by Pamela Aidan
“Th-thank you, my lady,” breathed Miss Avery in great relief. She disengaged her arm from Lady Beatrice and stepped lightly before them, whereupon Her Ladyship possessed herself once more of Darcy’s arm.
“Poor child,” Lady Beatrice commented, shaking her head. “Do you not have a sister near to Miss Avery’s age, sir?”
“Yes, ma’am. Miss Darcy is a year or so the junior of Miss Avery.” The thought struck him then how different Georgiana was from Miss Avery! Yes, his sister had been demure and still was somewhat shy, but never could he recall seeing the self-conscious timidity in her eyes that seemed Miss Avery’s daily companion. On the contrary, Georgiana’s demeanor had ever been one that trusted in the goodness of the world that had been created around her…until Wickham had shattered it. Lately though, since her newfound contemplation of religious themes and the solace it seemed to have afforded her, Georgiana had exhibited a maturity in both mind and manner that far outmatched Miss Avery’s thin veneer of social sophistication.
“She is not yet out then,” Lady Beatrice asserted, continuing the conversation.
“No, my lady. Perhaps next year she will be introduced at Court,” he replied carefully.
“It was not so long ago that my daughter made her curtsy, Mr. Darcy. Such a trial! When she was a child, Mr. Farnsworth would have Judith always with him, for he had — alas — no sons, and that meant in the stables and out in the fields, you may believe, not the drawing room.” Her Ladyship sighed. “That all ended, of course, with his accident. The poor man finally met a fence that he could not master and left me a widow.” She glanced quickly at Darcy as he murmured the appropriate condolences. She then continued. “Judith did not immediately take to the circumscription of her former activities with her papa, but I am glad to say, by the time she made her curtsy she had been brought to recognize where her happiness lay.”
Lady Beatrice slowed her pace, and with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Darcy did likewise. “I cannot deny that Judith is of a strong-minded temperament, Mr. Darcy. She is a little like her father in that regard, but she is yet young. She will, I am certain, respond to a firm hand and quickly settle down to the enjoyment of all those domestic accomplishments required by a gentleman of the highest position and influence.”
Darcy’s jaw tightened, as had his resolve during Lady Beatrice’s excuse of her daughter’s exhibition of a shockingly headstrong temper. So, she needed a firm hand, did she? And was it hoped that he would choose to be responsible for her schooling? He could well imagine the scenes enacted within the Farnsworth household when Miss Farnworth’s will was crossed. There might be some men who enjoyed bringing such a woman to heel, but he was certainly not of their company. Good Lord! He shuddered inwardly at the thought of a life spent battling Miss Farnsworth’s temper. Any hopes this lady entertained in his direction were to be dampened at all costs!
“Undoubtedly that will be the case, my lady, when the appropriate gentleman appears,” he returned in as disinterested a fashion as he could summon.
“But you, Mr. Darcy, have had the raising of your sister and know your way in this regard, do you not?” Her Ladyship persisted. “I have heard wonderful things concerning Miss Darcy…”
“I thank you, ma’am,” Darcy intervened. “But I believe that the rearing of a sister cannot at all be compared with that of such instruction as you say Miss Farnsworth should require at the hands of her husband. In that task, I believe, my experience would serve me but little.”
“Well!” responded Lady Beatrice, withdrawing her hand from Darcy’s arm. “Upon my word, sir, you are forthright!”
“Your pardon, ma’am, but you would not wish anything less than the truth in a matter regarding the happiness of your only child, I am sure,” he returned coolly.
Her Ladyship’s eyebrows twitched upward before settling into a countenance graced with a speculative smile. “I see you have encountered your due share of matchmaking mamas, Mr. Darcy.” She laughed throatily. “You handled me quite well, sir. Quite well, indeed.”
As there was naught he could decently reply to such an observation, Darcy held his silence but with increasing unease at each step. Several times he detected measuring glances from the lady as they progressed, and when she stumbled over a rock upon the path and into his arms, he began to be alarmed at the possible meaning of her regard. When they reached the top, he quickly excused himself and strode toward the rest of the party.
