IT’S HERE!
Release day is always amazing. And a little terrifying. But mostly amazing.
Today I get to send a very different Darcy and Elizabeth story out into the world. Because in this one, Lady Anne Darcy is still alive.
How did that happen, and, more importantly . . . how does having his mother still very much present in his life change Fitzwilliam Darcy (and some of our other canon characters)?
Quite a bit, as it turns out. Especially because Lady Anne isn’t merely the mistress of Pemberley. She is also one of the ton’s most respected—and successful—matchmakers.
She has opinions, experience, and a son (and nephews) who are very sure they want nothing to do with her special set of skills.
And Elizabeth Bennet, who is in London to get away from her own mother’s matchmaking, feels pretty much the same.
But Lady Anne? For her, it’s just “challenge accepted.”
I had so much fun exploring what Darcy might have become with Lady Anne still there to love him, interfere in his life, and perhaps make a mistake with him. (Or more, though she’ll never admit it).
If you love Darcy and Elizabeth, a matrimony averse Colonel Fitzwilliam, a teasing Uncle and Aunt Gardiner, a strong Jane, and some surprises along the way–including a Lady Anne Darcy who is a force to be reckoned with–you’ll enjoy this book!
Get your copy here🡪 https://readerlinks.com/l/5420723
And if you’re still not sure, Chapter One of The Matchmaker’s Mistake is below!
The Matchmaker’s Mistake
Chapter One
Fitzwilliam Darcy had suffered many indignities in his life, but among the worst was learning that he was on the verge of proposing marriage.
Miss Bingley said the words just as the carriage rolled into London. “Your mother will be so pleased.”
She spoke them like a woman laying down a trump, as though the hand was already won and she had only been awaiting their return to London to announce it. Darcy, who had been gazing out of the window at the grey November outskirts, pretended not to hear, because as a gentleman he could not say what he was truly thinking.
He maintained that pretence for the remainder of the journey.
When the Hursts’ carriage at last deposited him at Darcy House, he stood on the steps while his trunks were unloaded and gazed up at the windows. The lamp in the morning room burned brighter than the midday light required.
His mother was waiting.
Lady Anne Darcy was the most formidable matchmaker in London and had been for the better part of two decades. Hostesses wrote to her about their daughters. Dowagers consulted her before approving suitors. The Morning Post, in an unexpected bit of wit, had once printed the phrase “The Darcy Register” in reference to the private list she was rumoured to keep, and several ladies of his acquaintance had asked him, quite seriously, whether he knew where she kept it. A simple denial would have dispelled that myth in an afternoon, for the truth was that every name, every connection, every half-promising match in London society was filed away in his mother’s extraordinary mind. It exasperated Darcy that she would never simply say so. But she never would, for she believed that a reputation neither avowed nor denied was the most powerful sort to possess.
Her method was simple. She believed that proximity through friendship was the surest path to matrimony, and when she matched couples, it was compatibility that she sought. She had married her best friend’s brother, and she took her own success as a model for everyone else’s.
It was a lovely theory. It had produced a happy marriage for his parents. It had also just produced six torturous weeks in Hertfordshire for him.
Darcy had suspected his mother was up to some mischief before he had departed for Netherfield House; she had been nearly giddy over his planned visit. Saying anything would have required explaining why her scheme could not work, and she would have listened, smiled, and sent him off anyway. Better, he had reasoned, to let her aspirations come to nothing and return to London with all of her expectations quietly quashed.
He had not anticipated that Bingley’s unmarried sister would also be aware of his mother’s plan.
Miss Bingley, it turned out, had gleaned something from his mother’s invitations. His mother was never direct on such matters when she could be oblique, but Miss Bingley was unusually sensitive to such displays, and had spent her time at Netherfield being elegantly, exhaustingly hopeful. And now, despite his refusal to show her anything more than the civilities due to her as his hostess, she was clinging to wildly unwarranted expectations.
Darcy was not even remotely tempted to propose to Miss Bingley. Temptation had made itself known at Netherfield. But it had not involved her.
“This is insupportable,” he grumbled as he walked up the steps.
Hewitt opened the door for him, and once inside, Darcy surrendered his coat, hat, and gloves. Mrs. Paulson appeared from the back stairs, placid as always.
“Lady Anne is in the morning room, Mr. Darcy.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Paulson.”
He had hoped to refresh himself and consume at least one large brandy before initiating this conversation. He had not even written ahead to say he was leaving Netherfield a fortnight early. Miss Bingley, however, might have.
