The tavern was hot and noisy, oaths and barking laughter warring with the clinking of glasses. The hubbub died slightly as Captain Wentworth entered, then rose again as the men recognized that he was not their commander. He glanced about the carousing men until he saw another captain, drinking with a lieutenant. He wove his way nimbly through the crowd and addressed the man, "Captain Newbury?"

Newbury looked up and stood to greet Wentworth.

"I am, how can I help you?"

"I am Captain Wentworth. I understand you gave one of my men passage lately. I was hoping to buy you a drink in thanks."

"Captain Wentworth, it's an honor to meet you. I have heard of your successes. Please, join me. You must be exacting to buy ale for every captain who gives one of your men passage to or from leave."

A smile wreathed Wentworth's face as he seated himself and ordered a round. The lieutenant had made himself scarce.

"Not always, but my man told me such an odd tale that I felt I must learn more."

"I am happy to gratify your curiosity," Newbury said, and saluted Wentworth with his ale.

"Thank you," Wentworth said. "The man is Chester Romney. I believe you brought him from Portsmouth to me."

"Ah, yes, good seaman, for the brief time he was aboard."

"A worthy first mate," Wentworth agreed. "So I was not surprised that he was granted leave, but I don't think I've ever seen an order of leave come in with such… promptitude. And he usually takes his leave to Guernsey, where his wife keeps house for him, we were to send him to Portsmouth. Quite odd. One wonders if the Admiralty knows what they are about."

"It was a civilian affair, no matter of security," Newbury said, happy to clear up a mystery.

"Ah, excellent," Wentworth replied. "One hates to think of one's men being called from duty for affairs that their captains might not know of."

"He was visiting his wife, who had gone into the country to attend the wedding of a friend's sister," Newbury explained.

"Just one wedding? I thought I understood from my man that there was a second wedding."

Newbury frowned, confused for a moment before volunteering, "There had been another wedding, but a month before and on Guernsey."

"Ah, that must be the truth of the matter. To be honest, he seemed a bit confused about what happened," Wentworth said confidingly.

"A man may know his lines, yet nothing of ladies," Newbury said, and Wentworth laughed and ordered another round.

"So this friend of yours, this Mr. Darcy, brought this girl to Guernsey to wed, lost her, found her, wed her, then on the way home was lost at sea?" Wentworth asked incredulously.

"Just as you said it," Newbury said, happy to have an audience for the unlikely tale. "Knocked off the deck clean as anything. Washed on up Alderney, but not before we all gave him up for dead. Twas that storm we had in mid-April, just as we thought the season was turning mild. I didn't hear that he had been recovered for more than a fortnight, though he sent me word as soon as he landed in England."

"There must have been great mourning for such a man," Wentworth ventured.

"We all felt it. What kindness had he not done, when a good man could no longer serve on sea and his wants were more than half-pay would cover? A sick wife or child will soon make nothing of those shillings, but Darcy found them places."

"His family must have been most distressed by his loss," Wentworth said.

"His sister, Georgiana, must have been most distressed," Newbury said. "I have met her at Ramsgate, where she has her establishment, and he is a most devoted guardian to her."

Wentworth sighed consolingly. "It is good to hear he was so soon restored to his bride."

Wentworth paced in his cabin, thinking on what he had heard. When he had learned that Romney had been snatched away from him on the whim of a civilian, the haughty captain had been offended. That a land-lubber could command away his men though some unknown pull with the Admiralty was unsupportable. He had bent to the task of finding out how and why a civilian had been able to so command the resources of His Majesty's navy, prepared for outrage at corruption.

To discover that the power came through the unexceptional path of charity to distressed seamen threw cold water on his hauteur. But to discover that the command had been made for the sake of women…. Wentworth sneered.

