Page 6 of Colour My World
“You think I do not know that?” His father’s voice cracked through the door. “You think I do not carry that weight every waking moment?”
Darcy, heart hammering, pressed himself to the wall.
The door creaked open. The physician, mouth tight, passed without a word.
Darcy inched forward. Through the narrow crack, he saw his father by the fire, empty glass in hand. The other clutched a crystal decanter, nearly empty. His father’s shoulders sagged.
Darcy hurried to his mother’s door, knocked, and opened the door. The nurse, stationed by her bedside, looked up. “Master Darcy, your mother must rest—”
“Hush… Leave us.” His mother’s voice was thinner than the day before.
“Please,” he said. She gathered her things.
All days travel towards death, the last one reaches it.The line from Montaigne fell away as the door clicked shut.
He dropped to his knees beside the bed. “Mother.”
A smile curved her lips. “My dear boy.” She had always been slight but never weak.
His throat tightened. “I-I pray, do not—”
“I must speak while I may.” Her cold fingers found his.
He clasped her hand in both of his. “Then save your strength and tell me when you are well.”
A whisper of a laugh. “Ever my stubborn boy.”
“I am only a boy to you.”
To his father, he was much more. He was the future. The shoulders that Pemberley’s weight rested upon. But here, at his mother’s bedside, he was simply her son—small, and helpless.
Her fingers traced his brow. “Your father has told you what itmeans to be a Darcy.”
Duty. Honour. Reputation. A life of laws and ledgers, estates and expectations. He had known his path since the nursery room door had closed behind him.
“Yes.”
“Then I must tell you something else.”
Darcy lightly squeezed her hand.
“One day, you will stand at a precipice.” Her fingers wove through his. “Two paths will lie before you. One of duty, the other of the heart. The world will tell you to turn away from love.”
“Love is not duty.”
“No.” She paused. “It is far more.”
Love was kindness and warmth.That is you, Mama.Father only ever speaks of alliances and responsibility. He kissed her hand. “I do not understand.”
“Your cousin does.”
“Anne?” he said, immediately thinking of his aunt arguing with his father.
“No, Richard. He knows that family must be protected. Not out of duty, but out of love.”
Richard Fitzwilliam, three years Darcy’s senior, was his closest friend and the second son of the Earl of Matlock. While Darcy’s father spoke of duty as an obligation, Richard called it a privilege.
“You must be like him,” she whispered.
