I am delighted to announce, Inspiration is ready for pre-order.

I didn’t exactly plan to write this one, but I’m glad I did! I’ll tell you more about that later, so for now I’ll leave you with this:

His muse desires her; she detests him. How will his soul survive?

Gentleman artist Fitzwilliam Darcy had never been able to express himself in words, but with his brushes and paints, he expresses what few men ever could. When his flighty muse abandons him, though, he finds himself staring at blank canvases in a world that has turned bland and cold and grey.

Worried for his friend, Charles Bingley invites Darcy to join him in Hertfordshire, in hopes the picturesque countryside might tempt Darcy’s muse to return. The scheme works only too well. His muse returns, with a vengeance, fixated upon the one young woman in the county who utterly detests him.

Will his selfish disdain for the feelings of others drive her and his muse away or can he find a way to please this woman with the power to bring color and feeling back into his world?

Find it HERE.

Since our theme this month is Deplorable Dates, it is fitting that the next part of the story features what might considered a date gone rather wrong!

Part 5

At first, the return to Pemberley helped. After an extended time away, accumulated estate business kept him gainfully occupied for a solid month. What a month it was! One of occupation of mind, of useful engagements and meaningful activities.

In some ways mundane in the fullest sense of the word, but in others, truly and absolutely glorious. Every meeting with his steward, ever call from a tenant with complaints proved welcome in a way it never had before. The aching, incessant weight of his muse faded away in favor of useful, practical employment.

Blissful.

And over far too soon.

By the beginning of February, his paints and brushes, his pencils and crayons—anything with which he could make a mark—began to call him again. A whisper at first, but the volume increased steadily. Only a fortnight’s resistance was permitted before he was drawn back to his attic studio to confront half-finished works and a tormenting blank canvas.

Initially, the unfinished works proved a balm, giving him a place to start, a direction to go, freeing him from those first, sometimes awful decisions that were demanded in the first moments of creation. When his muse proved temperamental, she delighted to torture him in that critical initial period. Was it wrong to delight in thwarting her effort?

But even that reprieve was not to last. Another fortnight saw all the unfinished pieces completed—not to his satisfaction, but completed. A landscape copied from one of John Constable’s works that he had seen at the Royal Academy , the image of his favorite pointer—what had possessed him to paint that?—a still life of his mother’s favorite things—a bit too sentimental and heart-stirring to truly enjoy—and the view from the studio windows of his favorite spot in the river, where he and his father often fished, so long ago now. All of those had been begun before he left Pemberley for Bingley’s company in London, though, and hardly fulfilled the maddening drive now encompassing him.

With no works left to finish, he confronted a blank canvas. Shapes began to take form on one after another, but damn it all, they were all extensions of his study of the nymph in the forest. This time though, her face took shape. The face of Elizabeth Bennet. Every single time.

This had to stop! It simply had to stop! Such unwarranted intrusion upon his mind and art was not to be borne! How dare she! How dare she!

So, he tried to paint Caroline Bingley’s visage instead. Disaster, unmitigated disaster. She was no nymph. She was a siren, somehow confined to land—resentful of her limited existence and her fate. Her beauty, such that it was, and her song would only lead a man to his death.

That particular canvass offended his own sensibilities and his muse so much, there was little choice but to burn it, lest he never sleep another night.

Aunt Catherine’s summons for his annual Easter visit to Rosings Park came as a relief. Though it would not likely remain so once he arrived and the demands to marry Anne began anew. Still it was better than pacing his studio whilst his muse to continue her torment.

***

The journey to Kent proved nothing like the ride to Hertfordshire. Nothing. And yet, the promise of a journey was all it took to send his muse thrumming, awakening every nerve with agonizing precision.

It was not possible, but still his ears ached for Miss Elizabeth’s musical voice, his eyes sought her out in every shadow, ever flash of sunlight, he longed for the scent of her—what sort of flower was it that she wore? All hunger, yet knowing no satisfaction awaited him at the end of this journey. That should have been enough to quell the longing, but no, somehow it only increased the anticipation.

If only to make the disappointment when he saw Anne all the more acute.

Realistically, that he should look forward to that. The sight of Anne was enough to chill his muse into silence. Usually. But not this time.

Why not this time?

Why could he not cease to hear Miss Elizabeth’s voice on the wind, see her face in fleeting shimmers of light? Why had he come here at all? Dreadful fool he was to think he could flee the relentless cur nipping at the heels of his soul.

He locked himself in his room with the curtains drawn against the sun. Perhaps he could sleep until it was time to depart this horrible place.

Fitzwilliam insisted he drag himself to Holy Services on Sunday. While it was his habit to do so, the knowledge that the vicar was none other than Miss Elizabeth’s cousin made the entire affair unpalatable at best. But after Fitzwilliam’s years in the army, he could be a force to be reckoned with, and Darcy lacked the energy for the standoff. So, he went.

Though the sun was bright and the air crisp and fresh, the walk to the stone parish church was flat and dull and grey. The birdsong seemed monotone and off key, even the sheep bleating rasped harsh against his beleaguered nerves.

