“Who sent it!”
“Well, was his lordship, Earl of Lachglass. You be Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”
“I was, I am Mrs. Darcy now.” Elizabeth was surprised at how calm and steady her voice was.
Perhaps, some tiny part of her mind thought, he wrote to declare that he had realized the wrongness of his ways, and repentantly wished to assure Elizabeth she could return to England and have no further worry of being bothered by him.
The messenger drew out the still crisp letter from his oiled leather pouch that had protected it from the rain, and any other inclement conditions that may have been encountered on the journey from England. He handed the letter to Elizabeth and then looked between the two of them with a sort of expectant smile.
“Find a different employer than that man if you wish a tip from me,” Darcy harshly said.
“Now, my dear, that comes perilously close to punishing the messenger.” Elizabeth stared at the letter, and the deeply imprinted wax seal of the earl. She did not yet feel in sufficient command of herself to simply tear open the letter and look at what message was given to her by her enemy. “Give the poor boy what you would have if this letter had been sent by a man we are on some friendly terms with.”
Darcy grunted with annoyance and fished a small silver coin from his purse.
He stepped closer to Elizabeth who had made no move to open the letter.
She recognized the stationery. It was the same paper she had used to have his daughter practice her letters with during her brief time in Lord Lachglass’s employ.
Fine and thick paper. And really excellent wax that gleamed even in the rainy grey light from the windows. If she were of a different temperament, she might lever off the reddish purple wax, with the seal perfectly pressed into it, and store it in a collection of pieces of sealing wax she had received as one of the best in her collection.
The messenger was gone from the room, along with the housekeeper.
Darcy took the letter from her numb fingers, and he efficiently ripped it open, destroying the red wax and smearing a little bit into his fingernail.
He read the paper with at first a deepening scowl and then a completely blank emotionless face. No sign of what he felt was openly visible.
Elizabeth thought her Darcy might receive the promise of his own death from a physician with a similar expression. A proud and firm expression, but one that could not hide his worry or his feelings from Elizabeth, not from his Elizabeth who knew him so well.
“What news?”
Darcy put the letter down on the table. At first Elizabeth thought he was about to crumple the paper and toss it into the fire, but he thought better of that and instead just pushed the pages away.
“Your sister Kitty, and your mother. He has abducted and imprisoned them,” Darcy said at last, after a pause that was dreadful to Elizabeth’s feelings. “He swears that he shall have them killed if you do not come to his estate in England. The letter has some other threats within it, but that is the essence of the matter.”
Elizabeth grabbed for the letter.
“You do not wish to read what he wrote. Believe me, you do not.” Darcy held the white fluttering pages away from her.
“What can we do? — do you think. Oh, God. What can we do?”
Darcy put the letter away in his waistcoat. He opened his mouth to respond, and for an instant Elizabeth felt a surge of hope that her Darcy would have some notion of what to do that would immediately rescue her mother and sister.
But he then closed his mouth.
Elizabeth shivered, like she had when she sat in his drawing room, awaiting Darcy’s return after walking six miles on a swollen foot in a freezing London without a coat or proper shoes.
“At the first we shall contact a judge in his county to send constables to his estate,” Darcy said at last, pacing next to the rainy window. “This is not a sort of matter which he can expect to escape punishment from. This letter alone is proof that he is the one to cause the disappearance. He has been deeply incautious. When the magistrates descend on his house—”
“He will simply do what he swears, and kill my sister and my mother.”
“Elizabeth…” Darcy walked up to put his arms around her.
His touch was not enough to comfort her. She felt her skin crawling, and part of her wanted to shout at Darcy to leave her be.
Her mother. Her little sister.
Elizabeth panted horribly. She felt like a bare-knuckled punch had been delivered to her sternum, and the air would no longer come in.
“Breathe, Lizzy.” Darcy gripped her tightly, holding her body comfortingly against his solid mass. “Deep breaths. One breath in. Breathe out. One breath in. And then breathe out. Breathe, Lizzy.”
