I must admit I was having a most difficult time making a momentous decision. It is a choice which will no doubt be passed to grandchildren as accumulated wisdom, and must be made most carefully. My conundrum is that I could not decide which thing I liked more.

The first candidate was the look of my cousin's fist, ragged bloody and bruised. While a truly worthy cousin would never take pleasure in another's pain; I must confess I have never pretended to be a good cousin.

The second candidate was the wall in Pemberley, where said fist was now entombed. Granted, it had already been damaged by water before we got there so it is not as if he was punching through stone. A little rotten plaster and lathe was hardly even worth mentioning. In a battle, it would not have served as cover against an army of mice, let alone French.

The third was the various look of absolute joy, excitement, consternation, probably love but who am I to say, and burning explosive frustration with the word spit out like an expletive, "Easter"

That probably would have been the favorite, if I had not pumped the bellows on the forge just a bit with my comment, "Trust your sisters, cousin!"

The look then contained no love… but it did contain a lot of frustration, but he at long last apparently decided even with the poor condition of the plaster, he had no need to abuse his hand again by hitting me… but I could see it was a well thought out decision that could have gone either way.

I finally decided to take pity on the poor man, and said, "Darce Easter is just five weeks away. We have travel time, so she is really only asking you to wait three weeks, and you could not possibly leave for ten days or more anyway, so at most she has delayed you a week or two. It will not kill you. She probably wants to be strong enough to oppose whatever mad scheme you plan to throw at her when we get back."

The man finally calmed down, and said, "She has banned me from Rosings!"

"Yes, I gathered that."

He just chuckled and said, "The roads are very bad anyway. We should leave early enough to insure our safe arrival. It would not do to have an accident or be late Easter services."

"You are the most cautious of masters. I applaud your good sense."

Then his face split into a grin, having apparently come up with some probably bad idea that I was certain we were about to implement. He had thrown money and workmen at Pemberley like a madman since we arrived, and even hired three temporary overseers to help the steward, so there was not really anything keeping us here except Elizabeth's instruction after about another week or so.

He finally looked at the letter again, and said, "She did not ban us from the parsonage!"

Ho-Ho… This was the Master of Pemberley once again, working his magic.

I can tell you this. With an injured leg and an overexcited cousin, it is not a great idea to try to cram ten years of instruction in estate management into ten days, but Darcy did his best to provide it; and I did my best to absorb it. I imagined my Charlotte probably knew more about it than Darcy did anyway, but thought I should do my best. Ten days seems like a year if your life is just waiting to start, and if you spend half of it on a horse and half sitting your arse on a chair; both of which involved an endless stream of instructions from my cousin, it can in fact seem like ten years.

At long last, the day to depart came. We had personally chosen the design for all the new cottages. Darcy showed me how to get the best information about any part of the estate from the people who worked it day in and day out, year after year. The tenants were not a well-educated lot, but they did have good ideas from time to time. For example, we hired a dozen men to dig a drainage ditch for one of the overflowing creeks that would have saved the cottage had it been done a year sooner. Many of the wives had suggestions about the layout of the kitchens or the attics, and Darcy listened patiently to all and implemented those that made sense. Some of the cottages were moved to higher or lower ground as appropriate. Many wells and barns were not in the best condition so we sent men to repair them. Darcy explained that a break like this was a good time to shore up all the accumulated problems that never seemed quite important enough to fix or even notice during a normal year.

Darcy also gave quite a good lesson in how to be a master… how to talk to your tenants with the right level of respect, when to bounce a child on the knee or send him back to his mother. When a young boy could be treated as slightly more than he was, and when the opposite was required. I was astounded that here in his own world, Darcy was an entirely different man than he was while he was wandering through the first circles with a target on his back. If Elizabeth could have spent her first week with him here, he would not be in any danger of having lost her love; and I suspect there was no chance she would have let him get away either.

In the end, I had to admit one thing to myself; although I would certainly never say it to my cousin. Mrs. Reynolds was right… Darcy was the best of masters, and I only hoped I could do as well on whatever small estate my family selected for me. I would have to admit that Darcy was very cagey about exactly where said estate was, though.

