These Three Remain by Pamela Aidan Page A

voice penetrated through the comforting warmth. “I was thinking that the blue might do — the new one from Weston’s, sir? And the cream nankeen breeches and waistcoat.” Darcy had had the same in mind himself. It was Easter, after all! He pushed the thought that he would be certain to encounter Elizabeth again to the edge of his conscience.
    “It is Easter, sir,” the valet said when he did not respond.
    “So it is. The blue it shall be, then.” Darcy smiled to himself as he found a comfortable position and lifted his chin for the razor but then stayed his valet’s hand in sudden caution. “You will take care this morning, Fletcher!”
    “Of course, Mr. Darcy. If you will remain still!”
    Lady Catherine’s traditional Easter breakfast
en famille
proceeded in its grand manner as it had for over twenty years. The only difference Darcy noted that morning was his own impatience to have it done and be on their way to Hunsford Church. That Richard also chafed to be gone was an unwelcome novelty that even Her Ladyship observed.
    “Fitzwilliam!” Lady Catherine set a stern eye upon him. “I have an excellent digestion, equal to any in the kingdom, a fact in which I pride myself and encourage in young people; but if you will not cease fidgeting, I will be put off my breakfast entirely.”
    “My apologies, Ma’am.” Fitzwilliam flushed and cast a beseeching glance at Darcy.
    “I also understand that you arose this morning much earlier than is your wont,” she continued. “Why is that, I wonder. I have never heard that you were a religious man, Fitzwilliam. Your mother’s letters have long lamented your absence from the family pew. It cannot be that you have taken leave of your senses and become an ‘enthusiast,’ I trust! We shall have none of that nonsense in our family!”
    “My dear aunt —” Richard began to protest.
    “Then you can have no cause for impatience. Collins will wait! What else has he to do?” Having no answer, Richard lapsed into studied stillness until, being able to bear the inactivity no longer, he reached for another slice of toast and heaped it with an unconscionable amount of jam. With a look at his cousin that dared him to say anything, he thrust it into his mouth and began chewing on it as vigorously as possible without arousing his relative’s ire once more. Darcy bit down on his lip, struck with unease and anger as Lady Catherine proceeded to declaim upon her next subject. It had been wise, after all then, that he had decided against Georgiana accompanying him to Kent. Regardless of his own reservations concerning her new interest in religion, he would not chance his sister’s recovery to their aunt’s crushing opinions. He stared at her as she continued her discoursing, wondering if he’d ever truly seen her before, and silently vowed never to allow Lady Catherine to bully his sister about that which had brought her back to herself and back to him.
    The closer the hands of the Ormolu clock crept toward the hour appointed for departure to Hunsford Church, the more needful it became to Darcy for some manner of activity to stave off his mounting impatience. Unable to countenance any longer the confinement of his aunt’s table and conversation, he rose abruptly from his chair. To the astonishment of his relatives, he excused himself and, forestalling Richard from accompanying him with a frown, left the morning room for the air of Rosings’s garden. Once beyond the doors, he stopped, filled his lungs with the sharp morning air, and then turned his attention to the garden and his own disordered emotions. The crunch of the white graveled path beneath his boots was the only sound that accompanied his thoughtful meander through the geometrical beds and hedges that Lady Catherine deemed correct in a polite garden. No suggestion of wildness, neither the veriest hint of the natural was tolerated here, only the mathematical order of sharp angles and precise beds. A formal, logical