She followed his orders, and breathed in long shuddering breaths.
He kissed her hair. “We’ll rescue them. We’ll find a way.”
Her mother. Her sister.
Kitty had grown to look very like Elizabeth. Would Lord Lechery slake his lusts on her now that he could not touch Elizabeth? What did he plan to do with Elizabeth when she came to his estate — for she knew she must, even if he killed her.
She was shivering, feeling scared and unsafe, despite Darcy’s hold.
She saw her mother, her nervous anxious mother, who despite everything she loved. She imagined her mother caught in this terrifying situation, trying to complain of matters to her captors like she would to all her friends, and them screaming at her to shut up.
“I must go, as he ordered.”
“He means to kill you, or worse.”
“There is nothing worse than him killing me.” Elizabeth pulled out of Darcy’s hold and walked to the window. She hunched her shoulders.
The sky was still grey, rainy, and ugly.
Darcy walked up to her, but while he had a firmness in his face, she could tell from his manner that his mind was endlessly spinning, and not coming to any conclusion.
She gulped air repetitively, and she pressed her elbows against her sides, as though that pressure was the only thing which kept her from dissolving into a million pieces.
Then Darcy’s distraction faded away. He stood taller, with something that was almost a smile.
Yes, she saw him mouth to himself.
Darcy said, “Do you trust me? You have claimed me as your champion. Your dragon slayer.”
“He will kill my family. I must go. I see no other way. I must go.”
“Perhaps, we must go.” Darcy put his arms around her once more, and he held her tightly against him. “But he shall not be permitted to win. Yes, we must go, and I fear that you will be the bait to draw the vile dragon out of hiding, so that he may be trapped and his hoard seized. But we can slay this dragon.”
“Do you mean that?”
“I mean it. I have a scheme in mind. We’ll win through this and turn the tables on him.”
Chapter Twenty
A week later
“Jove I wish I could go with you,” General Fitzwilliam loudly proclaimed, as they all stood in the midst of the town in Cambrai where his regiment was accommodated. “Would be a nice chance to see the old boy again. Have a friendly-like talk with my cousin. Alas, the Duke would not give me leave for such a family manner, not after I only so recently returned.”
“I understand,” Darcy replied with a quiet voice. “I wish you would be with us as well.”
He embraced his cousin, and then he entered his carriage into which he had already handed Elizabeth.
They would immediately travel to Calais, where a boat waited to take them to Brighton. The regiment of a friend of General Fitzwilliam’s from the Peninsula was quartered there, and they planned to gather a substantial escort of soldiers which they could take to the Kentish estate of Lord Lachglass.
Lord Lachglass had demanded Elizabeth come to meet him, and meet him she would. But she would not meet him alone.
*****
A week later yawing and creaking their ship sailed int
o the harbor at Brighton, pulling against the pier on a calm early summer day. “Are you well, my dear?” Darcy whispered to Elizabeth.
She shook her head no. Elizabeth still felt queasy as the gangplank was extended out to the pier.
Her stomach had become no stiffer since the she had left England on General Fitzwilliam’s ship to Calais. She had eaten nothing since leaving Calais the previous evening, and the billowing sea breeze felt cold against her sweaty face.
Darcy stood next to Elizabeth with his arms around her as they waited to disembark.
“I shall not make this journey often,” she groaned. “Hardly worth the illness to see what is on the other side of the ocean.”
He squeezed her closer against his side and kissed the top of her bonnet. Elizabeth sagged against Darcy and closed her eyes until he tugged her to walk towards the gangplank when everything was ready.
When they reached the end of the pier, twelve soldiers waited for them in fine redcoats, with their muskets loaded and pointed upwards.
They had delayed for two days in Calais before sailing to Brighton, so that arrangements for the arrival could be made via letters sent express before they arrived.
