“You want fifteen thousand pounds to do what?”

All heads in the room snapped towards the doorway where Darcy stood surveying his family. He’d been listening to their conversation for the last few minutes without them realising, and was getting angrier by the second.

Bingham, catching Darcy’s eye, shrugged in response to his gravel-toned question, slowly shaking his head at his eldest brother to indicate he didn’t have a clue what was going on around him. His father rolled his eyes, as unamused by the conversation as Darcy, and it was their mother, Anne Austen, who finally spoke up.

She looked from Wick to Darcy and back again before scoffing, “Oh, Darcy, you make it sound like fifteen thousand is a lot of money. I have shoes that cost almost that much.”

Darcy opened his mouth to expel an appropriate retort and was beaten to it by his father.

“Part of the reason we’re in this bloody mess is your spending,” Claude Austen grumbled under his breath, before tagging on the sickly-sweet platitude of “my dear” when Anne heard him and turned her icy glare his way.

“It’s for charity,” Wick piped up when the room fell silent under Darcy’s uncompromised stare. “It’s great exposure for the Austen name, the perfect place to network, and who doesn’t like a ball?”

“Me,” Darcy replied flatly, no humour in his tone or on his face. “They are full of sycophants and gold diggers, and I have no time for either. Besides—” he continued while narrowing his gaze on his youngest brother “—I heard you mention the Bennets. What could you possibly want to do with those society princesses? They won’t give the likes of you a second glance Wick, let alone invest in the business.”

Wick’s swallow was pronounced as he fought against the need to break eye contact with his far too intuitive brother. There was no way he’d get Darcy to go if he thought the whole thing was a setup.

“I only mentioned them in passing,” Wick lied. His eyes darting away from his brother’s face indicating his untruth. “I was just saying it’s a shame they have all that money and those looks but with zero between their ears to back it up. Airheads, the three of them.”

“Met them, have you, brother?” Darcy questioned mockingly. “Or are you making assumptions based on what you’ve read in the papers?” He arched an eyebrow in challenge. “You’d think with all the bad press you’ve gotten in the past you’d be less inclined to make such judgments.”

Wick scoffed and opened his mouth to disagree but thought better of it when he remembered his late teen years and all the things he’d been caught doing.

Austen’s Drug And Hooker Shame.

Dipping His Wick.

Austen’s Send Youngest To Rehab.

Yeah, there were truths in what had been printed about him, but equally as many lies. Wick wanted to tell Darcy—never done a thing wrong in his life, golden boy extraordinaire, favourite son, Darcy—that he wasn’t that stupid kid anymore, that he’d grown up and would prove it when he saved Austen’s, but he didn’t. Instead, he sulked like a petulant child and plotted all the ways he’d show his eldest brother exactly how capable he was now.

“Yeah, just as I thought,” Darcy jibed at Wick’s silence. “So who is supposed to be going to this damn ball and where’s the money coming from to pay for it?”

Nobody answered.

“Again, just as I thought,” Darcy repeated, his tone thick with annoyance and a touch of resignation.

For as much as his father and Bing agreed with him, neither spoke up. His father because he wanted an easy life and spent his days kowtowing to his mother, and Bing because it wasn’t his style. He breezed through life avoiding confrontation.

“You could pay for it,” his mother eventually mused out loud. “After all, you just made a fortune on that property deal you’ve been working on for months. I’m sure that’s pocket change to you now.”

Darcy’s head snapped up to stare at the only woman in the room. Anne Austen married into the Austen family for one reason and one reason alone—money. Little did she realise at the time that the man she married wasn’t as cash-rich as she’d thought. Still, she milked him for as much as she could—which was more than he had to give, another reason they were in such a mess— and did her duty by giving him three sons to carry on the family name. She saw it as a fair trade, but Darcy often wished for a ‘normal’ family. Whatever the hell one of those was, he didn’t know, but it certainly wasn’t his.

“I could, but I’m not,” he responded flatly, glaring a warning at her when she appeared to open her mouth to argue.

Narrowing her eyes at her eldest son, she scowled for a moment before masking her annoyance and turning her attention to his father.

“Claude, dear. I’m sure you can pay for the boys to go. Wick’s right, our sons need to be out in society, wining and dining investors, catching all the eligible ladies’ eyes.”

Her gaze roamed over first Wick, then Bing, and finally back to Darcy. With a calculated smirk, she continued, “After all, our boys are far too handsome to all still be single. Don’t you want grandchildren, Claude? New blood to carry on the Austen name.”

Darcy’s eyes found his father’s and he knew his mother would get what she desired. All Claude Austen wanted was an easy life, and the woman he married was nothing if not tenacious in her quest to get what she required, no matter how fanciful. If his father didn’t give in now, he would crack soon enough. He knew it, Darcy knew it, and most importantly, his mother knew it.

“I’ll consider purchasing tickets, my dear,” his father sighed in resignation. The weary look in his eyes a stark contrast to the sparkle of delight that filled his mother’s.

“Hear that, my boys?” she grinned, exposing her whiter than white teeth in a look that made her seem slightly deranged. “You’re all going to the ball.”

She practically skipped over towards Wick, giggling churlishly, “Oh, Wick, my youngest boy. This was such a good idea, and I’m sure I can convince your father to get us tickets too.”

Wick smiled at his mother, lapping up her attention like a dog starved of affection, while Darcy bored holes into the thinning hair at the top of his father’s head since his father would not return his stare.

“C’mon, Darce,” Bing finally spoke up, his face curved with a pleading smile. “It could be fun. We haven’t hung out together for ages. Good food, good wine, what’s not to enjoy?”

Darcy knew Bing’s motives. Bing was always the first to look on the bright side of things, no matter how dire the situation, and he always wanted to smooth over any altercations. The middle Austen brother hated confrontation.

Darcy stared at him for a beat. He wanted to be annoyed that his brother gave in so easily, but he could never stay annoyed with Bing for long. He was his only real ally in his fucked-up family—a family that lived like royals with a champagne lifestyle while their bank accounts could only afford cider, and that was at a push. Anne Austen thought them high-society and had the countenance of the lady of the manor when the truth was she was from a rundown council estate. She only met Claude because she worked in one of Austen’s stores and had caught his eye when they were both very young. You’d swear by the way she acted that she’d married into the aristocracy, and not a family quickly approaching bankruptcy. The woman was so ostentatiously fake, it was embarrassing.

“Yeah, Bing,” Darcy conceded eventually. “It could be fun.”

As fun as a visit to the dentist for a root canal.

Darcy turned around to walk from the room but not before catching his father’s nervous smile that soon twisted into a grimace at his mother’s over-exuberant squeal of delight.

He left them all to it, not bothering to stay for dinner. He couldn’t remain in this house a moment longer.