Miss Avery had gained the crest before them and all but run to her brother, who listened to her briefly and with displeasure. “Bella, stop your damned stammering, girl, or I shan’t listen to you. What about Sayre?” Miss Avery assayed to meet his demand, but he soon turned and called to his other sister. “Letty! Bella is in a state…something about Sayre. P’rhaps you can make it out, for I cannot abide her babble a moment longer!”
At his very public complaint of her, Miss Avery’s face turned a pink that did not recommend itself to her other features and in haste left Manning’s side. Striking out in the opposite way, she avoided the rest of the party and went off alone toward a large, singular stone that brooded over the landscape some yards away.
Darcy watched her progress for a few moments before turning to the rest of the party, his jaw clamped down in anger at Manning’s callous display of contempt for his own flesh and blood. He really could stomach it no further.
“Shall we hear them whisper, Mr. Trenholme?” asked Lady Felicia, cautiously brushing the tips of her glove-clad fingers along the side of the largest stone.
“I cannot say that I have ever heard them,” Trenholme confessed, “but I would hazard that we will not hear anything in broad daylight. Such things,” he dropped his voice into a menacing register, “belong to the dead of n ——”
A scream of abject terror cut off Trenholme’s words and froze the smiles on his listeners’ faces. “Bella!” shouted Manning. Again the scream was heard, jolting them out of their icy trance. Finding the use of their limbs returned to them, Darcy and Manning broke into a run across the ground that separated the stones. Heedless of Manning’s claims, Darcy quickly outstripped him and, reaching the great monolith, rounded it to behold Miss Avery. She stood as one bewitched, her hands clasping and unclasping, her face drained of color. If she recognized him, she did not show it but continued her screaming until Darcy was nearly upon her.
“Miss Avery!” Darcy stood between her and the stone, taking up the entire window of her vision. “Miss Avery!” he repeated and grasped her arms. Finally, she looked at him, her eyes wide with terror; and with a pitiful wail, she cast herself against his chest, burying her face in his coat and clutching at the lapels. Without a thought, he brought his arms around her just as he had done countless times to comfort Georgiana. “What is it?” he probed gently. She only shook her head and clung to him more tightly.
The others must be almost upon them, Darcy reasoned, as he looked back over his shoulder. What in the name of Heaven had frightened this girl who trembled so in his arms? The King’s Stone loomed behind him. Its ancient, weathered solidity challenged his sweeping gaze and silently compelled his attention, drawing it down…down to its piercing claim upon the earth. The blood in Darcy’s veins turned to ice.
“Good God!” Manning’s voice trembled with horror as he swayed away from the base of the stone and looked up into Darcy’s eyes.
“Yes,” Darcy agreed tersely. Miss Avery still trembled and sobbed so into his coat that he doubted she could stand on her own strength. “Manning!” he called sharply to the Baron, whose attention was once more transfixed by the grisly bundle at his feet. “Manning!” He had to shout again before the man’s head came up, his visage almost as pale as his sister’s. “Miss Avery is in need of you,” he continued in a firm but subdued tone. “She must be taken from here immediately and the others warned away.”
“Yes…ofcourse,” Manning agreed hoarsely, shaking himself as if to awaken from a nightmare before stepping toward Darcy a
nd his sister. With more gentleness than Darcy had before seen him employ, Manning eased her grasp on Darcy and transferred her weight to himself. He held her tightly for a brief moment, whispering something in her ear, then bent down and took her up in his arms, pressing her face into his shoulder. With a nod to Darcy, he began to make his way down the hill to the fire. As soon as Manning and his sister were seen, the rest of the party surrounded them. From his vantage point, Darcy observed Manning’s vigorous refusal of assistance. Sheltering her closely, he bore his sister free from their clinging curiosity and continued to the fire, the others trailing after him in agitated confusion.