Well, there was nothing for it now but to straighten his shoulders and climb the stairs.
The morning room always smelled faintly of orange blossom and bergamot—Stephanotis by Floris, his mother’s favourite perfume. She sat at the writing table with her correspondence, which she set aside so promptly that he knew she had not been reading it. Two teacups sat on a table next to the settee, a tendril of steam curling up from the teapot’s spout.
His mother rose to take both his hands in her own, looking up into his face with the quick assessing glance he had known all his life. If she spied anything there, she chose not to reveal it.
“Fitzwilliam. You look well. A little tired, perhaps. Was the road dreadful? It is always dreadful north of Barnet in November.”
“The road was not dreadful.” Only the company inside of the carriage had been.
“Sit.” She gestured towards a chair she had arranged across from the settee, no doubt so that she could observe his face throughout the conversation. “You must have tea and tell me all about Netherfield.”
Darcy sat. He accepted the tea and made his mother wait until he had taken a few sips. Some small show of resistance was necessary for his pride, though he had little expectation of a final victory. “Bingley was very pleased with it.”
“He has such excellent instincts about houses. People too, I think.” She hesitated. “And the neighbourhood?”
“A market town, not unlike Lambton.”
She waited, but he offered no more. “The local assemblies—did you attend? I imagine country assemblies can be quite”—she searched for the word—“lively?”
“We attended one in Meryton.”
She handed him the tea. “And?”
“It was well attended.”
She waited. He looked back at her over the rim of his teacup.
“Did you dance?” She poured her own cup and lifted it to her lips.
“No.” He had not written a word about the ball at Netherfield, for he was aware of the danger. His mother could construct a courtship from a single set of dances, and he had rather more than that to conceal.
His mother took a breath. “What of Mr. Bingley’s party? They all travelled comfortably, I hope?”
She sounded hopeful. Darcy could not allow that to continue.
“They did. Bingley left for town before us, but Miss Bingley and the Hursts were very comfortable.” He had not been, but his mother was not really asking about his comfort.
“Miss Bingley. Such an accomplished young woman. I heard her play at Lady Laraby’s in June. So elegant!”
He knew what she wanted, and he was not going to give it to her. “Yes. She presents herself very well.”
“She does.” His mother smiled brightly at him. Too brightly.
He set down his cup as a thought suddenly became clear. “You did not simply take advantage of the visit. You arranged Netherfield. The entire venture.” Of course she had. Darcy felt rather stupid for not realising it before.
His mother remained silent for a few seconds before she said, “Charles Bingley is a grown man.”
“Mother.”
She did not attempt to reply, only reached for the teapot instead.
“Bingley was considering three properties,” Darcy said. “Two in Exeter, one in Northamptonshire. Nothing in Hertfordshire. By the end of August, there was only Netherfield, and by Michaelmas he had signed the lease.”
“Netherfield has very good shooting.”
“Does it?”
His mother met his gaze. “Apparently.”
“And how did you come to know it had very good shooting, and was available to be let, and was suitable for a young man in Bingley’s precise circumstances?”
She finished pouring her tea and set down the pot. “Lady Milburn wrote to me in July.”
“Ah.” One of his mother’s great confederates in all matters of love.
“She mentioned in passing that the great house at Netherfield was to be let, the old gentleman having died last year, and I immediately thought of Mr. Bingley. He had been speaking of taking an establishment for some time. It seemed a kindness to pass the information along.”
Darcy did not, even for a moment, believe his mother’s display of innocence. “A kindness,” he repeated. “You thought of Bingley immediately.”
“I did.”
“You did not think of me?”
His mother’s gaze met his with a serenity so complete he knew it to be false, for she was not a naturally serene woman. “Really, Fitzwilliam. Not everything is about you.”
“That is what you say when you know I am right.”
“Lady Milburn is an old friend. Her letters are a pleasure to me quite apart from any practical intelligence they contain.”
“I do not doubt it. I also do not doubt that when she wrote about Netherfield, you were already in correspondence with at least two other friends about two other country houses. Did Netherfield win your approval because Lady Milburn’s letter arrived first or because Hertfordshire is but a half-day’s ride from London?”
“A half-day’s ride is a very reasonable distance for visiting one’s friends.”
“It is also a very reasonable distance for a son to travel if he is recalled to town by his mother to plan a wedding.”
