Chapter Nine

A/N: Hey Everyone, taking a break from studying :) A big thank you to prhood, toolazytologin, EngLitLover, coffeebookchiller, Gedoena, Janet Cobb and Captain Americaaa for reviewing.

prhood, you have no idea how much a review from you means to me. And yeah, I just cannot seem to fix on a title. I think I'll stick with this one, for LAF has a nice ring to it ;)

Toolazytologin, I wish you had logged in so I could tell you just how happy I was on reading your review. My smile was a mile wide after I read your words. And I, too, get jealous of Alina from time to time. She's just that awesome!

EngLitLover, thank you so much for your reviews on almost every chapter. I almost keeled over in shock when I saw five mails saying I'd gotten reviews. And I think, if Alina wants something, no one stands a chance, forget Darcy.

Captain Americaa, thank you darl, I love this story too :D

Coffeebookchiller: I'm so glad you like my story. Alina is five years older than Georgiana. I hope you're satisfied with the chapter length now. I really can't make it more than 2.5k+. Thank you for your review and your wishes!

Gedoena: First ever comment? THANK YOU :D I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts ;)

Janet Cobb: Thank you :D That's really sweet of you!

Before you start thinking that half the word count was the AN, I present to you, without further ado, the ninth chapter.

Warning: Contains an excerpt from Fordyce's sermons ;)

Previously

Alina protects the family honour and saves Robert from being compromised.

Blue Sitting Room

Fitzwilliam House, London

23rd February 1806

Dull.

Inane.

Tedious.

Foolish.

Monotonous.

Asinine.

Extremely foolish.

Alina amused herself by thinking of the various adjectives that could be used to accurately describe her governess as the lady in question read aloud from Fordyce, a thoughtful gift from dear old Aunt Cathy.

' ...there seem to me to be very few, in the style of Novel, that you can read with safety, and yet fewer that you can read with advantage.'

She was going to see Richard. It was very hard to sit still, knowing that her brother was going to arrive tomorrow.

'What shall we say of certain books, which we are assured (for we have not read them) are in their nature so shameful, in their tendency so pestiferous, and contain such rank treason against the royalty of Virtue, such horrible violation of all decorum, that she who can bear to peruse them must in her soul be a prostitute,' Miss Price coughed over the word and then apologized profusely for her scandalous mistake, 'let her reputation in life be what it will.'

What in heaven could the word mean, that Miss Price had been so scandalized? And his opinions of novels being shameful, pestiferous had no merit in her mind when he had not read them. Foolish,domineering man who wanted to control the minds of young women and dictate their behavior. He was not a young woman. He had no authority to tell them what to think, feel, read and write. She was not interested in listening to this nonsense for a moment longer!

'Please, Miss Price,' she interrupted, in her most injured voice. 'I am immensely fatigued and head hurts most terribly. I cannot pay Mr. Fordyce the attention and respect his enlightening words deserve. Please, Excuse me.'

Miss Price had no choice but to agree.

There are some benefits of rank after all.

War Office

London

24th February 1806

Dearest Allie

I, your most stubborn brother, beg for your forgiveness. I have received urgent orders and I must depart for Buenos Aires at first light. Despite my best efforts, I shall not be able to visit you at Mayfair. Opus primum as they say. I hope you will not be so exceedingly furious that you will refuse to write your poor brother-for whom, your lively letters are a solitary ray of sunshine in the darkness he chooses to live in.

God bless you sister,

Yours mischievously,

Richard

P.S. I have enclosed my writing directions in case you change your mind.

Alina read the note and sighed. What an adventurous life he had, her dashing red coat of a brother. Always going off, doing his duty towards the country, without any regard for his personal safety. Well, she had not touched her prayer book for days, so lost she had been in the sights and sounds of this great, monstrous thing they called London, and this was God's way of reminding her that she needed to get back to her prayers. Someone had to pray for that daredevil's safety after all.