Satisfied that they were well occupied, Darcy turned back to the monstrosity lying at the base of the stone. His stomach revolted at the sight, but he resolved to ignore it as well as the icy prickings down his spine that urged him to flee the task before him. What confronted him could only be called what it was: Evil, monstrous Evil. The bundle of blankets wrapping the tiny figure was stained with blood. Despite the cold, perspiration stood out on his forehead as he carefully drew off the first layer of swaddling, revealing the infant face turned away toward the stone. His gorge rising in his throat, Darcy gently tipped its head back, then sucked in his breath, his eyes narrowing in surprise and thought. What was before him was certainly a mask. Made of a flesh-colored fabric and cunningly stitched, it was fashioned to imitate the face of a child. Its delicate, cherubic features stuffed with cotton wadding enhanced the illusion and completely covered whatever was beneath it.
“Darcy!” Trenholme’s shout caused him to look up just as its owner rounded the stone. “Darcy,” he repeated when he saw him, “I say, what — Good God!” Trenholme’s hand went to his mouth as he unwittingly repeated Manning’s horrified exclamation, his shoulders jerking so convulsively that Darcy fully expected he would hurl his breakfast. To his credit, Trenholme regained control of himself and dropped down on his haunches beside him. “Is it…a child?” he asked in a whisper.
“I am not yet certain,” Darcy answered, his voice constricted with the effort to contain his own trepidation. “Look here, Trenholme.” Darcy pointed at the head. “It is wearing some sort of mask.” Trenholme stared at him in stupefaction. “I was about to remove it when you arrived.” At Trenholme’s glazed nod, he took a deep breath and, reaching over, grasped the top and pulled it away. For a moment the two men could only stare in perplexity at the sight before them.
“Thank God!” Darcy closed his eyes and leaned back, embracing the flow of relief that was easing the tight hold he had maintained upon his nerve.
“It’s a pig!” Trenholme croaked. Then, his voice rising in anger, “It’s a damned, bloody baby pig! Oh, this is beyond everything! I’ll not have it! Where is my horse?” He scrambled to his feet and would have run for his mount had Darcy not risen swiftly and caught his arm.
“Do you know who did this?” Darcy’s piercing examination bore down upon the man. “Trenholme! Do you know?” Trenholme looked back at him in outraged anger, but he could not conceal from Darcy the shadow of fear in his eyes.
“What do you mean, sir? No! No, I certainly do not know who did this…this filthy…Gaaugh!” He wrenched his arm from Darcy’s grasp and fell back a few steps. “The Stones have always drawn those who hold with the old ways…as well as lunatics who dance around them in the middle of the night. Love potions, cures, curses — the whole lot — but not this!” He shook his head as he gestured toward the stone. “Never this!” Under Darcy’s narrowed gaze, Trenholme turned away and stumbled down the hill to the others, leaving him to the solitary contemplation of their awful discovery.
Darcy cast one more look over the scene before the great stone. Although its horrors were materially lessened by the knowledge that an animal lay beneath the bloody wrappings, he could not suppress the shudder that passed through both his body and his mind. It had been meant to pass for a child! Someone had prepared for and committed this hideous, unholy sacrifice pretending it was a child. The evil of it was staggering in its implications, and they granted him no quarter in their assault on his own careful view of the world. It simply did not fit! Such execrable practices belonged to another age, millennia past, when men were slaves to superstition and cringed in fear before a capricious universe. This was the Nineteenth century, for Heaven’s sake! Men had long been accustomed to rule by the dictates of logic, not some bloodthirsty deity lurking about ancient stones on an Oxfordshire hillside! The idea was totally irrational, absurd even, save for the terrible fact that stained the hillside at his feet.
Darcy looked down the hill to the confused gathering at its foot. A roar from Sayre reached his ears. Although he could not understand his host’s words, Sayre’s meaning was obvious as all the servants scurried to pack the food and other amenities that had been provided for their master’s guests. The outing was over, and it was expedient that he rejoin the others. There was nothing more he could do here.
Except for Trenholme, who brooded over a mug of hot cider at the fire, the party was divided into two groups near the sleighs. Manning had retired to one group, his sister still within his embrace. Around them, the ladies clucked or cooed over Miss Avery, trying to entice her face from the folds of her brother’s greatcoat. The remaining gentlemen formed another group, but Monmouth and Poole, seeing his approach, broke from them and strode over to meet him.