She was not contrite. If anything, she was pleased. “You have always been clever,” she said. “I do not know why I continue to be surprised by it.” She was quiet a moment, but she had never been one to retreat. “Is the expectation entirely unreasonable?”
He took a weary breath. “Yes.”
“Fitzwilliam,” she said. “I wish only to explain my reasoning. Will you hear me?”
He gestured for her to proceed, but offered no assurances.
“I have made,” she said, “many excellent matches.”
“This is not one of them.”
She ignored him. “The Nieves connection, which everyone said was impossible. The Lexington girl, upon whom poor Lady Lexington had entirely given up. The Carringtons last spring—neither of them had the faintest idea what was happening until it was very nearly done.” She recounted these without boasting. Though his mother cherished the credit of having made a match, Darcy knew that the success of her schemes was her primary satisfaction. “Seven at my last gathering alone—even though Lady Castlereagh still claims that she made two of them.”
“I am aware of your prowess, Mother. I simply do not require your assistance.”
“Do you not?” She lifted her brows. “Fitzwilliam, I should like to have the Mount Street house opened before Georgiana comes out.”
The house on Mount Street had been his father’s gift to his mother, hers to use for her lifetime. It was smaller than Darcy House, with fewer bedchambers and no nursery, but large, grandly decorated rooms made especially for entertaining. There was more than enough room for Georgiana, a few guests, and all the servants the house would require. She had not yet removed to it, for she was mistress of this house while he remained unmarried. Darcy House, he was aware, was better suited for a family, and his mother was anxious for him to begin one—but he had not, until this autumn, understood how anxious.
He had told her before that she ought not to wait on him, but she had scoffed at the idea.
“I have in my immediate circle yourself, Richard, and Milton, all of you highly eligible and yet unmarried.” She lifted the teapot, discovered it was empty, and set it down again. “Lady Ralston asked me, with a great deal of sympathy, whether there was some difficulty. Sympathy, Fitzwilliam. From Eleanor Ralston, whose own daughter I placed three seasons ago.”
He felt this bore repeating, and so he asked again. “Have you ever considered that none of us want to be matched?”
She looked at him steadily. Then she said, with less composure than she had yet shown, “Milton is heir to an earldom, and I have not known him to even look at an eligible lady twice since he came of age. Richard speaks of his horse as though it were a wife. And you have just spent six weeks in the company of a handsome, accomplished young woman with twenty thousand pounds and have come home a fortnight early because she frightened you.”
“I did not return early because of Miss Bingley. Why should I be frightened of her?” This, at least, was true. It was not Miss Bingley who had frightened him.
“Of course she frightened you. When you are frightened and do not wish to show it, you are painfully polite and then withdraw.” She shook her head. “When you were younger, it made you say the most impolite things. Thank goodness you have outgrown that peccadillo.”
He did not trust himself to answer at once. There was, in fact, no answer to give that would not have been a lie, because he had not outgrown it at all.
His mother was an extraordinarily intelligent woman, and that was likely to make the next several months of his life very difficult indeed. He would have to be careful not to reveal the true source of his distress.
“I look at the three of you,” his mother went on, more quietly, “and I see men I love, good men who ought to be married and building their nurseries. And I cannot shake the conviction that if no one intervenes, none of you shall have the happiness you deserve. Milton shall be godfather to half of England and father of none. Richard shall have married his horse. You shall become a hermit at Pemberley and be spoken of in whispers at parties you have declined to attend. There shall be no Fitzwilliam heir, and no Darcy heir, and when I arrive in heaven I shall have to account to your grandmother for how I permitted it to happen.”
“Mamma,” he said fondly.
“I am willing to concede that I sound a little ridiculous. But I am not wrong, Fitzwilliam. Something is the matter with the three of you. I am the only person in this family who appears to have noticed, and I would like it very much if one of you—any one of you, I am not particular—would prove me wrong by the end of the coming season.”
He was quiet for a moment. “And you thought I would like Miss Bingley as a wife?”
“I thought that, as you spent so much time with her brother, she was a reasonable place to begin.” She considered her empty cup and set it aside. “I have a theory, Fitzwilliam, and this theory is well-founded, because it is the story of my own life.”
He settled back. He might as well be comfortable.
“Your father was the brother of my good friend Miss Darcy.”
“Yes.” This was his aunt, who had married a Neville and lived in Bath.