The smell of cold, damp stone filled his nostrils as he settled into the family pew, trying to avoid eye contact. Yes, there were those with whom he shared an acquaintance, and he should deign to speak with them. He would fulfill all the obligations of etiquette at the first moment that civility was available to him. For now, it was not.

A flash of blue caught his eye. His lungs seized and refused to breath.

Wait. No, it could not be. That was simply not possible. There in the vicar’s family pew with a woman who must be Mrs. Collins.

Her.

Darcy swallowed hard and blinked several times. Breathe, he must breathe.

“Darcy? Darcy? Are you well? You look like you have seen the devil himself.” Fitzwilliam elbowed him sharply.

Darcy jumped and shook his head. “Yes, yes, I am fine.”

“You have noticed Mrs. Collins’ houseguests I see. Aunt Catherine was just telling me about them.”

Them? Were there two? By Jove, yes there were two young ladies sitting with Mrs. Collins. The other must be her sister; they shared a very similar look. But the other—

“… the other is Miss Elizabeth Bennet, I am told, a childhood friend of Mrs. Collins and cousin of Mr. Collins.”

His heart swelled to fill all his chest and shut off any hope of breathing. It was her, it was her! Here in the middle of exactly where she had no reason, no hope of being, she was here. A strange sense overtook him. A foreign mix of peace and euphoria floated his limbs and left his head muzzy and light.

The next day he lost no time in suggesting to Fitzwilliam that it would only be proper for them to pay a call upon the parsonage to honor the new Mrs. Collins. While Fitzwilliam did raise an eyebrow at the suggestion, he did not hesitate to act upon any idea that would excuse them from Aunt Catherine’s presence.

And no wonder, Aunt Catherine was in rare form this visit. Even in the short time they had been there, she had wasted no time in insisting that Darcy act upon hers and his mother’s plans for their offspring to wed. While it would be a sure way to silence his muse forever, he was not yet that desperate. Still, a shiver snaked down his back as he trotted downstairs, avoiding the parlor Aunt Catherine preferred to use in the mornings.

Darcy had been in the parsonage often enough; he and Fitzwilliam always called there when they visited Rosings Park. The prior vicar had been not dissimilar to Mr. Collins, grateful for Aunt Catherine’s condescension and a bit of a toad-eater—probably the basis by which Aunt Catherine chose the current holder of the living.

But somehow the place felt different as the housekeeper showed them in. It was not the lighting, nor was it the smell. A presence—sweet and steady— filled the entire house, noticeable the moment he entered the front door. She was indeed here.

Mrs. Collins—had he met her before? She seemed familiar— they must have met in Hertfordshire. That was it! He had seen her at the Netherfield Ball. A plain mousy woman, exactly the sort that would have married the vicar; she introduced Fitzwilliam to Miss Elizabeth who curtseyed to them both, saying nothing.

But she did not need to say a single word. Her presence spoke everything that needed to be said. The previously unremarkable parlor sang with her being, and his muse sang harmony against its melody.

How could he be so supremely favored to find her here, when his soul was the most desperate? What would such favor cost him?

Fitzwilliam prattled on for some time with the readiness and ease of a well-bred man. Darcy exhausted his conversation after having addressed a minor observation on the house and garden to Mrs. Collins.

It might not have been noteworthy conversation, but it was sufficient to be considered polite. More important, it permitted him to remain and allowed his muse to nourish itself with sidelong glances at its sustenance. Perhaps he could, he should, force himself to say something more. “Is your family in good health, Miss Bennet?”

“They are, thank you. My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you never happened to see her there?” Something about the way her brow arched as she looked at him.

His throat tightened so swiftly, he could not even exhale. He could not lie, but he could not tell her the manner in which he had seen the elder Miss Bennet. She required an answer, but how could he offer one?  “I had not been so fortunate as to meet Miss Bennet in town.”

It was entirely true, he had not lied. But something about the way her eyes narrowed—how much more did she know and how did she come to know it?

***

Those eyes preyed upon him, tortured him, taunted him with reminders of his subterfuge. But was not telling Bingley something that he would be better off not knowing truly wrong? Surely it was for Bingley’s own benefit that he concealed Miss Bennet’s call. And his sister, her guilt was surely far more conspicuous. After all, she knew directly that Miss Bennet had come to the house, he had only happened upon her and surmised what had happened.

The logic was sound; his argument would have persuaded the King’s finest barrister. But his muse was no barrister. She turned on him as surely as a vixen would turn on a threat her kits. Was it possible for a muse to bare her teeth and growl, foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog? If it was, surely that was the sound that awakened him the next morning and every morning thereafter.

If only he could see Miss Bennet again, perhaps there would be some way he could make things right and appease his vengeful muse. But each time he tried to approach the parsonage, the image of her taut brow as her gaze penetrated his very being stopped him. Clearly, he could not intrude upon her solitude uninvited. So, he remained at Rosings manor, tortured, pacing his chambers like a caged wild cat, avoiding Aunt Catherine’s demands.

Finally, after a week full had passed, the denizens of the parsonage were invited to Rosings Park to dine after church. Perhaps Aunt Catherine had grown weary of so little company, perhaps she thought their presence would draw Darcy out of his rooms. Whatever her reason, it meant that he could encounter her again and perhaps, somehow appease his muse’s fury at his mistreatment of her chosen vessel.