“Darcy, what happened?” Poole gasped out as he came to a halt. “Manning will only say it is something horrid, and Trenholme will speak to no one!”
“We apply to you, old man.” Monmouth nodded his agreement with Poole’s words. “The ladies are imagining all sorts of lurid scenes à la Mrs. Radcliffe. ‘No such thing,’ I told them. ‘This is England, not Italy or the deep reaches of Carpathia. Probably tripped over a dead rabbit or bird,’ I said. But truly, Darcy, what happened?”
Darcy hesitated. This is England. He knew exactly what Monmouth meant by the phrase. Had not every man in the country used it at one time or another, or heard his father declare it? The French may brutally lop off the heads of their aristocrats and later follow a madman across Europe, but This is England. The Italians might form secret, murderous societies and regard poison as merely one more political tool, but This is England. Yet above them on an English hillside lay a reality more maleficent in its authorship than any novel Mrs. Radcliffe had ever written.
Darcy looked into the faces of his old hall mates. A wave of disgust washed over him as he detected neither concern nor compassion for Miss Avery in their importuning of him, but only a rampant desire for the satisfaction of their curiosity. He would not feed it.
“If our hosts decline to discuss the incident,” he responded stiffly, “I must naturally respect their wishes and remain silent as well.” He interrupted their vociferous protestations. “Excuse me, but the lad has my horse ready. Gentlemen.” He bowed quickly and strode around them. The bay pricked up its ears at his approach and bent its neck to watch him as he gathered the reins and prepared to mount.
“Mr. Darcy.” Miss Farnsworth brought her horse alongside him. “I fear, sir, that I must humbly beg your pardon. You were proved quite correct in your concern and, I confess, your advice as well.” She smiled contritely. “My horse,” she supplied at his vague return of her regard. Darcy inclined his head in weary consent — that she could speak of that now! — and vaulted into the saddle.
The sleigh drivers signaled to the stable lads, who stepped away smartly, and the party departed the cursed scene with a nervous chattering that drove Darcy to the rear of the procession until they should gain the track leading to Norwycke. In his circle back, he brought his mount abreast of Manning’s sleigh to inquire after Miss Avery. She was still pale as she shivered in her brother’s arms, but some color had returned to her face. Her eyes remained tightly shut against the world, and wrenching sobs would overtake her as tears spilled down her cheeks.
She still mourns a child! The realization that Trenholme had not relieved her suffering w
ith the truth of her discovery sent a hot surge of fury through Darcy’s body. Cursing himself for not immediately seeking assurance that she was in possession of the truth, he leaned down.
“Manning,” he ventured. His old antagonist raised eyes still shadowed with incomprehension at what they had beheld.
“Darcy,” he sighed in acknowledgment. “How can I thank you? Poor Bella…thank God you kept your head.”
Dismissing the Baron’s expression of indebtedness, Darcy continued, “Manning, it is of the gravest importance…you must know and represent the truth of it to Miss Avery — it was not what it appeared to be.”
His hearer’s brow creased in confusion. “But, I saw it…in all that bl ——”
“Quite.” Darcy forestalled him describing the scene in the hearing of the sleigh’s other occupants. “It appeared so and apurpose, but it was not; I assure you. Miss Avery must find a great comfort in that.”
Manning shook his head in bewilderment and then looked down into his sister’s face. Gently, he caressed her cheek and the curls that had escaped her bonnet. “Why would someone do such a thing?” he breathed and looked back up at Darcy.
Darcy drew upright, his jaw clenching as he looked into the darkening distance behind them. Why indeed? Returning to the Baron, he inclined his head. “I regret that I can be of no further use to you in that regard. Please convey my best wishes to Miss Avery.” At Manning’s nod, Darcy checked his horse, allowing the sleigh to sweep past them through the clean, white snow.
By the time they had clattered across the castle’s bridge and into the courtyard, Darcy was stiff with cold and wished for nothing better than the solitude and comfort of a hot bath to stay his mind from further reflection on the events of the day. The discovery at the stone had so preyed upon his mind that he could not have relayed anything about the journey back to Norwycke Castle save that a solemn twilight had crept over them, accompanied by a rise in the force and coldness of the wind.
