The carriage ride out of Kent was conspicuously silent. Darcy was never particularly talkative, but he was wont to be engaging and intelligent and an excellent conversation partner in the comfort of familiar friends, and Colonel Fitzwilliam was perplexed by the unusually dark and silent mien of his friend. He had been inclined to think that, once out of the officious company of their aunt and away from the constraining society of strangers, his normal demeanor would return. However, as the wheels added mile after mile to their distance from Kent, the silence in the carriage only grew heavier, and his moody cousin's stony expression never altered.

Darcy, for his part, was absorbed in his own thoughts and gave no thought to his cousin's. Pain and anger, resentment and despair, confusion and misery and indignation and anguish swirled and boiled in his chest, one giving way to another and then two or three warring within him until they were overshadowed by the rising of the next. Elizabeth did not, could never love him. Elizabeth believed him to be without feeling and without honor. Elizabeth would not have him. Elizabeth...

Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam was not without a suspicion that Darcy perhaps mourned the separation from a certain young lady, whose presence he believed to be the cause of his cousin's recent odd behavior. Though he was determined to decipher Darcy's mood, and more than willing to turn their coach around and return to Kent to see Darcy's problem put to rest, he had deduced only the beginning of the problem, not the ending, and his friendly interference communicated his lack of complete information.

"Tell me, Darcy," he finally interrupted the dark man's musings, "is your sour mood a result of regretting leaving a certain young lady behind? I should not think less of you if it were so. She is an enchanting creature."

Darcy's kept his gaze aimed at the window, not deigning to favor his cousin with even a glance, or perhaps not daring to for fear that Richard would see through his eyes into his heart.

"What are you going on about Richard?" He deflected, hoping to silence Richard's suspicions.

"Don't play dumb with me. Darcy. I have had an inkling for some time that you were rather partial to the lady. Indeed, I have been talking you up in our conversations, though she didn't seem to feel the full merit of my credits to your character."

Darcy's head swung up and his stormy eyes met Richards for the first time in many hours. The Colonel started at the glimpse of the turmoil he saw in his cousin's eyes.

"What do you mean? What did you tell her?" Darcy demanded,

Surprised at Darcy's outburst, he replied evenly, "Only things to your advantage, I assure you. I told her what you related to me about removing your friend from his dangerous predicament."

"Blast, Richard!" The stony facade fell from his face and for a moment Richard glimpsed the lines of despair around Darcy's mouth. "You told her?"

"Why should I not have told her?" He asked, uncomprehending. "I meant only to demonstrate to her your good sense and your solicitude for your friends. I think it entirely to your credit and hoped to raise her esteem of you for your sake, since you seem so ill able to do it for yourself at this time."

Darcy heaved a sigh and flung his head back to rest on the back of the seat. "It does you credit, my friend, that you would try to assist me. You could not have known."

His curiosity piqued, Richard pressed for more. "What should I have known? She did seem to think rather ill of your interference."

Heaving a sigh, Darcy turned his gaze to the window again and forced his voice to be neutral. If he could not control the utterances of his heart, at least he could control the tone of his voice.

"The woman I spoke of in that tale is Miss Elizabeth's elder sister. Indeed, I believe she is her very dearest sister."

Richard flung himself back into the seat in dismay.

"Good god, man! And you separated your friend from her? And I have announced it to her. You must explain yourself. Surely you can do justice to your reasoning."

Darcy shook his head and glared at him. "You have seen me these weeks, Fitzwilliam. When I am in strange company I am stupid, and when she is in the room I go dumb. I do justice to nothing and no one, most particularly myself."

"It cannot be so bad as all that!" Richard rejoined. "I know you to be very able to make yourself agreeable, though you have certainly done it ill these past weeks. And at the prospect of leaving her, you are crosser than I have ever seen you. I have no desire to put up with you in this mood for the foreseeable future as you pine over her. We will turn the carriage around now and you will explain yourself and offer for her and put an end to this misery and all will be well again."

"No." Darcy's voice was cold and firm. "We will not and I will not."

"Come now, Darcy, whatever the objections to her sister, I have met Miss Elizabeth. You can have no objection to her manners or her mind or her person, you have no need of either fortune or family in your choice of wife, and you are obviously besotted with her. She is clearly not a fortune hunter, and I daresay she is the only single woman of our acquaintance I can easily say that about. She will make a fine wife and I should love to have her for a cousin. Think what good she will do for Georgiana!"

"Richard, enough." Darcy ground out roughly.

Richard ignored the interruption. "Perhaps she is not now so attached to you as you are to her, but I have no doubt you could make her so if you snap out of this funk and show her your true self and explain yourself. You are well-matched in mind and morals and you will do each other great good. Come, let us turn and have this settled this very day. You can say your piece and win her fair hand. I daresay there is not a woman in the country who would refuse you for any reason, let alone simply because she is not violently in love with you yet."

Colonel Fitzwilliam paused to hear his cousin's response, prepared to signal the coachman and have him turn back immediately.

When Darcy spoke, his voice was low and rough, something dark and cold in the tone of it. It chilled Richard to the bone before he even comprehended the meaning of the words.

"You are mistaken, Richard. I assure you that there is one."

Darcy's hand gripped the head of his cane until his knuckles turned white. Across from him, Richard sat without comprehending for long moment until his cousin spoke again.

"She will not have me, Richard," he growled thickly, his voice not much above a whisper.

Turning away again, Darcy cut off Richard's response in the same dark tone that had chilled him moments before.

"I have offered and have been refused," he told him. "Please, I pray you, Richard, leave me be."

Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, suddenly at a loss for what to say or do, did as his cousin asked and left him be. The journey to London was completed in silence.

AN: This is the first P&P fanfic I have ever written. As I finished the Kent passages of the book (for the 3,465th time) this week, I discovered I was writing an extra conversation between Darcy and Fitzwilliam in my head, and this is what came of it.

I'd love you hear what you think!