The letter General Fitzwilliam had sent to his friend in Brighton had arrived by then, and the soldiers were here to meet them to ensure that no ruffians hired by Lord Lachglass could attack them the instant they stepped onto British soil.
There was still the threat of the Bow Street Runners, but after discussion with a lawyer Darcy had called from London to Calais, they had determined that at this time that while it would be a very frightening event if Elizabeth was put up for trial, there was no longer any practical chance she would be found against.
Elizabeth had nightmares each night since they had received the letter.
Nightmares of Kitty shot, blood gushing from her skull. Of Mama, crying in her natural complaining way, “If only you had been quiet and let him have his way with you, it would have quickly been over, and I would still be alive.”
Now Elizabeth felt for the first time something like guilt.
She had been a little annoyed at first with General Fitzwilliam, wanting to blame him for the essay she had written to destroy Lachglass’s reputation. The timing of the abduction of her family suggested that his dismissal from the cabinet — Elizabeth and Darcy had cheered and toasted with fizzing champagne when they heard of it — had triggered his choice to seek revenge in this new way by abducting her mother and her sister.
Elizabeth swallowed.
Much as she hoped everything would turn out well, and that Darcy’s scheme would succeed perfectly and in the end they would all be alive, she was not in any sense entirely persuaded it would.
An odd beggar in a giant shaggy coat stood near the soldiers who waited for them on the dock. He had a huge bulbous nose, and a giant scar across his neck that he pointed to whenever anyone stepped near. He then extended his hand out pathetically asking for money without being able to speak.
Elizabeth smiled at the beggar.
Another person caught her eye. She stood beside the captain who commanded the platoon of soldiers sent out to meet them. A young woman Elizabeth had not seen for four years.
Her sister Lydia.
Elizabeth tottered down, her stomach forgotten, to stare at Lydia, who in turn stared at her with a half smile, and a half worried expression.
They stood across from each other, and Elizabeth hardly knew what to say. She had been angry at Lydia for long after she had disappeared with Mr. Wickham. Though Elizabeth knew that there was no actual connection in cause, a little part of her had always thought it was somehow Lydia’s fault when Papa became sick and died less than a year after she disappeared.
At the same time… at the same time.
Suddenly tears started in Elizabeth’s eyes. She and Lydia embraced each other fiercely. “My dear sister,” Elizabeth cried.
Lydia at the same moment exclaimed, “Lord! You look quite the same as ever.”
Elizabeth could not help but feel happy. Lydia was her sister, and she could see that she was well and happy.
While the soldiers grinned at them, Lydia turned to the officer leading the men. “Lizzy, this is Captain Dilman, my handsome husband.”
He bowed to her. “My pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Darcy.”
“And you as well.” He was a handsome man, but not at all well dressed in the way Mr. Wickham had been.
There were spots of patching on the elbows of his uniform, cleverly sown to be almost invisible, and in spots the fabric was worn rather thin. He also was missing half his ear and had a light scar on the cheek on the same side. When he noticed Elizabeth looking at the injury, he laughed and tugged at the remainder of his ear. “At Waterloo. Wrecked my handsome looks, but at least my Lydia still loves me.” He embraced his wife from the side and smiled at her.
Lydia looked at Mr. Darcy and exclaimed with a laugh, “La, what a joke that you two married! I remember how you disliked each other so.”
“I never disliked Elizabeth,” Darcy replied.
Lydia laughed. “No, you did! Everyone in the whole neighborhood knew you’d said, on first sight, she wasn’t handsome enough to tempt you.”
Elizabeth flushed. “Enough Lydia.”
Lydia laughed. “Such a joke! That you then married. But I was so happy to hear from Mama how you gave her and Kitty a house and some income to live upon.”
“And then I sent Lord Lachglass after them,” Elizabeth said.
Lydia rolled your eyes. “To blame yourself ‘tis very much like blaming King Louie in France for the ogre coming back and shooting at my dear Dilman at Waterloo! You did not want it to happen.”