The corridor outside Lord Milton's study

Milton Hall

12th September 1806

From a crack between the door and the wall, Alina watched her father pound from one end of the room to the other, mumbling furiously to himself and almost pacing a hole in her mother's second most favorite Persian rug that covered the floor in his study. He had received news about Richard, she was sure of it: after all, it was only Richard who could make her father traverse the room as it were a veritable battlefield and he had Bonaparte hot on his heels.

'This boy is going to be the death of me,' he muttered as he walked. 'Tis not enough that he has to join the army and fight the little frenchie, he has to go to the damn Latin Americas to cross swords with Santiago's men and almost get shredded to bits.'

After this provocative statement, he relapsed into silence and stood motionless in front of the fire, his stillness only broken when he occasionally ran a hand through his hair agitatedly. Seeing that he had no intention of elaborating on his dire pronouncement and concerned and curious about her brother's folly, she knocked sharply on the study door and asked for permission to enter.

'Good Evening Father,' she greeted her father's back as the man in question stared intensely at the dying fire, facing away from her and merely maffled something indiscernible in response. This was new. She had done nothing wrong and her father was sending her to conventry. Well, she could not be dissuaded easily.

'What has you so terribly agitated, Father?', she ventured. 'Perhaps, I could help.'

He spun around and glared at her like a fury from Hades. Oh dear! It looked like Richard had messed up royally this time.

'Your dear brother,' he spat angrily, 'has almost got himself killed yet again. It seems he was not taught the meaning of the word surrender at Eton.'

Alina had a sudden, mad desire to laugh. She clamped her teeth together to stop herself from going into hysterics. Stupid Dickie, did he really have to throw himself in the line of fire unnecessarily and worry his family?

'Thankfully, he was saved by a comrade of his, a Colonel Brandon, I believe. He is being sent home on leave.'

After this impassioned speech, her father collapsed in his armchair facing the fire and silence reigned, uninterrupted for the next quarter hour as he lost himself in his reflections and Alina struggled to master herself. It was not easy to be told that your brother had almost died yet again and then be expected to act as nothing had happened. And from what she could see, it was taking a toll on their father too.

'Will you let him go again, Father?', she asked softly, curious to hear his reply. Would this be the last time Dickie went to war?

'Do I have a choice, dear?', he returned rhetorically. He seemed resigned, the creases on his face thrown into sharper relief in the flickering light of the glowing embers in the fireplace.

Before she could even think of a reply, Mrs. Harrison hurried into the room, her face pale. She curtsied and held out a plain cream envelope, quite unremarkable in appearance but for the fact that there was a black Darcy seal stamped on its back.

Mrs. Harrison's tone was unusually grave as she said 'There's an express for you, Sir. From Pemberley.'

Lord Milton took the proffered envelope, his hands shaking and tried to break open the seal with his hand, uncaring about the damage to his nails. Alina took the envelope from his weak grasp, wordlessly cutting it open and then handed it back to him. He drew out the folded square of paper within, his hands trembling but he could not bring himself to open it.

He knew what a black seal meant. There had been a death in the family. Though it had been ten years since Anne died, the wound still hurt. Sometimes, it would be a phantom pain and sometimes, it was like a thousand knives being driven into his heart repeatedly. He could feel it pulsing, coming to life, reveling in the fact that the letter he had in his hand was going to give it company. He wanted to set the letter on fire, watch it being reduced to ashes and then pretend that he had never received it. His train of thought was interrupted when his daughter gently squeezed his shoulder, as if giving him strength to face this adversity. Sometimes, he felt that his children were far more braver than he ever had been in his life. Steeling himself for whatever the letter contained, he opened the folded sheet of paper.

Alina watched anxiously as her father's eyes practically flew across the missive. She could not read it from where she was standing so she waited and prayed fervently to their kind Lord, to let all of this be nothing but a terrible mistake.