The trip to Kent took some days, and Darcy continued the lessons apace with hardly a break. It seemed to me he wanted to be sure he had done all he could before he met his Elizabeth, probably correctly surmising that he would be entirely worthless as in instructor when she was present or even within the same county.

I occasionally bludgeoned him into other conversation.

"Darcy, you are clearly in love with Elizabeth. How do you plan to dispose of her husband?"

Perhaps that question was on the blunt side, but once said, it could not be unsaid.

Darcy looked pained, and finally said, "I cannot break a confidence, but suffice it to say that Elizabeth does not intend to marry again once he dies. His death will come soon enough, and I will deal with it after that, but I have a long uphill climb in front of me. For the moment, I will do nothing but try to take care of Elizabeth to the best of my abilities."

I watched him carefully for another moment to see if there was more.

"Richard, Aunt Catherine and I do plan to purchase you an estate, but that is not the primary reason for teaching you to be a landowner."

This was news. He had been quite reticent about his sudden interest in my health and happiness.

"Please enlighten me, cousin"

He stared out the window for a moment, and continued.

"I have money aplenty, but I lack time. I need an heir for Pemberley, but I also need Elizabeth and I am not certain she even likes me. She certainly did not a week before the attack. In fact, she despised me more than your Charlotte dislikes you. She disliked me for good reasons."

He seemed pensive, but I let him think a few minutes more.

"I need time… time for her husband to die… time for her to… well, I will not discuss that. I need time for her to be healed, and if a man's love can make the difference, she will have all of it I have in me and more, but all of that takes time."

He paused, but I could tell he was just thinking so held my peace once again.

"I need an heir, but as Elizabeth pointed out in some detail and no uncertain terms…"

He even flinched at that one, so it must have been a most uncomfortable conversation. How did someone like Elizabeth and him end up in such a conversation?

He finally came back to his point, "I cannot leave Pemberley at risk for thirty years. I need an heir now."

He stared at me as a sinking feeling settled in the pit of my stomach, and for the first time I wished I was back with lunkheaded Frenchmen shooting at me. At least I knew how to deal with that.

"You are to be my heir. You are to stand in my place should I fall until such a time as my son is worthy of replacing you; or yours or Georgiana's son should it come to that. I need time for my love to heal wounds, and I am requesting, though it is a lot to ask, that you give me that time. That is the price for your independence, and I know it is heavy, but I will ask it anyway."

Much to his credit, he did not plead, or argue or discuss once he had made his request. I had known in some vague way that there was a chance my brother might not survive long enough for his son to take over Matlock and I might be master, but that was like being vaguely aware a storm could come up suddenly to kill you, or your horse might bolt or a ship might sink. It may or may not happen, but the odds were in your favor and you need not actually prepare yourself for it.

Here, I was being asked to assume responsibility for an entire region, hundreds of people and an entire community. As a Colonel I had commanded men, but that was always so immediate. We all knew we were to fight. We followed orders and either died or prevailed, or possibly something worse, but whatever we did would be over in an hour or a year. We would be victors or vanquished, whole or broken, alive or dead; but we would be done. Here, Darcy was asking me to be responsible with no orders from anyone for hundreds of children and grandchildren not yet born. For the very first time in my life I got a true glimpse of what it was like to carry Darcy's burden. I had seen many men carry such with the greatest of ease, but only men without a conscience. A man like Darcy would carry it at great cost.

A few minutes of frightened panic ensued, and I will not bore you with the thoughts and fears that went through my mind. It settled soon enough, and I replied.

"I would be honored, cousin."

Now he just smirked, and said, "I only have one demand of you."

"Yes"

He tried to look clever, but ended up seeing some memory that just made him flinch.

"You take care of our generation, cousin. Should I fall, you need to take care of the next. You need a wife, and if you cannot win Miss Lucas, you need to find another. Neither of us can be as lackadaisical about it as we have been thus far.

I stared him down, and said, "You need a wife too, Darcy. Tell me a date, perhaps one year from now, where if you have not secured Elizabeth you will bow to the inevitable, and I will agree to the same."

He simply reached his hand across and shook mine. We had one year.