A Note from the Author:

This is the very first scene I wrote for Fitzwilliam Darcy, Master Spy. I knew that I wanted to write a Spy Darcy, but that was all I knew. What would inspire a responsible gentleman, like Darcy, to do something so risky? That was the question I asked the characters, and the following scene, told from a younger Darcy’s point of view, was the reply. I hope you enjoy it! 

The Making of a Spy

Darcy

I jolted awake, my breath ragged. Flinging the covers aside, I looked through my window into the darkness. The curtains billowed on either side of the open pane. A tree branch tapped against the glass, and I fell against my pillows in relief. In my dream, I had been racing over the fields, enjoying the thrill of a good chase and closing in on the laughing figure before me, her dark curls escaping from her pins to bounce like springs against her back. I was so close, I could have reached out as I had wanted to do a thousand times before to caress her hair. To touch her.

But my faceless apparition evaded me, as she always did. A shot fired and my horse stumbled, launching me forward and nearly making me tumble from my bed.

It had only been a dream.

I nestled back against my pillows, but the damage had been done. My mind was alert, and I knew there would be no easy return to slumber for me that night.

My stomach grumbled. Maybe Cook had left me something in the pantry. She usually did for occasions such as this. My dreams had been waking me more frequently lately, for reasons I could not explain.

My father was a conservative man of strict habits. He would be asleep in his bedchamber. Georgiana was safe with her nurse in the nursery. Pemberley was secure. England was at war, but I could not recall a time in life where that had not been the case. Granted, things had become worse over the years, but that might have been my own shift in perspective as I matured and understood political conflicts better.

Stuffing my shirt into my breeches, I padded barefoot down the hall and to the stairs leading to the kitchens.

Nobody was there. No light guided my path, only my familiarity with the halls which had been in my family for generations and which I would one day inherit. I loved Pemberley. Every stone, beam, closet shelf, and floorboard.

I opened the cupboard and breathed in the swirl of cinnamon, cloves, and dried fruit. A plate covered with a cheesecloth sat on the bottom shelf.

Pulling back the cloth, I grinned at the treat. My favorite—a large profiterole filled with creamy custard, the top drizzled with chocolate and powdered with sugar. I inhaled half of it in one bite.

I took my plate out to the table where the servants sat and ate, wishing I could procure a cold glass of milk but knowing there would be none this late in the summer outside of the ice house.

I took another nibble, licking the custard from my fingers and savoring the last bites. Was there anything more delicious than puffy pastries?

A scratch from outside the door made me sit up. A bang and a grunt, then a large figure drooped in the entrance, stumbling forward and leaving a trail of blood from the hand he stabilized himself with on the counter.

I hopped up from my chair, wielding the morsel that remained of my puffy pastry. I was too scared to feel ridiculous about it.

“Darcy,” a voice that gripped me by the heart grunted.

“Father?” Dropping my treat down to the table, I ran to his side, helping him to the floor before he fell down. “Father, what are you doing here? You are supposed to be abed!”

He chuckled, then grimaced, then fell silent.

“Father! Wake up!” I shook him as hard as I dared before sense overcame my panic. He was injured. I must first assess his injuries, then I could get answers.

There was a bucket of water ready by the stove, and I pulled it over with one of the white cloths Cook left hanging on the back of her chair. Dipping the cloth into the bucket, I wiped the sweat from Father’s face. He mumbled something incoherent. Then, I unbuttoned his coat and pried his hand away from where he gripped his arm.

“Flesh wound,” he mumbled in a burst of strength. “Clean it,” he strained out in his next breath.

His coat and shirt were already ruined, so I spared him the contortions of removing the items by cutting the cloth away.

“Good lad,” he muttered, more in sleep than in consciousness.

An ugly gash sliced through the fleshy part of his arm, a clean cut.

I knew what he needed. And I knew where Cook kept her secret stash. When I was younger, I had required a chair, but now, I could reach it by standing on my toes.

I stretched to the top shelf of the pantry where she hid the scotch her family sent her from the highlands. It was her family’s special brew, the stuff she had claimed would grow hair on a boy’s chest. Richard and I had put her claims to the test, much to the chagrin of our mothers and the laughter of our fathers. It had taken three more years for my first chest hair to sprout, and it was no thanks to her Scottish whiskey.

Grabbing the bottle, I hastened back to my father’s side. I lifted him up and aimed for his mouth. He choked and coughed, but some had made it down his throat. What had spilled must have landed on his open wound, for he howled. “Dash it all, boy! Are you trying to get me to wake the entire household?”

I was glad to get proof that he was feeling better, even if it was to express his displeasure. Father had withdrawn after Mother’s death, though he tried not to. I could tell his heart was not in our conversations, and he was sad when he stayed too much indoors. He took many business trips, and he frequently visited friends at their estates. Better to stay busy, he always said, claiming that when I was the master of this large estate, I would forever be at the demand of others just as he was. 

“You will have to stitch it, son,” he said, closing his eyes and breathing out his mouth. “Give me another swallow of Cook’s whiskey.”

I did as he bid, with better aim and greater success.

He shook his head back and forth with a deep sigh and a groan. Then, he squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw. “Now. Do it now,” he said between clenched teeth.

I had seen many injuries nursed over the years, both my own and those of my cousins, and I was grateful for paying attention to the surgeon and my mother’s care when Father passed out during the cleaning.