“I met him because Eleanor and I were inseparable from the age of fourteen. I knew your father four years before I understood what I felt for him, and by then I knew him entirely—not the man he appeared to be, but the man he was. That is a very rare thing, and it happened because I came to know him through a connection I already trusted.”
“I have never been informed that the manner of locating one’s spouse is handed down like an inheritance.”
“Everything is an inheritance in this family.” His mother’s smile was wry. “So you understand,” she continued, “why, when your closest friend has an unmarried sister—”
“Bingley has always had an unmarried sister. When I first met him, he had two, in fact.”
She ignored his pique. “When that sister is accomplished, elegant, and perfectly suited by temperament and education to the kind of establishment you would provide, then yes, Fitzwilliam, I made a modest effort. I do not apologise for it. I do apologise for whatever I said to Miss Bingley, which was perhaps more encouraging than it ought to have been. That was careless of me. But the intention was sound.”
He was quiet a moment. What he said next required choosing his words with care. “Miss Bingley,” he said, “is indeed accomplished. But she also is the sort of woman who lays out her accomplishments before any potential suitor like the silver on her table and expects them to compliment her on the shine.”
His mother frowned.
“In all our time at Netherfield,” he said, “I did not hear her laugh once at anything she thought I would not find amusing. She had no preference that was not an echo of mine. She plays well, she speaks French, she draws designs for screens, she embroiders—and all of it is done with a sort of grim determination rather than any enjoyment.”
His mother was listening intently.
“My reservations,” he said, more quietly, “have nothing to do with her family’s connexion to trade. Both you and Father have always said the trading families would be the making of the country, and I am your son. I am not troubled by the origins of her fortune. Only by her.”
She regarded him for a long moment. “Very well,” she said at last, as though conceding a minor point in a larger argument, which Darcy suspected it was. “I had not understood her as you do.” She sighed. “Fitzwilliam, I only wish to—”
“I know.” His interruption was gentle. “I know exactly what you wish. And I do not doubt that it is for the right reasons. What I should like is for you to allow me to find a wife in my own way, in my own time, without attempting to control the conditions.”
“Has it not occurred to you,” she said, measured and reasonable, “that the conditions sometimes require a small amount of planning?”
“It has occurred to me that you believe so.”
She pressed her lips together, refusing to smile, but she was amused even if she would not admit it.
He stood. “I should like to refresh myself and rest before dinner.”
“Of course.” She did not return to her correspondence. Instead, she waited as he crossed to the door, and when he was nearly through it she said, “Do you know, I had a charming letter from Lady Macomber last week.”
Darcy stopped with his hand on the doorframe. He turned.
She was looking directly at him. Not with a mother’s apology, but with a matchmaker’s clear, mild attention.
“Amelia has come out since you saw her last,” she said. “By all accounts, she has grown into a pretty, sensible young woman. Lady Macomber has recently brought her to town.” The pause that followed, he suspected, was entirely for his benefit. “I have invited them to dine on Monday.”
“I beg your pardon?” Had she heard nothing he had said?
“Only a small party, Fitzwilliam. Family. My brother and nephews, Georgiana of course, and the Macombers, and I thought perhaps the Hursts. Of course not Miss Bingley, who will be otherwise engaged. Lord Cavendish’s cousin is giving a card party that evening for which I shall procure her an invitation.”
“You intend to arrange Miss Bingley’s evening so that she will not be at your dinner?”
“It would be unkind to introduce you to Miss Macomber in her presence.”
“You are not even going to pretend you have listened to me?”
“Listening is not the same as accepting.” She held his gaze. “Monday is only the beginning, Fitzwilliam. I thought you ought to know.”
He opened his mouth. He closed it. There was, he realised, nothing he could say that would not make the situation worse. “I will excuse myself, if you please.”
“Of course, dear. We will speak more this evening.”
Once he entered his rooms and shut the door behind him, Darcy leaned back with his hand still on the knob.
It was a mercy, he reflected, that Miss Elizabeth Bennet was safe in Hertfordshire, and a greater mercy still that his mother had no occasion to meet her. As long as that was the case, she could not fix her attention where it was dangerous to do so. Provided Darcy was in London and Miss Elizabeth remained in Hertfordshire, the matter would resolve itself through simple distance.
He had no notion how a man secured forgiveness from a woman he had insulted twice. But as he was unlikely ever to see her again, the question was, he supposed, academic.
He went to change for dinner.
Reader Question: How well do you think Lady Anne is going to do with her son?
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