Her violet eyes grew large with fright as her father rose unsteadily from his chair and then collapsed back into it, sobbing, holding his head in his hands. This frightened Alina more than she would ever admit, for she had never seen anything that had caused her Father to lose his composure completely. Panicking, she shook his shoulder, begging him to tell her what had happened but her father remained as he was, his body trembling with the force of his sobs.

She was pulled away by Mrs. Harrison who gestured at her to keep quiet and led her out of the room.

'Why did you-'

Her angry protests were interrupted as Mrs. Harrison handed her a sheet of paper , the very missive that had reduced her father to a sobbing, insensible mess.

Her heart in her throat, she began to read the letter, written in the beautiful penmanship of her cousin. As she read, the words meshed together on the page, in a seemingly nonsensical mixture but few of them stood out glaringly.

Sudden illness.

Physician.

Too late.

Request you to come immediately.

Dead, her dear old Uncle George, who snuck her sweets from the kitchen when no one was looking, who solemnly asked her to dance when she was seven and insisted on being 'treated like a lady', who had loved her like his own daughter, dead and gone from this world. She sank down onto the floor, drawing her knees up to her chest and cried.

She cried for her father, who had lost a man he considered a brother, she cried for her cousin, her stupid, proper 'grown-up' cousin, who was in actuality, a scared, uncertain boy who lived for the approval of his father, she cried for Georgiana,who had lost the only parent she had ever known. She cried for herself, for she had loved her Uncle and godfather dearly and now she would never get to see him again.

Mrs. Harrison rubbed circles on her back and gently shushed her. How she felt the absence of her mother, who was away in Kent, visiting her sister in law. As she thought this, she felt like she had been doused in cold water as realization struck: there was nobody here to help her Father regain his mental equilibrium. Robert was God knows where, Richard was on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic and her mother was in Kent. That left her, a fifteen year old girl, to comfort a grown man of over forty. But, she was not going to let that stop her, was she?

Determined to be of use to her father, she raised her head, wiped her tears and picked up the letter. Darcy's language was precise and orderly but she knew he was going to pieces. The ink was smudged in places and some words looked like his hand was shaking when he wrote it. She could see him in her mind's eye, sitting rigidly at his desk, penning a missive to her father, drowning himself in responsibilities and locking away his pain. How similar was he, to her own father. Both not unlike lions in character, protecting their loved ones at any cost to themselves but always retreating to lick their wounds in private, refusing to let anyone share their burden. He needed her too, she concluded. Richard, the closest thing he had to a brother, was a twenty day voyage away from England, her father was drowning in his grief and Georgiana needed comfort too much to be able to provide any solace to Fitze. It was up to her now, till her mother reached Pemberley, to hold the family together and God willing, she would certainly do it. With this resolve in her heart, she got up with Mrs. Harrison's help and after embracing the old woman in thanks, entered the study.

Her father was staring at the ceiling, his head thrown back on his chair, a glass of brandy in his hand. He gave no sign of registering her entrance. She allowed him his peace for a moment more and then spoke up resolutely, 'I want to come with you to Pemberley, Father.'

He did not respond.

'I want to come with you to Pemberley, Father.'

He stirred and muttered something.

'Father..'

'Call Burton, I said,' he fairly shouted.

Alina shrank back, then after glaring reprovingly at her father, for gentlemen were not supposed to shout at ladies, straightened her shoulders and hurried out to do her father's bidding.

Alina snuck out of the house and ran towards the stables. She needed to talk to Jason.

A few minutes later, some pebbles and a bit of gravel made their presence felt against the glass of Jason's window. The boy in question stuck his head out of the window and nearly fell out when he saw Alina smirking at him.

'What in heaven's name are you doing here, you madwoman?'

'Look after the tenant children, won't you? I'm going to Pemberley. It might be a fortnight before I come back.'

'Dear Lord, couldn't you have sent a note?' He rested his head against the wall. This girl was going to be the death of him someday.

'What fun would that be?' Still smirking, she turned her horse and galloped back to Milton.

Splitting it here, Sorry folks.

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Thank you for reading :D