Author's Note: Here's Chapter 3 of my work in progress, Mr. Darcy's Cipher (Spies and Prejudice, Book 1). UPDATE: By popular request, I have added some snippets of the code to this and future chapters! This book is a whole bunch of fun, and I keep having to rearrange things to get the balance of spy-craft and romance right. It is not yet edited, though I have run it through spell check and Grammarly. As always, I hope you enjoy this chapter, and if you have any feedback for me, either notes for improvement, questions, or just straight up encouragement, please drop me a review (or PM if it's something more complicated and you wish to have a genuine conversation.) ! I read all feedback! I am hoping to have this book published by the end of the year, and I appreciate you taking a look at the first draft of it. *NOTE* Thank you EightYearsandaHalf for calling attention to some issues I had overlooked in this chapter! Teatime and dinner timeline issues have been addressed :) Also, big THANK YOU to EmmaE73 who pointed out that I had used the wrong cipher name here and in Chapter 5. Fixed! This chapter has been updated to reflect these changes! As always, all errors are my own.

Chapter 3

Mr. Darcy might admittedly be possessed of handsome features and fine manners, but little else recommended him. Elizabeth Bennet could not and truthfully did not wish to contain her fury as she took Mr. Darcy's letter and opened it.

It began: My dearest Georgiana...

"This letter is not addressed to you," Elizabeth remarked.

"It was sent from my late brother. Reginald Darcy, to our younger sister."

Elizabeth knew she ought to feel some charitable sentiment for a man who had recently lost a brother, but considering how dismissive Mr. Darcy had been of her and her capabilities, in truth just the slightest hair of being outright rude, Elizabeth could not muster the emotion. "My condolences," she said stiffly.

"Thank you," Mr. Darcy said, his voice nearly as flat as her own. If this was a young man was in mourning, he took care to hide such emotions from those around him. More likely, he did not possess much familial regard at all.

No. That was unfair. She hardly knew the man. Still, however, Mr. Darcy mourned, or did not, stealing away his own sister's correspondence did not incline Elizabeth to think well of him. "If your late brother did send your sister a message in some form of code, would it not make sense to assume she had the necessary tools to decipher it?" Elizabeth asked.

Mr. Darcy's expression froze for the briefest moment. Finally, he said, "It is because my sister might quickly decipher it that I have brought it to your father's attention first. My sister Georgiana and my brother Reginald were quite close. It has been five months since his passing, and she is only beginning to step out of her deep mourning. For the first month, she did not smile, and she hardly ate. As her guardian, I must see to her well-being, of the body, mind, and spirit."

Elizabeth weighed Mr. Darcy's explanation. Devotion to family, to especially a beloved sister, was something Elizabeth understood all too well. Though her own sister was the elder, Elizabeth had always been protective of Jane's happiness. Jane had a sweetness of temperament that brought joy to every room, but there was also a fragility to it. Like the bloom of a prize rose, subtle alterations to the soil and air could harm its petals or keep it held tight in bud until it withered and fell.

"And if this letter's contents are something innocuous?" Elizabeth asked.

"Then I will seal it and pass along it with your father's translations to Georgiana immediately. It is not my intent to hide our brother's last words from her, but more to ensure that they do not, at this time, add to her grief."

And yet, while Elizabeth did understand the urge to protect, she did not, in her heart, fully agree that Mr. Darcy had the right of it. Did not Georgiana have a right to her own grief?

A difficult tangle and one Elizabeth was not charged to decipher.

Thankfully, Mr. Bennet interrupted her musings with a practical question. "Is the entire letter in code?"

"No," Mr. Darcy said. "The first page or so is ordinary pleasantries, and Reggie shares – –." Mr. Darcy swallowed. It was the only concession in his manner to what Elizabeth was beginning to just to suspect was a far deeper grief than his general demeanor suggested. "He shared some small ordinary details of his life in the French capital. Nothing, as far as I can ascertain, relating to the Emperor's designs or movements. And the latter pages were wet. Some of the words are almost indecipherable, even if they did make sense before."

Elizabeth skimmed over those pages, trying hard not to feel like a voyeur picking over the silhouette of another man's remains. Nothing immediately caught her eye is a code key. No letters were oddly capitalized or written in a different style. Nor were other simple tricks used. The first letter of each paragraph spelled nothing; neither did the last.

Still, for Mr. Darcy's brother to be in the French capital at all suggested something deeper at play. Through assisting her father, Elizabeth was well aware that both Bonaparte and the Prime Minister employed at points less than honorable means of obtaining information about their opponents. War was far messier than what the officers in their sharp regimentals shared when flirting with young ladies. But if Reginald Darcy was doing special, secret work for the crown, it would do no good for Elizabeth to suggest such a thing to his grieving and overly constrained older brother. Especially not without more than a suspicion.

Admittedly, my dearest sister, there is more to life here than the acquisition of pastry. I have found points only the comfort of the Almighty can offer some degree of solace. In truth, sometimes it is only the hand of the Lord who can truly comfort and protect us in times of trouble.

After that, it was as Mr. Darcy described. Two pages of neatly scribed Latin, formatted as though it was a prayer.

It began:

Piissimus dominus

Illustrator iudex

Auctor magnus

Incompraehensibilis pacificus

Optimus iudex

Omnipotens redemptor

Gloriosus immortalis

Imperator fabricator

Opifex conditor

Misericors sempiternus

Rex iudex…

The words were, of course, nonsense. At first, Elizabeth thought it might be a Latin Gibberish cipher, but nothing was spelled backwards with false Latin suffixes. Maybe it was an Ave Maria cipher with each letter a faux Latin word, Elizabeth surmised. But lacking the key, deciphering it would take some work, without even taking into account the later water-damaged sections.