His victories at sea had not assuaged the pains of wounded pride. Though he had long schooled himself to cease thinking of her, Anne Elliot yet ruled him, now by inflaming his regard of the fairer sex. That one of his men had been used — was content to be used — for the gratification of idle, vain womenfolk rankled him, his lost ideals of womanhood mocking him from their grave.

Romney had not withheld the details shared by his wife: Lydia's attempted elopements, her pregnancy and unwilling confinement at home, her delight in officers, her insistence on going to Brighton. Such a daughter of the gentry was just as it pleased Wentworth's most cynical self to think of women: wanton, inconstant.

Wentworth smiled cruelly. He would taste vengeance.

Another week had gone by with Col. Fitzwilliam having received no word from Darcy. After the urgency of his request, the silence was ominous. Not knowing what else to do, he wrote again, addressing it to Pemberley, knowing that in summer his cousin was often to be found there, though he would think this affair would keep him in Hertfordshire.

Not even his duties could keep his mind from dwelling on this scandalous matter. A sister-in-law of Darcy — of Georgiana — unwed and with child! Were anyone outside the family to hear of it, the scandal would taint all of them. He fretted, powerless and unable to confide in anyone.

Elizabeth and Darcy's carriage arrived first, by his emphatic orders, that Mrs. Darcy might be received properly by his household. She thanked them warmly as they stood in tidy array, and Darcy glowed with quiet pride.

He sent them about their duties before the Bennet ladies arrived, Kitty overwhelmed, Mrs. Bennet overjoyed. Elizabeth and Darcy welcomed them gravely.

"We shall have much to do tomorrow, so rest well," Elizabeth bade Kitty.

The next morning, Elizabeth went with her mother and Kitty, first to the modiste so Kitty might be fitted for a court gown. Darcy, unable to get an appointment yet with the Lord Chamberlain, proposed to call upon Louisa to deliver Bingley's letter. Each looked at each other with sympathy as they parted, each to unpalatable chores.

Mrs. Bennet was delighted by the sumptuous wares at the modiste's shop. Though the woman could not be made to understand that the gown would be wanted before winter, she yet made a pleasing fuss over Kitty's shape and promised a gown that would set the debutante off to perfection.

Elizabeth then loosed her mother upon the shops, which even her country-bred eye could see were near devoid of gentlefolk. Mrs. Bennet seemed disappointed that there weren't more to see her extravagance, but even the modest numbers were rather overwhelming to Kitty, who clung to her mother.

Darcy knocked at the door of Bingley's town home. The footmen gravely informed him that Miss Bingley was from town and that Mrs. Hurst, though in residence, was not at home. If the gentleman would leave his card…

Darcy was tempted to leave the letter but thought that if the request was to have any chance of a favorable answer, it would be if he, himself, was on hand to back Bingley's request with his own. He left his card with thanks and turned back into the street.

Shopping, he knew, would occupy the ladies until dinner, and so sought for some occupation. He had not practiced with his fencing master since winter and turned his steps toward the fencing school.

A half hour saw him dressed in whites and awaiting his lesson. The warm room raised a sweat as soon as he lifted his foil, and the back-and-forth with the master soon had sweat streaming down his face. The master called for a rest and ice water, which Darcy gratefully accepted.

When they resumed and Darcy again drew his foil, a sense of nervous foreboding fell upon him, and he retreated. The master bade him attend to his stance and advance, and yet Darcy stood, unsure, suddenly wracked with nebulous feeling.

Seeing his distress, the master again sheathed his own foil and called for a break.

"Are you feeling this June heat overmuch?" he asked, concerned.

"No, the heat is nothing," Darcy said, "It is… something else. Some odd feeling I cannot banish."

The master was too versed in the ways of the forbidden yet all-too-common duel to not suspect that an earnest fight was the cause of his pupil's distress.

He urged Darcy to sit, and himself put the foils away. Seemingly idly he asked what had occupied Darcy since he was last in town.

Darcy replied that he had been married and much occupied with his wife's family.

"And did any of this occupation involve a conflict with another gentleman?" the master asked gently.

