These Three Remain by Pamela Aidan Page B

garden, Darcy mused, as he put as much distance between himself and Rosings Hall as the garden could afford. Would that the geometry of the garden might seep into his bones, discipline his unruly thoughts and emotions, and return them to the figures in which they had run before he’d ever heard of Netherfield. He slowed his stride; the path went no farther but divided right or left to circle the garden’s perimeter. With a sigh, he turned back to face the manor house and the truth.
    He was wild to see her; there was no denying the truth of it. But it was also true that he feared to see her. The memory of that moment in the parsonage, when her presence and his desire’s imaginings had caused him to doubt his reason, had been a continual torment and tease. The scene had intruded on his every thought and accompanied his every action. One moment, the remembered delight would be such that he would give much to be caught up so again, and the next, when the reality of the situation reasserted itself, he swore that he would give anything not to be. Darcy clenched his fists. This mad swinging of his thoughts and desires was becoming intolerable! His resolve had melted in the candescence of her eyes. His self-physic of duty and busyness had been an utter failure.
Is there no means of quenching this fascination?
    The only response to his plea was the sudden, shrill call of one of the peacocks allowed to roam the park. On its heels followed a faint “Darcy!” from the house. Looking in that direction, Darcy spied Fitzwilliam at the opposite end of the garden, striding purposefully toward him. Come to plague him, most like. But as Richard advanced, something he had said earlier that morning teased Darcy’s memory. What had it been? Something about having had a surfeit of Collins? Darcy seized upon the thought. Might that be the solution to his obsession with Elizabeth?
    “Fitz! It is time to be off! What the devil are you doing out here?” Richard demanded querulously as he came upon him. “Why did you abandon me to the old she-dragon? Fitz!” He addressed him again when he got no reply. “And what the devil are you smiling at?”
    It was indeed a fine Easter morning. So mild was the weather and so light the breeze that Lady Catherine consented to Darcy’s request that the calash of the barouche be let down. The beauties of the Kent countryside, thus displayed in their full glory, were duly observed under the lady’s express direction and commentary, but Darcy never heard her during the sojourn to Hunsford, nor he suspected, did his cousin. This was of no consequence, for an unfocused stare and an occasional nod were all Her Ladyship expected or desired from her nephews. Any more fervid a response would have given rise to a suspicion of “artistic” tendencies, which the lady deplored almost as much as “enthusiast” ones in men of rank.
    The distance to Hunsford by carriage was not long, but it was obvious from the agitated demeanor of its rector as he fluttered about the threshold that they were late. Since Darcy’s turn in Rosings’s garden had hardly delayed their departure, it was plain that Lady Catherine’s timetable had been designed with a grand entrance in mind. Members of the elevated strata of the local gentry stood with Mr. and Mrs. Collins outside the church doors in order to greet Her Ladyship and her distinguished nephews, but Elizabeth was not among them. Darcy tensed as the barouche swayed to a stop and it became apparent that neither was she to be seen within the threshold of the church. Chagrined, he glanced at Fitzwilliam, who was scowling with annoyance, first at his aunt and then at the crowd gathered on the church step.
    “Too late!” Fitzwilliam grumbled under his breath as one of Rosings’s scarlet-clad servants hurried to open the barouche’s door. “And a bloody gauntlet to run as well!” Once the door was opened, he bounded out of the equipage, forgetting his duty to his aunt for the