It was there, in the silence that left me alone with my injured father and my own thoughts that the implications of this moment hit me over the head like a rafter falling from the ceiling. I had thought my father asleep. He had not even been home. What else was he keeping from me? 

All the times he had been away on business, what had he really been doing? Who was this man, and how had he kept this part of himself a secret from me? And now that I knew, would he share it with me?

I grew impatient and wished he would stay conscious long enough for me to ask him the questions that burned and spread in my mind. Then, I felt horrible because he was obviously in tremendous pain, and if he had not shared this dangerous secret with me before this night, then what right did I have to insist that he share it with me now? Oh, but I hoped he did. I wanted to know this man, my father.

I struggled with these thoughts until I heard his voice, low and weak at first. “That is a good lad.” He was looking at his arm, testing the strength of the binding. His eyes were clear and sharp when his gaze met mine.

I bit my tongue. The questions could wait. He would recover so long as he did not suffer an infection and fever. I shivered at the thought. I hated fevers, despised them. A fever had taken my mother, had nearly taken my little sister.

His hand rested on top of mine, gripping too tight. I did not move, too grateful that he was home with me.

“I need to talk to you, son.”

“On the morrow, after you have rested.”

“No! Now.”

My heart raced. This was exactly what I had hoped for, but his intensity bordered on despair, and I did not feel ready for it.

“Are you certain?” I asked, giving him another opportunity to reconsider, to spare me.

He nodded. “We are Darcys. We never say anything unless we mean it.”

I smiled. He always said that.

To my father, being a Darcy was the highest compliment. It meant honor and honesty and reliability. We took care of our responsibilities diligently. No task was too low, no servant was beneath our notice if they were under our care. We cared for and protected our people.

He tried to sit up. “Help me lean against the wall.”

Gently, I pulled him up with his good arm, then before I forgot, I cleaned his bloody hand stain from the wall. No sense startling Cook in the morning. Then, I tossed out the water from the bucket and left it by the door. I would leave her a note that I had done it, or she would reprimand one of the maids for forgetting to fill it the night before. She ran an orderly kitchen.

I returned to Father’s side. There was a warmth in his eyes that he usually spared for Georgiana, but this look was all for me. I am not too proud to admit that I reveled in it.

“Pour me another drink.”

I handed him the entire bottle.

His smile looked like a grimace. “What am I to do with you?”

I was not aware that anything needed to be done with me. But the blood, the secrecy, the urgency already gave me the clues I needed to give an educated guess what this was about. “If you tell me, will you have to kill me?”

He barked a weak laugh. He must have drank enough whiskey to dull the pain because he did not grimace. “My superiors would advise me to…” His words trailed off and he looked at me so intently, my throat tightened and I swallowed hard. He was not considering it, was he?

Shaking his head firmly, he said equally firmly, “No, I cannot eliminate my heir. Your life is too precious. Besides, your mother would never forgive me.”

Never mind that Mother had been gone nearly five years. But she was always present, especially with Father.

“Four years ago, I was approached by an old friend. Do you remember Sir NIck?”

“Of course. He let me read in his library while you two argued over tobacco.”

Father smiled. “Our history goes back to boarding school. His family came upon straightened times once he inherited, and I advised him on a few promising strategies—”

“Speculations?”

“No, nothing so risky as that. What I recommended were solid investments based on the work of honest, hard-working men whose inventions would change how we cultivate the land and travel. Sir Nick took my advice.”

“And by way of thanks, he invited you to join a spy agency?” I watched his reaction after saying the word aloud. 

“No. Some reward that would be! No, he recalled how easily it had come for me to see what was obvious to me but that which was not to others. He felt that a mind given to strategy, as mine is, would be a boon to the British government during these tumultuous times.”

“And you agreed?!” Every sensibility protested. Father was the heart of Pemberley. If anything happened to him, Georgiana and I would be on our own to manage, and I had so much to learn still. How could he willingly put himself in danger when we had already lost our mother? It was the question I wished to ask him, but my throat closed around the words.

He leaned against me. “We were going to nip this war in the bud before it truly began. But Napoleon has many skillful, ambitious men on his side. It has not been so easy. I meant to spare you from all of this… and yet, here we are.”

“What if you had been killed? Would we even have been told what had happened? Why you had died?”

“No, which is why I do my best to stay alive.”

“It is no laughing matter,” I said, feeling cross. How had Father hidden this from me all this time? How had I missed all the signs?

“I am not laughing. There are certain techniques, certain skills I have developed to avoid most of the danger.”

I looked pointedly at his bound wound. 

He sighed. “After your mother died, I was beside myself. I tried to fill my days with business, rising early and only going to bed when I collapsed from exhaustion. But the nights and the empty moments, they tortured me. They still do. God, I miss her.” He closed his eyes and his chin quivered, and I forgave him.

“I miss her too.” At least I had known and loved her, had known I was loved unconditionally by her. Georgiana was too young to remember her, and Father and I were sorry substitutes for Mother’s tender care.

“I kept going for you. You and Georgie were the only reasons for me to keep going. I love you so much… when I realized how your lives could be threatened and saw how I might help keep you safe, I had to do it. I had to try.” He looked at me intently. “And now, you know my secret.”

I would have promised him anything right then. Not only had I gained my father but we now shared something bigger than both of us, something that united us to a purpose. Together, we would help to win the war.