“Very good, sir. Shall I ring Fletcher?”

“Yes, do so! And Witcher” — he stopped the butler as he reached for the bell pull — “I shall have a note ready to send round early in the morning. No answer is desired.”

“Yes, sir.” Witcher pulled on the rope, and Darcy once again mounted the stairs to discharge two last duties. The first was a note to Miss Bingley; the second would be a confrontation with his now celebrated valet. When Darcy finally gained his chambers, it was to find his nightclothes neatly laid out upon his bed, hot and cold ewers of water standing at the ready, and his toiletries lying in neat ranks upon the washstand. Gone was every stitch of the clothing that had been marshaled for his inspection earlier that evening. Unappeased by Fletcher’s meticulous industry, Darcy closed the chamber door with decided force and strode quickly to the center of the room, his hands clasped behind his back, summoning a grave look upon his face. The dressing room door sprang open almost before he had settled his features.

“Mr. D —”

“Fletcher, I wish to have a word with you!”

At Darcy’s tone, Fletcher’s eyes at first went wide and then quickly lowered. “Yes, Mr. Darcy, sir.”

“I distinctly recall warning you that I had no wish to compete with Mr. Brummell nor to occasion any undue notice on anyone’s part.” His indignation rekindled, Darcy warmed to his subject. “I believe those were my exact instructions, were they not?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Darcy.”

“Mr. Fletcher, you have failed me, then, on both counts.”

Fletcher’s head came up, expressions from guilt to uncertainty and on to caution passing over his features in quick succession. “In truth, sir?”

“In excruciating truth, Fletcher! You have made me the ‘glass of fashion and the mold of form,’ and I do not thank you for it! As it happens, I should have liked to have passed unnoticed at Melbourne House this evening; but, thanks to this blasted cravat, there was no chance of that. I find myself now in a most disagreeable position.” He began pacing the room. “ ‘Measure for Measure,’ you said. Little did I realize that you meant Brummell! Were you aware that he knows you by name, man?”

“I had heard rumors…” Fletcher’s face blanched white, in guilt or surprise, Darcy could not tell.

“Rumors! I wonder you are not in direct communication! They were laying bets, Fletcher, bets!” Darcy stopped only a pace away from his valet, whose eyes had once more returned to the floor. “I will not have it, Fletcher, I absolutely will not have it! If you desire to valet a fashion card, you have my leave to find one who delights in preening before Society. But if you will continue in my employ, you will content yourself with my simpler requirements.” He turned away, sat down on his dressing chair, and growled, “Now untie this infernal thing.”

“Yes, Mr. Darcy.” Fletcher approached him carefully and with expert fingers began disassembling the intricate article. “Mr. Darcy?” he asked after working out the knot.

“Yes, Fletcher?”

“If I may, sir…Exactly how grievously did I fail you tonight, sir?”

Darcy looked at him measuredly. Anxiety and pride waged undisguised war on a countenance that was usually closed to him. Fletcher’s excellent control was in near shambles, and given his intimate relationship with the man, Darcy had to consider the reason why. That he had succeeded in intimidating Fletcher he dismissed out of hand. No, the answer was not to be found in his anxiety; therefore, he must look to the man’s pride. He cleared his throat. “The Sphinx is retired.”

Fletcher’s hands trembled. “That grievously, sir!” He, too, cleared his throat. “Please allow me to offer my most humble apologies and beg you would not ‘think too precisely on the event.’” The offending neckcloth lay now in a limp heap on the dressing table.

“Humph,” Darcy snorted, and looked askance at his valet. He had guessed aright; Fletcher had succumbed to the siren call of his art, and by bringing the celebrated arbiter of fashion to heel, he had unquestionably achieved the pinnacle of his profession. A wave of understanding and sympathy for Fletcher’s pride in his art swept through Darcy, but it was soon tempered by the remembrance that the success had been won on his unsuspecting and unwilling person. Fletcher appeared truly chastened, and the inconvenience of securing in a new valet…He shook his head. The man had been with him since he finished University, and he could not imagine instructing a new one in all those preferences that Fletcher comprehended so well. Firmness seemed to be what was called for and, perhaps, an olive branch.

