Chapter Text
It began, as so many dreadful things do, at a party.
It wasn’t Bingley’s party, though Bingley was responsible for Darcy’s presence there. It was Bingley who, with his soft and pleading eyes (which Darcy had often felt, rather meanly, would have been far better suited in the face of a golden retriever), had managed, via a deadly combination of guilt and cajolery, to coax Darcy on board a train from London, bound for Bristol on a perfectly good Friday afternoon when any sensible man would be at home.
The train deposited him at Temple Meads two hours later, whence he took a bus—a bus—for another forty-five agonising minutes until at long, long last he arrived at the loft of one Jane Bennet, with whom Bingley was (unaccountably, in Darcy’s estimation) currently obsessed.
And so, instead of spending his Friday comfortably at home with scotch and a book, and perhaps Georgiana playing something soothing on the piano in the next room, Darcy found himself standing awkwardly in the midst of what he fancied Hell must be like, wishing people would stop bloody looking at him.
One of those looking—and she would cheerfully own to it—was Elizabeth Bennet, sister to the much-lauded Jane, co-host of the party, and a woman who, when a delicious man appears in her living room, is most certainly going to spare him a glance.
“Who’s that?” she asked Charlotte. Shouted at Charlotte, really, the music was that loud.
“Charles’s friend.” Charlotte knew everything. “From London. Name’s Darcy.”
“That’s his name?”
Charlotte shrugged. “Surname, probably. You know what posh boys are like.”
Elizabeth did.
This particular specimen of the posh-boy species was quite tall—a weakness of hers where men were concerned—and quite extraordinarily good-looking, though the effect of his dark hair and sharp jaw was rather spoilt by the expression on his face—as of one encountering a terribly unpleasant smell.
Which, thought Elizabeth, was entirely possible. This party had got a bit out of control, and she was no longer certain who exactly was in attendance or what they might be smoking.
This party was sheer chaos, thought Darcy. Far too many people packed into far too small a space, bodies writhing, shouting at each other over music so loud he could feel it vibrating in his bones.
God, he hated it. The noise, the confusion, the way you couldn’t hear what anyone was saying. The way you could hardly even think. Give him a quiet gathering of close friends any day, at a boutique restaurant or better yet at home, anyplace there might be actual conversation rather than this shrill and mindless squawking.
Someone grabbed his arm and he nearly leapt from his skin. But it was only Bingley, his golden-retriever eyes cheerful but hazy with drink and secondhand smoke and young love. He wrapped his hand around Darcy’s bicep and held on, in order to keep himself upright, Darcy surmised.
“Darcy! What are you doing hiding in the corner?” he demanded. “Come, talk to people. Dance with us!”
“No.” Darcy’s head was pounding from the beat of the music and the tension in his shoulders, and the absolute last thing in the world he wanted to do was attempt to dance—an activity he could only just about manage in a formal ballroom setting. Here amongst this wild and carefree crowd he’d never be able to move a muscle.
Bingley’s face fell into an expression of disappointment that would have been comical had it not sent a stab of guilt through Darcy’s chest.
“You don’t like it here,” said Bingley sorrowfully. “You’re not having fun.”
What was your first clue, sneered the nasty voice in the back of his mind, but despite that voice and the ache in his head and his vicious mood, Darcy wouldn’t hurt Bingley for the world.
“It’s just not really my scene,” he said stiffly. “You didn’t tell me there would be so many… people here.”
Bingley leaned in and spoke low his ear, as though conveying a closely guarded secret. “I didn’t know,” he whispered, then reared back his head and laughed. “I didn’t know! Jane said their parties are popular in the neighbourhood but I had no idea it would be—Darcy. Darcy. Darce, old man.”
“What?” Darcy could barely follow the train of his friend’s thoughts, but he imagined they were no longer speaking about the party.
“What do you think of Jane?” Bingley demanded, confirming this theory. “Is she not the most—the best—the absolutely amazingest and most brilliant woman you’ve ever met in all your life? Well? Isn’t she?”
“Jane is lovely,” Darcy agreed, and she truly was. Beautiful and with a gentle sweetness in her manner that would draw a man like Bingley as a fly is drawn to honey. Darcy could not imagine what might incite such a charming woman to throw a party like this one. He dreaded to think.
“Look, look,” Bingley clutched at his arm and pointed into the crowd. “Look there! That’s her sister, Elizabeth.”
Darcy squinted in the direction his friend indicated. “Which one?”
“There! Right there, in the green dress. She’s lovely too. Why don’t you go talk to her?
A shifting within the crowd at last granted Darcy a glimpse of the woman Bingley meant, as she detached herself from the heaving pit of bodies and made her way over to the table near where they were standing, grabbed a can of beer off it, popped the top and drank it down in great heaving gulps.
