An excerpt

Darcy stared dully at the bright red sealing wax dripping onto his aunt’s fine stationery and thought it might as well be his blood that dripped there onto that ivory sheet. …the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry. The words echoed with merciless clarity through his brain and then, like a dagger, plunged unerringly to his very heart. He removed his personal seal from his writing kit and, in like manner, stamped the crest of the Darcy family into the soft, red wax. It was done! The letter, which had cost him a night of agony, was ready to be placed into the hand of the woman who had so decidedly refused his.

Pushing back from the writing desk with a groan, he glanced out the window at the approaching dawn before rubbing at his dry, smarting eyes. Wearily, he picked up the packet and read the name written so carefully in his own hand. Miss Elizabeth Bennet. He did not have to wait long for the pain to surge through him again. How could he ever have supposed that these emotions, awakened against his leave, were ever his to control? Had he not acknowledged that lack to himself and to Elizabeth, as well, only a few hours ago when he had made his offer of marriage? He had hoped that writing his defense against her bitter accusations would restore him to mastery, but he knew now the exercise to be only one more vain hope in a long line of self-deceptions. Rising quickly, as if to shed himself of such naïveté, Darcy put out the guttering desk candle with his thumb, welcoming the small, quick burning sensation. He looked again at the letter lying in his hand, his tender rendering of her name flowing across the stark paper field. Yes, it was done! It only remained to deliver this last excuse for contact with the woman whom he had so unwillingly come to love and begin to put the pain and humiliation of yesterday behind him.

Excerpt from Pamela Aidan’s “Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman.”