Darcy swallowed and nodded.

"And the outcome of this conflict?"

Darcy blanched. Surprise that his level-headed student had engaged in law-breaking of this magnitude mingled with fear that word would get back to the authorities that one of his pupils had fought — and killed — in a duel.

"Was this conflict in town?" he asked with some urgency.

Darcy shook his head. "They were eloping to Gretna Green and were near the border when we… when I caught up with him." Relief lightened the master's heart.

"And did you know this man well?"

"We grew up together," Darcy admitted. "Though since his betrayals, I had thought that taking his life would leave me only lighter."

"Has he friends who may seek reprisal?" the master asked.

"None, he had run through every resource," Darcy said with assurance.

"And the fight, did he put up a good defense?"

"It happened so quickly. His fiancée called out, I turned, he lunged, I struck and it was done." As he spoke, he saw the disapproval in his teacher's eye for his having turned from his opponent, a potentially fatal mistake on the field that he had oft reprimanded in practice.

"Ah, then, this, though unpleasant, is not to be marveled at. It is no small thing, what you did, and it can take many months for a man to recover his feet after," he said sympathetically.

Darcy shook his head, trying to clear it. "It has been only a fortnight since… the conflict. This is the first I have thought or spoken of it. I had thought it behind me."

The master nodded grimly. "It can be months or seasons before the trouble makes itself known in a man's heart. Life will be the cure. Seek for your bride and take comfort in her," he counseled, clapping Darcy on the shoulder. "But do not fight."

Darcy muttered thanks and departed to dress and return home, feeling that some previously unsuspected part of himself was missing.

—

Dear readers,

Thank you for sticking with me so far! Your comments are spot on: It is ludicrous that Lizzy and Darcy are allowing themselves to be railroaded by Mrs. Bennet's ridiculous demands. The Mr. Darcy in P&P would have shaken it off and gone off to Pemberley with only a curled lip of disdain for his mother-in-law's request.

But this is not that Mr. Darcy. He is traumatized, wracked by guilt. His willingness to do the impossible to earn forgiveness of the people he has wronged (and by kidnapping/eloping with Lizzy, he has wronged her parents deeply) is consonant with his guilt. And because he is, deep down, a decent person, his guilt is great.

Lizzy has never been great at standing up to her mother. Her current circumstances have her so far off balance that she is not feeling her new power to resist her as a married woman.

Mrs. Bennet has been in a dither since they received Mr. Collins' express, very early in the morning on April 10. That's 47 days of crisis at this point. Having three daughters wed within that time would have been enough to unhinge her. These circumstances are enough to take her completely around the bend. She's grasping at control and at the advantages that she's dreamed of matches like this bringing her.

These are all ripple effects of Darcy's uncharacteristic action. Even Bingley is affected. In writing P&P variants it is all to easy to let the characters revert to their canon baseline, but I've tried to be diligent in letting their actions be driven by their changed circumstances.

Regarding Captain Wentworth, it is now more than five years since Anne refused him and he went back to sea. He has taken big risks and had them pay off, but his accomplishments are not filling the void she left in his heart.

We remember from his confession to Anne near the end of "Persuasion" that he characterizes himself in this period as buried in his feelings for her. This puts him in a dangerous position. He is used to limitless power as captain of a naval ship at war. To have one of his men taken away with no notice, by some landlubber, for what seems to him a frivolous reason, would engender strong feelings.

As incapable as he felt of acting in ways to benefit his happiness, I'm afraid this feeling would come out as a thirst for revenge.

In my reading of Austen's works, I see one of her recurring themes as that exerting one's will over that of others will, in the long run, not give the person what they are desiring. We will see this play out in this work.

Again, I thank you for your patience. If you are looking for lighter-weight pieces, I have several posted on A03 that might fit the bill. If you're looking for something more explicit than what the guidelines here allow, you can find them by searching the web for my username.

Kaurifish