Page 1 of Most Truly the Gentleman

Prologue

Portsmouth, Late August 1811

Fitzwilliam Darcy felt his fifteen-year-old sister tremble at his side as the ship’s gangway was lowered. He looked down at her, expecting to see tears or a bowed head, but though he distinctly felt her shaking, her chin was up, her expression resolute. A surge of pride mixed with the grief and anger which had been his constant companions in the four days since he had arrived in Ramsgate. That journey had been made to give her the news of their cousin’s wounding and imminent return to England’s shores, only to find her preparing to elope with that unmitigated scoundrel, George Wickham.

The information that he and Colonel Fitzwilliam, as her guardians, had full control of her dowry and its disbursement had got rid of Wickham quickly enough. With him departed his conspirator, his sister’s companion, Mrs Younge. His sister’s shame and heartbreak were not so easily banished.

Their rushed journey along the southern coast to Portsmouth would never have been anything other than fraught, but under those circumstances, it had been unbearable. She had wept for much of it while he sat largely in silence, trying to understand how it could have come about that his little sister, naught but a girl in his eyes, could contemplate leaving all she had ever known for the sake of a rakehell’s smiles. And just at the moment when the cousin who was as a brother to him lay injured, possibly dying, on some stinking ship! He felt as though fortune had turned its face away from his family and left him scrambling in the dark for a way forward.

On Georgiana’s other side, the colonel’s mother, Lady Matlock, patted her arm. “My son is the strongest man I know,” she told her niece, though Darcy suspected he was meant to hear it also. “He will be well in time. I am certain of it.”

“Indeed,” opined the countess’s aunt, Mrs Beresford. “It would take more than some flailing Frenchy to do more than temporarily inconvenience the boy.” Some of the tension drained from Georgiana’s stiff frame, and Darcy sent the ladies a grateful nod over his sister’s head.

The Earl of Matlock, meanwhile, slanted them a dubious glance, which his wife either missed or chose to ignore. Mrs Beresford simply raised an eyebrow at him, as though daring him to contradict their reassurances. Of all the party, he had the least knowledge of his younger son’s qualities, having been rather too absorbed in his heir from the moment Viscount Hilldale came into the world. His daughter and second son were distant concerns at best, and Darcy suspected he was only present today because Parliament was not currently in session.

The gangway was secured, and at its top, Colonel Fitzwilliam soon appeared. Not borne upon a stretcher as they had anticipated, but leaning heavily upon crutches, his keen blue gaze sought them out swiftly and his familiar grin bloomed over a face gone drawn and pale since last they met. Georgiana gasped and pressed her clasped hands to her breast.

“What did I tell you?” the countess murmured. Darcy was seized with a nearly uncontrollable urge to run to his cousin, and he would be very surprised to learn that the ladies were not battling the very same desire.

As Fitzwilliam began to laboriously and none too steadily pick his way down the gangway, his loyal batman appeared behind his right shoulder with a sack slung across his back. Sergeant O’Leary had been Fitzwilliam’s man since his commission was purchased upon his graduation from Cambridge, and Darcy felt the knot of anxiety in his chest loosen a bit at the sight of the burly Irishman. Fitzwilliam, stubborn fellow that he was, had certainly insisted on disembarking under his own power, but O’Leary would never allow him to fall.

“He is so thin,” Georgiana whispered.

She was correct. Fitzwilliam’s uniform hung off him as though it belonged to another, the bones of his face far too prominent.

“Easily mended,” he assured her softly.

At last, Fitzwilliam reached the dock and stood before them, chest heaving from the exertion. In his usual brusque fashion, the earl declared, “Well, you are better off than we were led to believe. The letter from the surgeon in Portugal had you at death’s door.”

“Disappointed, Father?” the colonel drawled, though the effect was somewhat muted by his breathlessness.

Lord Matlock sputtered. “Certainly not. Impudent boy.”

“We are all very relieved,” Lady Matlock said, stepping forward to take his face between her hands and look her fill upon the beloved features. “Welcome home, my darling son. Your sister was delivered of a daughter only last week, but she has given many messages into my care, which I shall convey to you at a quieter moment.” Having said as much, she stepped aside and gestured Mrs Beresford forward.

The lady had lived eighty years or thereabouts—she would not give an exact figure—but was quite hale and even at such an age, handsome. Between her and Lady Matlock there was a strong resemblance. She put herself before her great-nephew, inspected him up and down in one sweeping look, poked him in the chest with a stiff finger and declared, “If you ever frighten me like that again, young man, I shall slap you. Unless I do not survive the shock, in which circumstance, I shall haunt you instead.”

The colonel threw his head back and laughed so hard he almost lost his grip on his left-hand crutch, and required O’Leary’s steadying hand for a moment while he regained his hold and his balance. “I hope you have not rattled all the way down from Warwickshire on my account, Aunt?”

“No, I was in London when word of your injury came, to comfort and assist an old friend who was recently widowed.” She regarded him critically. “Well, you do look a fright, but we shall soon have you back in form. When you are feeling more yourself, there is a matter I would discuss with you, but it will keep.” At last, a hint of a smile touched her refined features. “Welcome home, my dear boy.” She patted his arm and returned to her niece’s side, allowing the Darcys to speak with him.

Their reunion was similarly formal and reserved—the earl would stand for nothing less in a public place—yet Georgiana smiled broadly the entire time, and they all anticipated that heartfelt sentiment would be conveyed soon enough. For now, it was enough to have Fitzwilliam before them, alive and out of danger.

Darcy started as a dappled grey war-horse was led off the ship behind the porter carrying Fitzwilliam’s familiar trunk. “Good God, can that be Boreas? We were told you were wounded when he was shot out from under you!”

Fitzwilliam cried, “Quite the reverse! I was shot out of the saddle. The old fellow is perfectly hale. Stopped the instant when he lost me, as a matter of fact, and that allowed O’Leary to throw me over his back and get me to the surgeon in time to save this leg.”

Darcy regarded his cousin’s batman gratefully. “You have my thanks, Sergeant.” The soldier merely nodded in return.

“Well, now we have you and your trunk and your horse,” the earl declared as his men took charge of the latter two. “Let us repair to more salubrious environs, shall we?”

Darcy lingered at his cousin’s side as they made their way to the shore where the carriages waited. “I assume we are bound for London rather than Derbyshire, given my present infirmity?” the colonel enquired in a low voice.

“We are. And we might linger here a few days first, if you wish to rest before undertaking another journey.”

“Lord, no. I did nothing but rest on that infernal ship. Let us be away as soon as may be. I hope I am to stay at Darcy House while I recover?”

“Of course. Aunt Matlock and I have it all arranged. No one except your father believes that you and the viscount ought to dwell under the same roof.”