“Her?” Darcy nearly spat. “You must be joking.”
Elizabeth finished her beer and was brushing away a rogue droplet rolling down her chin when the deep voice with the posh accent fell on her ears. She tilted her head and from the corner of her eye saw Charles and his tall friend with the curious name. Charles smiling his jolly smile, the tall friend looking as though he’d just eaten a bad oyster.
“Her? You must be joking.”
“What?” Charles sounded genuinely shocked. “Why not? She’s fit!”
“She has purple hair.” Spoken in the same tone one might use to remark: She hunts children for sport.
“Well, yeah, but it suits her. It’s whimsical! Come on, Darce, loosen up for once.”
The tall friend—Darcy, if he insisted—drew his mouth into a thin, hard line. “You’re wasting your time with me, Bingley,” he said. “I will never be ‘loose’ enough to talk to anyone who has purple hair.”
This was undoubtedly true, thought Elizabeth, and what a happy escape for the purple-haired people of the world. She herself would be prepared to keep her hair that colour for the rest of her life if it functioned as a repellent against men with sticks up their arses the size of the one this so-called Darcy was packing.
She snorted a laugh at that mental image, and when she glanced back at Darcy he was alone, turning towards her and away from Charles’s retreating form. Their eyes met. She quirked a brow as she held his gaze, so as to leave no doubt in his mind that she’d heard every word he said, but if he was embarrassed at being caught out he gave no indication of it. She inclined her head in a mocking nod which he returned with a small half-bow, then both turned their backs and walked away.
Many hours later Elizabeth lay sprawled on the sofa amidst the wreck of her living room, with her head on the armrest and her feet in Charlotte’s lap, and a headache blooming behind her eyes. Party detritus was strewn everywhere, some bloke she’d never met was passed out in the bathtub, and Jane had gone home with Charles Bingley, to his newly renovated, airy, and most importantly clean loft a few streets away.
All in all a successful evening, thought Elizabeth, though she was not looking forward to the tidying up.
“I found out more about your friend Darcy,” Charlotte remarked.
“Mmm?” Elizabeth had thought she was asleep. “More of his esteemed pronouncements on the suitability of hair colours?”
“Oh, far better than that.”
“Tell me.” Part of her hated that she was interested but the man’s sheer arrogance amused her and she never could resist the opportunity to laugh. Preferably with people rather than at them, but this Darcy was asking for it.
“His given name is Fitzwilliam, for a start.”
And laugh she did. “Good lord. No wonder he prefers to be called Darcy.”
“His mother’s maiden name, so I’m told,” Charlotte informed her.
“Naturally.” Elizabeth restrained her sneer, but barely. “How very posh boy of him.”
“It seems he’s in property development—”
“Of course he is.”
“—though he doesn’t have to work at all. He’s the nephew of an Earl and quite terribly wealthy.”
“Of course he is.”
“And so it seems he simply runs his enormous, multi-million pound company for his own amusement.”
“Uses it, you mean,”—the sneer was unrestrained now—“to impose his will on the countryside and shape it to suit himself and other wealthy men, and woe betide anyone who dares attempt to stand in his way. Yes, that sounds like something he would find amusing.”
Charlotte gave her a curious look. “I thought you didn’t speak to him?”
“I didn’t.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“You sound very decided in your opinion of him, is all.”
“I know the type, Charlotte!” Elizabeth sat up, far too suddenly for the good of her tender head, but she ignored the stab of pain. “Born to privilege and disdainful of anyone and anything that lies beyond his very narrow sphere.”
Charlotte’s lip quirked. “Do you get narrow spheres?”
“You know what I mean!”
“It’s just that spheres are, by their nature, anything but narrow.”
Elizabeth threw up her hands. “There’s no talking to you when you’re drunk,” she proclaimed. “I’m going to bed.”
She stood up, precariously to be sure, and looked down at her friend.
“You staying? You can have Jane’s bed if you like.”
“If you’re sure she wouldn’t mind.” Charlotte stifled a massive yawn. “I don’t really fancy trying to get a cab at this hour.”
“Of course she wouldn’t mind. If she were here she’d offer to sleep on the couch so you could have it, as you know perfectly well.”
Charlotte staggered off to Jane’s room and Elizabeth to her own, stopping along the way to poke her head into the bathroom. Mystery bloke was still there, fast asleep in the bathtub, snoring faintly. He would be a problem for Future Elizabeth, she decided as she pulled off her dress and collapsed into her bed, drawing the duvet up around her ears.
She was asleep almost instantly, and as sweet oblivion claimed her the last image she saw in her mind was, inexplicably, the gorgeous, scornful face of Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Darcy was in his office early Monday morning, already hard at work when Caroline Bingley appeared, leaned against the jamb of his half-open door and smiled that smile she reserved for when she was about to stir a pot.