Elizabeth handed the letter to her father and outlined for the pair of them what she had seen, suggesting only at the end that she believed it was likely there was a cipher at work, but not one so easily unraveled to be completed in an afternoon.

A knock sounded at the study door. "Mr. Bennet?" Before any of the room's occupants could respond, the door opened, and Mrs. Bennet stepped inside. "A light dinner is ready if Mr. Darcy would like to join us when you have finished your business."

Elizabeth glanced at the clock. It was barely a quarter to four. They generally took dinner at four-thirty and tea directly after. Mrs. Heyer must have been working like a dervish to have a dinner together so early for the Bennet household.

"I could not impose," Mr. Darcy said stiffly. They took dinner at six-thirty in the city. Was Mr. Darcy looking down his nose at the Bennets for having such country hours?

Mr. Bennet nodded. "You may leave the letter in our care, Mr. Darcy, and I shall write to you when the translation is complete. It will have to be fit between my other work as Bonaparte and his disciples do not wait for our convenience to make their moves."

"Yes, certainly. I have heard your skills are in great demand from many sources. And my brother is long passed. This is for my peace, and my sister's peace, entirely."

"Shall I direct my missive to the address from which you wrote before?"

"For the duration of the holidays, I will be staying as a guest with Mr. Charles Bingley, who has recently leased the nearby estate at Netherfield Park." Mr. Darcy looked resigned. "It should be a simple thing to send any necessary correspondence there."

"But that is such a short distance!" Mrs. Bennet exclaimed. "You surely must return here to discuss the contents of your brother's correspondence when my husband has finished his work."

Another knock, and Lydia, her voice unmistakably pitched higher in an attempt at flirtation, said through the door, "Mother! Are you there?"

"Yes, my dear," Mrs. Bennet went to the door and swiftly opened. "Lydia," she admonished with no especial fervor in her tone. "You know better than to interrupt your father while he is working."

Lydia had dressed speedily but with obvious attention to flirting with a young gentleman with her hair arranged in perfect ringlets peeking from beneath her bonnet, and her dress, a pale yellow that perfectly highlighted her light blue eyes. Unlike Elizabeth, whose mitts were dark beige speckled with ink, Lydia's were the same white silk she wore when attending a local assembly. She smiled at Mr. Darcy and looked up at him through her lashes. "Father, I apologize for disturbing you. And your guest."

"We had just asked Mr. Darcy to enjoy his luncheon with us," Mrs. Bennet said brightly. "Mr. Darcy, how do you take your tea?"

Mr. Darcy did not acknowledge Mrs. Bennet's invitation the second time. Instead, he inclined his head towards each of them and said, "I must take my leave. Thank you, again."

"Lydia!" Mrs. Bennet called to her daughter. "Why don't you show Mr. Darcy to the door?"

"Yes, Mother!" Lydia said with delight. She managed, just barely, to get ahead of the taciturn gentleman. "This way. Are you fond of dancing, Mr. Darcy?"

Mrs. Bennet rubbed the thumb of her gloved right hand along the ridge of the other as she left to follow the pair at enough of a distance as to barely maintain the illusion of propriety.

After they had gone, Elizabeth muttered. "I wish Lydia the best with him."

Mr. Bennet smiled. "So you, like my wife, would wish Mr. Darcy to become a member of our family?"

"I'd rather marry his horse!" Elizabeth stated with vehemence. "And you know how I despise riding."

"A horse easily can be led by the reins. A man..." Mr. Bennet laughed, and after a moment, Elizabeth joined him.

Still, Elizabeth's mirth felt hollow. It disturbed her to have been so affected by the man. Granted, her primary emotion concerning Mr. Darcy had been dislike. She tried to tell herself it spurred from his disdain for her abilities. But others had disbelieved her skills in cracking ciphers. None had spurred such instant fury.

As the laughter died, Elizabeth took a second piece of paper and a pen for notes, but her mind was occupied with the first mystery of why Mr. Darcy had affected her so quickly and deeply.

"Will you read that out for me?" Mr. Bennet asked.

"Yes, father." Elizabeth started to read, but her mind wasn't on the code.

Mr. Darcy's handsome features had made tricked Elizabeth into expecting more from him, she concluded. That was her mistake, not his. At least his very rational desire to flee had spared them all an awkward meal.

That night, in their shared bedroom, Jane sat down on the edge of Elizabeth's bed. "So is Mr. Darcy as terrible as Lydia says?" she asked in a hushed tone.

Elizabeth initial thought was to give a quick yes, but in only the company of her favorite sister, she could not firmly state the man had been wholly terrible. "He was cold, and at points short-tempered, and of course he dismissed my abilities, but…"

"Usually, you are not so restrained in your opinions, Elizabeth. Did you find him handsome?" Jane added, "Lydia found him very handsome. And rude. And generally awful."

"He was handsome." Not that it mattered, considering the nature of their meeting and his temperament. "Like a marble statue and with about as much warmth. I doubt his lips have experienced a smile in all of his years of life. His face would likely shatter into a dozen pieces if he tried."

"You are incorrigible," Jane said with a laugh.

Elizabeth joined her sister in laughing. But even in her shared levity, Elizabeth could not help wondering why she couldn't erase the intensity of Mr. Darcy's gaze from her mind and how it might soften his features if he smiled.

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Thank you for reading! This book is a blast to write, and you can read the rest of it on Amazon in Kindle Unlimited! Enjoy!