Page 3 of Colour My World
He sat back, a crease between his brows. “But what if I never meet her? What if she is not real after all?”
“She exists.” She closed the book gently. “And when you find her, despite the opinion of others, you must never give her up.”
He ran a fingertip along his temple, just as his father did when deep in thought. He must be thinking of the voices of Catherine and George—
“Even if Father forbids it?”
She smiled and tapped her left eye, where gold ringed the blue. “Your father chose love.”
“He did?”
She remembered those whispers in the retiring rooms, the corners of ballrooms, and the smug tones in drawing rooms far removed.Unnatural eyes like that, they said.A beauty too aware of itself.A woman who must be vain, or worse.
Witch. Siren. Jezebel.
They would never dare say it aloud. Shewasthe daughter of an earl. Yet they whispered.
It was easier to condemn what they did not, and could never, have. Her unique eyes were of a beauty no looking glass could grant them.
If they judged me, let it be said they feared what they could not fathom, not what I ever wielded. I held no weapon but clarity, and no throne but his heart.
George Darcy, master of Pemberley, had called herperfection.
“A gentleman’s first duty is to those he loves,” she said.
He sat straighter as though his shoulders could already carry the weight. “Then I shall do as Father did.”
“That is all I ask.”
His head rested on her shoulder. She stroked his hair and ran her fingers lightly across his scalp.
A line from Voltaire wandered into her thoughts.The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
Her darling boy pressed closer, eyelids beginning to fall. She whispered it aloud, altered as all things must be.“The art of magic, perhaps, is to amuse nature while wonder takes root.”
PART ONE
The Past
Darcy
1792 – 1806
Chapter 1
Pemberley, May 1792
The library remained cool even as the drawn-back curtains admitted the late spring Derbyshire light. Books lined the shelves in orderly ranks, wise and patient, their knowledge locked behind covers that gave way only to those who sought it boldly. Darcy had dared, not with words, but with a question. He had read it a fortnight before, nestled cross-legged in the window seat, whenLord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Sonoffered this:
A gentleman must begin his mastery of small things. Let his linen be clean, his shoes sound, his hair neat. These are not trifles but the early signs of command.
So, he had asked for a valet. Earnestly. As though the request might summon the man he wished to become. It was with this courage he faced the two seated before him: one offered affection, the other expectation.
His parents sat together near the hearth: Lady Anne with her hands folded in her lap, George Darcy with a glass of port untouched beside him.
“Well,” his father said at last, “of the six candidates presented to you, you chose the youngest. Explain yourself.”
Darcy made sure to engage his father’s eyes. “Two delivered speeches as though reading from memory. Two others asked questions: one wanted to know the steward’s name, the other asked how many worked in the scullery.”