“Morning,” she drawled. “And how was your weekend?”
“I expect you’ve heard,” he replied, without looking up from his computer screen.
“I heard you met Charles’s latest totty, yes.”
“Bit rude, Caroline.” He spared her a glance, looking down his nose at her although he was seated and she quite tall. It was a knack inherited from his aunt, and he was rather proud of it. “I thought she was perfectly lovely.”
“Oh Jane Bennet is a sweet girl,” Caroline conceded, though her smile had gone somewhat brittle. “But her sisters! Did you happen to meet any of them?”
Images flashed through Darcy’s mind, of purple hair and the most extraordinary pair of eyes, dancing with mirth and mockery. “No,” he replied, rather gruffly. “I did not have that pleasure.”
“A narrow escape is what you had, if that’s the case,” said Caroline. “Such a collection of ill-bred bohemians you’d never hope to find. The second eldest dropped out of Cambridge to become an artist, can you imagine!”
Darcy kept his face impassive; the old wound hardly twinged. “Did she?”
“Oh yes. Takes after her father, apparently, he’s some sort of portraitist.”
“What?” He looked up sharply. “Their father is Sir John Bennet?”
“Er—yes, I imagine. Why, do you know him?” Her tone proclaimed clearly that she considered this to be impossible.
Darcy ignored the tone. “He’s the most celebrated portrait artist in the country, Caroline. He did that one of Georgiana for her sixteenth. I only met him twice, but—that’s their father?”
Caroline’s eyebrows had shot up nearly to her hairline. “It would seem so,” she said.
“Hmm.” Darcy would be lying if he said that this information did not soften, at least somewhat, his opinion of the Bennet family, but he’d also be a fool to say as much to Caroline. Opting for the path of valour’s better part, he said: “Speaking of artists, I’d like to commission one to do a mural for the new offices. Now, I know your opinion on the subject,” he added hastily, in anticipation of her objection, “but my mind is made up. Please add it to the agenda for the next board meeting.”
“Well, if you insist,” said Caroline, smiling her sharp-edged smile. “As you know, Mr Darcy, your wish is my command.”
“Thank you,” he replied absently, his mind already occupied elsewhere.
Two weeks later Darcy was again early at his office. In truth, he was nearly always early at his office, due both to the habits drilled into him by his admirable but workaholic father and his own enjoyment of the early hours of the day—their silent stillness and the expectation they held, and the fact that they afforded him the peace he needed to get some work done before he was descended upon by hordes of people demanding his attention.
This particular morning, however, his early arrival drew its motivation from a different source. At nine o’clock precisely he was scheduled to meet with the artist he wished to commission to paint a mural in the lobby of his new office building. A promising but reclusive artist, about whom very little was known. Darcy himself knew nothing more than that he adored everything he had seen of their work. It was astoundingly varied, from breathtaking landscapes to insightful portraits to quirky still-lifes, all rendered in a bold and distinctive style that called to something deep within his soul.
That was all he needed to know, he had informed first Caroline and then the board, when they protested that the mural ought at the very least to be done by someone with a Name, one that would both emphasise and enhance the prestige of their firm. At the very least, they said, let us choose an artist whose website contains more information than the name used to sign their works—Ebenn, whatever that might mean—and an email address for serious enquiries only.
But Darcy remained steadfast. It was a landscape he was after for his mural, one that captured his home county of Derbyshire in all its expansive beauty. There could be no better way, he informed them—Caroline and the board—to celebrate this beauty than by distilling it through the lens of his favoured artist’s unique eye. There was nothing he wanted more.
To his satisfaction they acceded to his request and to his delight Caroline’s enquiry email was promptly and professionally answered. The artist expressed interest in the commission and willingness—eagerness, even—to travel to Derbyshire to view the subject of the mural in person, as it were, confessing it was a place they had never been but always wished to see. This morning’s meeting was a simple formality, to hammer out the details and seal the deal.
Though he displayed no outward sign of it, Darcy was excited. His own forays into art may have been curtailed when he was still quite young, by well-meaning parents who wished for him to carry on the family business, not ‘dabble in fripperies’ as they had phrased it, but at least he was now in a position to assist others in their voyage down the path that had been closed to him. This commission would be the largest and the most highly publicised of the artist’s career and he was the one to bring it about. He would be the one who—
A brief knock sounded at his door, with barely enough warning to snap him from his eager daydream before Caroline’s head poked through his door.
“Your artist is here,” she said, with a sly smirk he felt could bode nothing good. What on earth might Caroline find to smirk about over an artist who—
Oh.
Oh.
Fuck.