Page 9 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
CHAPTER THREE
MR. FITZWILLIAM DARCYcould not say he had ever been close to his cousin Anne. He remembered, as a young boy, before the loss of his mother, being forced on too many occasions to visit his Aunt Catherine, who he frankly despised, and never enjoying Anne’s company whatsoever.
She was younger than him. She was a girl. She screeched a lot.
These things were quite enough to place her in a lower estimation than his very favorite people. But he would not leave the matter there, of course.
Once, Anne had demanded to be allowed to have the toy he was playing with, which was some kind of riding horse—the kind which is really just a long wooden pole with some facsimile of a horse head on top of it. This one even had reins. He could hold the reins and run about with the pole betwixt his legs and thus pretend to be riding a horse.
He was, at this point of his life, about six years old.
Anne would have been four.
He very much liked the riding horse, so much so that he had named it. It was called Horsey-Worsey. Well, one could not say that he was the most imaginative of children when it came to naming things. But the fact of the matter was that Horsey-Worsey was very dear to him, and that he felt of it that it was not a toy, not truly, but really his horse, in the way that children can imagine things real in a way.
At any rate, Anne wanted Horsey-Worsey. But she did not know its name and said she would call it Beauty, which was the name of her father’s horse. This was before Anne’s father had passed on.
Darcy would not give it to her. He staunchly refused, saying in a very firm voice that Horsey-Worsey was his.
“If you don’t give it to me, I shall scream, and I shall say you have been pulling my hair,” said Anne.
“But I haven’t!” he said, horrified.
She lifted her chin, eyes dancing with threat.
He did not give her the horse; she did exactly as she said.
Everyone sided with Anne. She was smaller than him. She was a girl. She screeched in a way so annoying that everyone was compelled to do whatever they could to stop her noise.
Not only did he have to give her Horsey-Worsey but he was sent to bed without supper that night and subjected to a long lecture from his father about not hurting girls. During the lecture, he protested several times that Anne was lying.
“What?” he said, spreading his hands. “Because she is a girl, she can’t do anything wrong?”
“Yes,” said his father. “That’s about the way of it, son, and you’d do well to learn that early. Women are the weaker vessel and they have been put on earth to be treasured, protected, and revered by men. Don’t forget it.”
Even then, Darcy thought that was horse shite.
Weaker vessel, his arse.
At some point, everyone had gotten it into their heads that Darcy should marry Anne.
That wasneverhappening, however, no matter what anyone said. He was very firmly against such an idea.
Anne had never stopped being screechy as she grew older, but she had gotten frailer and frailer. Her frailty only served to worsen her temperament.
“If you don’t agree to marry me,” she said once when she was lying on a chaise lounge wrapped in blankets, “I shall tell everyone you have been touching me in places I don’t like.”
They must have been in their early twenties at that point.
He was aghast at this, at her sheer cheek, at her awful, deceptive power over him. “If you do that,” he told her, “I shall strangle you on our wedding night.” He didn’t mean that, obviously. He would never strangle anyone, least of all a woman, least of all his wife, but he simply wanted to tip the balance of power in his favor somehow. “You are so sickly that everyone will simply assume the strain of marriage was too much for you and no one will even question it.”
Her face turned white. “Why are you so hateful, Fitzwilliam?”
“Me?I’mthe hateful one?” He could not believe she’d say that.
“All my mother talks about is getting me married. I can’t find a husband any other way, don’t you see? Most girls could go to balls, but it tires me so. I am never going to please her, never.” Anne’s lower lip trembled.
Now, he felt confused. She seemed pitiable now, and he felt sympathy for her, and he didn’t know how to reconcile that feeling with everything else he’d ever felt for her. “You don’t even like me,” he said. “Are you sure you want a husband?”
