Page 1 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
CHAPTER ONE
WHEN MISS ELIZABETHBennet found herself to be with child, it was not a cause for celebration but rather a calamity of the highest order.
As the prefix in front of her name indicated, she was not married, and that was the primary reason why the news was not joyful. She had gotten herself into this predicament after the gentleman who’d contributed to the formation of the child had promised her several times the very thing—matrimony.
Of course, that had not materialized.
She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, was this not the typical warning that young women were always given about men?Do not believe them when they claim they will look after you. Demand that they marry you before giving in to them.
She had heard such advice bandied about, of course, and she was not the sort of woman who would easily give in to most men. But the man in question had been so very convincing, and besides, she knew things of his character, things that led her to believe he would be as good as his word.
For instance, he had a very strong sense of duty and rightness. He certainly claimed, at least, to be a man of upright nature who cared deeply for propriety and goodness. He had many things to say about that—well, when it came to women, anyway. She remembered his enumeration of what made a woman accomplished, for instance. He’d been very exacting with all of that. And he’d comported himself in such a way so as to make her believe that he was an honorable man.
She had trusted him.
She had also been very drunk.
And not just on alcohol, although there had been that—strong drink, in fact, and a lot of it. But there had been absinthe within the mix, too, and there had been… sort of… well, everything had been unreal.
But she hadtrustedhim.
And that was why, the morning after it all occurred, when she had been accosted by her horrid cousin Mr. Collins and he had asked for her hand in marriage, she had refused him. She had waited all day for Mr. Darcy, the man she’d been with the night before, to appear. He had not.
So, she had gone to seek him out.
It was not unlike her to be so forward, truly. It was not the first time she had walked from her house all the way to the house where he was staying, all alone, though she knew such behavior might be frowned upon.
But when she’d arrived, he only looked at her with a very confused expression writ upon his countenance. “Did I say I would call upon you today?” he said, as if the thought of such a thing was beyond all sense. “At your house? At Longbourn?” As if setting foot in Longbourn was beneath him.
“You claim you didn’t say that?” Her voice had been a squeak, a horrified squeak.
“To be frank, Miss Bennet,” he said, “last night is entirely a blur. I might have said a number of things, but I can’t rightly claim to remember them.”
He had been drunk too.
He’d had quite more of the absinthe than she’d had.
Everyonehad been drunk.
There had been a ball. It had gone on until the dawn, which was why she and he had been capable of slipping away, drinking so much, divesting her of her virtue, and then getting dressed again—well, she had, he’d stayed in his bed—and getting back in her family’s carriage and going home with the thought—the promise—that he would come for her the next day, that he would marry her.
“You remember nothing about us last night?” Her voice was still a squeak, a higher squeak. Inside her heart was struggling to beat, going out of rhythm every third time it squeezed.
“We danced, did we not?” He squinted. “And then, erm…” He shook his head, face turning a bright shade of red.
Why was he embarrassed?
“What do you remember?” She pitched her voice lower, a whisper, leaning closer. “Please, sir, if you but remember being alone upstairs at the very least?”
He drew his brows together. “What?”
She licked her lips. Well, she’d come this far, had she not? She might as well—
But then someone else appeared in the doorway, a Miss Caroline Bingley, who did not like Elizabeth and had various designs on Mr. Darcy herself. “Are you two going to converse like heathens here in the entryway? If you have come to call, Miss Eliza, which I must say is highly irregular at this hour, do come into the sitting room.”
Elizabeth’s nostrils flared. She considered all her options in the moments that followed. Perhaps she could write a letter to him, explaining it all, explaining his promises, explaining what had happened.
But if so, if so, well, what if he shared it with someone? It was well known that Elizabeth’s mother wanted to snag wealthy gentlemen for her daughters. Why, one of the reasons that Elizabeth had been so indulgent in drink last night was the clearly embarrassing loudness of her mother declaring this fact to anyone who would listen at the ball. So, perhaps he would think it was an awful scheme on her part, that she was lying.