“I suppose ‘things without all remedy should be without regard. What’s done is done,’ but, Fletcher, do not serve me this kind of trick again. ‘More matter and less art.’ Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” The relief in Fletcher’s voice and mien was palpable.

“Do not imagine that I am entirely mollified,” Darcy continued as he rose for Fletcher to help him out of his frock coat. “Until some fellow trumps your Roquet, I will be forced to suffer any number of fools wanting to know how it is done. Thank Heaven I leave for Pemberley soon.”

“ ‘The quality of mercy is not str —— ’” the valet began, quoting the Bard with sincerity.

“Yes, well, I beg you will not allow this triumph of yours and its attendant notoriety to interfere with your duties or those of the rest of this household.”

“No, sir,” replied his valet. The sapphirine waistcoat was eased from Darcy’s shoulders, and as he turned to watch Fletcher’s careful folding of his clothes in preparation to quit the room, it was plain that the man’s equanimity had been overbalanced this night. The entire month had been far too unsettling for both of them.

“Fletcher,” Darcy called as his valet moved toward the door, “Lord Brougham desired me to extend his congratulations.”

“He did, sir! Lord Brougham is most kind.”

“He wished you to know that the expression on Brummell’s face as he surveyed his defeat at your hands will entertain him for days to come. And Fletcher,” he ended, “my guarded congratulations as well.”

“Thank you, Mr. Darcy!” Fletcher bowed deeply.

They bade each other a good night, and Darcy turned to readying for bed, devoutly praying that his task of dissuading Bingley was near an end and that nothing would stand in the way of a speedy withdrawal to Pemberley. Both of them might there recoup their balance. Everything would return to the way it had been.



Darcy shook out the pages of the Morning Post and methodically refolded the paper before finishing a last piece of buttered toast and draining his cup of morning coffee. The news he had missed while in Hertfordshire was shocking and disturbing, the latest incidents of public disturbance chasing the reports of the scandal at Melbourne House off the front pages of the Post and making him all the more eager to complete his business and quit London for Pemberley as soon as possible. He consulted his pocket watch; it still lacked three-quarters of an hour before his business agent was due in the library. Not, Darcy sighed as he returned the watch to his pocket, that there were not more personal reasons than alarm at the rioting of weavers in the Midlands to cause his disquiet with his situation in London.

He pushed back his chair and, rising, walked over to the window overlooking the greensward of Grosvenor Square, now blanketed with snow. The trees of the park were dark sentinels against the whiteness, save for the upper branches, whose thready fingers were delicately encased in ice that sparkled in the midmorning sun. Darcy took a deep breath and let it out slowly, covering one of the window’s chill panes with vapor that hardened to frost on the pane, so cold was the day. He ran his finger up through the ice, drawing a tiny Punch against the starry backdrop of frost. How many years had it been since he had drawn frost pictures for Georgiana? Ten? Every bit of ten, he was certain.

He curled his fingers into a fist and with its side obliterated the clown and the stars as he finished his review of his campaign thus far. No, the necessities that bound him to London chafed sorely, but no matter in what manner he examined the problem, he was fairly caught between his promises to Miss Bingley and his own concern over his friend. He was obliged to see it to a conclusion.

The meeting with his business agent proved blessedly short, and Darcy found himself free to indulge in the one activity in his short visit to Town that he had anticipated with pleasure: the selection of Christmas gifts for his sister. As the heavily swathed James and Harry argued up on the box over the best route to Piccadilly given the early morning’s snowfall, Darcy turned his attention to the coming season and all its attendant responsibilities. Both Mr. Witcher in London and Mr. Reynolds at Pemberley had received funds for gifts for the staff under their respective rules. Hinchcliffe would countenance for himself nothing more personal than a holiday purse each year, which, Darcy suspected, he had by now parlayed into quite a nest egg. Fletcher’s Christmas gift had always been the same as well: transportation to his family’s home in Nottingham for a week and a tidy sum to lighten the hearts and ease the lives of his aging parents. Quite a tidy sum this year, if the weight of Dy’s tribute to Fletcher’s genius, which had arrived this morning, was any indicator. Darcy snorted to himself as the carriage pulled to a stop at Hatchards. Harry had the door open and the steps down almost immediately.