and partly to warn me that Jane and Elizabeth Bennet would be visiting Derbyshire in search of a wealthy husband and I should stay well away from them. She had plenty of other things to say about them and I am afraid I believed her at face value when I should have questioned deeper."

"What did you do?" Richard asked seriously.

"You remember Walter Tavistock?" Darcy asked. Richard nodded. "Well, Tavistock was at the assembly, and I was glad to see a familiar face, so I chatted with him for a while. We spotted Sir Barnaby Linton across the room and Tavistock identified the woman with him as Miss Jane Bennet."

"You spouted off Aunt Catherine's ill-formed opinions, I suppose?" Richard asked.

Darcy nodded, looking rather embarrassed about it. "Tavistock paid me little mind," he explained. "In fact, he went off to talk to Sir Barnaby and the Bennet sisters. I expect they had a good laugh over my foolishness."

"That depends on what exactly you said," Richard grumbled.

"Yes, well, anyway, I eventually found Miss Rose," he nodded when Richard raised an eyebrow in question, "and I gained an introduction. We danced and talked. She was marvelous - intelligent, witty, well-read and perfectly lovely."

Richard chuckled at the look on his cousin's face. "Mooncalf," he teased. "What happened?"

"She disappeared."

"Wait, what? You were dancing and poof! She was gone?"

"It felt like that, but not exactly. Towards the end of our dance, I was distracted by the sight of Sir Barnaby talking with Miss Bennet again. Miss Rose asked what was wrong. I was musing over whether I had a duty to warn Sir Barnaby about Miss Bennet. As I did, I looked away for a moment and when I looked back, Mis Rose was gone. I just could not understand it. Your father said she may have been insulted, either by my distraction or because I was considering passing on negative gossip about a young woman I had never actually met." He fell silent.

"Did you?" Richard asked after a pause.

"Yes," Darcy admitted softly, once again not meeting his cousin's searching eyes. "I was wrong to even consider it. On the positive side, Sir Barnaby paid me no more attention than Tavistock had, but the next day Mr. Gerald Damask visited me at Pemberley. He is Miss Bennet's great-uncle, and he had some sharp words for me for passing on unsubstantiated gossip that could easily ruin a woman's reputation. It was when he asked me how I would feel if someone did the same regarding Georgiana that it finally sunk in how wrong I had been. I apologized and wrote to Tavistock and Sir Barnaby to retract my statements." He hung his head. "I am not at all proud of my behavior that night."