Darcy frowned as well. “My people failed to protect them — we should have known Lachglass might do something of this sort, and—”
“Do not blame yourselves!” Lydia exclaimed. “Johnny,” she turned to her husband. “Do tell them they are quite silly.”
“The colonel has said I’m to lead the force that goes with you to retrieve Mrs. Bennet and Miss Kitty. Your mother is a… well intentioned woman.”
Lydia elbowed him.
“She does not deserve to be used as a hostage,” Captain Dilman said. “Insane man. An insane man to do such a thing. As my Lydia said, you have no fault for failing to predict the actions of a mad creature.”
Darcy frowned. “If I’d only had a few men to stay in the house with them and installed better locks, and—”
“It was Mr. Wickham anyway,” Lydia said with a frown. “I am most put out with him.”
“Wickham!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “What does he have to do with the matter?”
“He sent me a letter. The sad man was drunk as a wheelbarrow in some brothel — poor man. Wrote he felt quite guilty, and that he’d already gambled half the money away. Mr. Blight gave him some twenty guineas to lead him to the cottage.”
Darcy growled. “I ought to have killed Mr. Wickham when I could.”
“Poor man, I heard from Denny that he has the pox now,” Lydia said. “The old regiment was here in Brighton, a year ago, those who hadn’t been discharged after the war. Glad he did not give it to me.”
The group walked, escorted by the soldiers, to the house that Colonel Pike, General Fitzwilliam’s friend and Captain Dilman’s commanding officer, had rented on the outskirts of the seaport town.
“What is it like,” Elizabeth asked Lydia as they walked, “to be back in Brighton?”
“Oh quite the same — pretty as ever. And exciting enough, though it is emptier than during the war. I was so gay, so young, and quite naïve then.” She laughed. “I was sure as rain, no sure as cloudy days, that Mr. Wickham planned to marry me. Took at least a month and a half before I realized that was not his notion at all. Quite annoyed with him then, but I had nothing better in sight. I came back here immediately after he left me in the lodging house. He’d had enough of me, and left me in our rooms without warning, and with a note to Mrs. Younge tha
t I would settle the accounts.”
Lydia laughed, though Elizabeth saw nothing at all funny with the story.
“Mrs. Younge?” Darcy asked looking sharply at her. “About your height, brown hair and with a pretense of gentility and education. A friend of Wickham’s?”
“Ah, you knew her too? She wasn’t a kind one. Would sell her own daughter for a profit, but the constables laughed when she tried to have me thrown in the debtors’ prison for the money Wickham owed her. They said it would be absurd and wrong to charge an abandoned woman in such a case, and that if she could not show any papers I had signed saying I would pay, they would not bother me at all. And they did not. So she just tossed me out, into the winter.”
Elizabeth gasped, remembering her own cold time. “Why did you not come back? Papa was still alive that winter.”
“I have a notion that was her idea when she tried to have me arrested for the debt — she knew my family was quality, and she had the notion I would send to Papa to pay my debts to leave prison if that happened. Likely thought I might be better off if I did that, which perhaps I might have been — but I was with child then, and I do not think Papa would have been happy to see me.”
“He abandoned you with child!” Darcy exclaimed, clearly disgusted.
Lydia shrugged as though to say that such a man was George Wickham.
Elizabeth studied her sister’s nonchalant expression. “Papa would not have thrown you entirely off, if you came to him repentant.”
“Repentant.” Lydia rolled her eyes. “I was certainly not repentant. Made my choices, and though I was a naïve fool, I’ll not apologize for being lied to, and I’ll not apologize for being imprudent — I wish I’d not been such a fool, but it is no sin to trust the wrong sort.”
“Perhaps not…” Elizabeth said. “I made a mistake in who I trusted to employ me.”
“I’ll certainly make no apology for trying to have a jolly time,” Lydia added. “Life is too short to worry about a little scandal.”
“I do not agree with that,” Darcy said dryly. “For it was a great scandal.”
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