“Inside,” Wickham commanded, pointing to the cottage.
They stumbled inside. They found themselves in a tiny room with a bare earth floor and very little in the way of furniture. There was a table, four upright chairs, a sagging horsehair sofa and a dresser. The grate spilled cold white ash.
“You’ll be tight enough here and Dolan will look after you,” Wickham said, pulling off their gags. “No use shouting, there’s no one to hear and no point in trying to cut and run, there’s nowhere to go.”
“You are going to leave us here with him?” Elizabeth demanded, nodding in the direction of the tavern keeper.
“I am. But you had better pray it won’t be for long. When I come back, if Darcy has been disposed to be generous, then I might set you free.”
“You expect him to pay a ransom for us?” Georgiana asked.
“Oh, he will pay. Even if he were glad to be free of your troublesome self he would never acknowledge it; he cannot be seen to cut off his own sister, can he? Not his legitimate relation. Now his bastard, that’s another matter, he can throw him off with impunity…”
“That child is not Mr. Darcy’s son, whatever you may think,” Elizabeth said. “You are mistaken if you imagine an honorable man like he is, who had promised to look after his people, would do such a thing.”
“Oh, ho, methinks I smell a romance here. The tales of you and he were not so far abroad after all. I am doubly blessed with two such fine specimens for barter. If you are good, friend Dolan will untie your hands, but you had better behave, because I have to tell you he has a very short temper and there’s no telling what he’ll do if you cut up rough.” And with a last instruction to his accomplice to watch them carefully, he returned to the coach and drove away.
For the next hour Elizabeth and Georgiana sat side by side on the sagging sofa, while Dolan relit the fire and set a pot on to boil into which he threw some meat and vegetables. This they knew would be their supper, but though they were very hungry, neither of them could eat any of it when it was served to them on two cracked plates taken from the dresser.
“Starve, then,” he said, taking their plates and scraping the contents on to his own. “You’ll get nothing else.”
“I need to relieve myself,” Elizabeth said.
“There’s a privy out the back.” He stood up and opened the back door for her. “There.” He pointed. “And don’t shut the door.”
“Why? Do you think I can disappear from there? And if I could, where would I go? Mr. Wickham is expecting to release us unharmed. Should I not believe him? And would I go anywhere without my young friend?”
He went back inside and slammed the door, though she knew he was watching from the window. She went into the reeking privy which was nothing more than a little wooden shed with a hole in the ground which stank so badly she thought she would be sick. She shut the door firmly and relieved herself because she had to, and then went back into the house, deep in thought.
Mr. Dolan had found a small cask of brandy in the bottom of the dresser and was busy sampling it when she returned. “Best French cognac, left behind by the smugglers,” he said, holding out a glass of the liquid to Elizabeth. “Try it.”
“No, thank you,” she said coldly.
“Please yourself.” Dolan was evidently very fond of a tipple because, with nothing else to do and the company not to his liking, he sat down before the dying fire and proceeded to do justice to his find.
“Do you think he will drink himself insensible?” Georgiana whispered when Elizabeth rejoined her on the sofa.
“No, he’s too wily for that, and being a publican, I have no doubt he can hold his liquor.” She smiled suddenly. “He’ll have to go out to the privy some time. Be ready.” Aloud she said, “Why don’t you try and sleep, my dear? It will help the time pass.”
Georgiana stretched out on the sofa and shut her eyes.
Dolan poured himself yet another glass of cognac. And another.
A few minutes later, he got up and staggered to the door, turning to make sure both his captives were asleep before going out into the dusk. Elizabeth got up and shook Georgiana. “Shh, be quiet and follow me.”
They crept outside. Dolan could be heard in the privy, singing a bawdy song at the top of his powerful lungs. Elizabeth picked up a stout piece of wood she had noticed earlier and silently propped it at an angle against the door, so that he was effectively imprisoned. “Now,” she whispered. “Let’s be away, as far and as fast as we can before he realizes what’s happened.”
There was only one way they could go and that was back along the road by which they had arrived. Crossing the marsh would be foolhardy. “We’ll make for the church,” she went on. “Thank goodness it’s nearly dark, but be careful not to stray off the road or we’ll be lost for certain.”
Hand in hand they ran. They ran until their breath was spent and they could run no more. The little cottage disappeared beneath a fold in the land behind them, but the church seemed no nearer. It was probably several miles away, but at least they had left the marshes behind and the terrain on either side of them was now scrubby pasture, dotted with bushes and brambles and an occasional cow, lying down for the night.
“Do you think he’s got out by now?” Georgiana asked as they stood panting for breath and listening for sounds of pursuit.
“Probably. We must keep going.”
They had been walking for several more minutes when they heard the sound of a carriage approaching very fast. In a moment they had dived into the ditch beside the road and lay, hardly daring to breathe as an old coach passed them going towards the cottage. “Wickham,” Elizabeth said, lifting her head slightly. “He wasn’t alone.” She scrambled up to stare after it. “Now we’d best make haste because as soon as he sees Dolan, he’ll turn right round and come back.”
She had hardly spoken before the carriage came to a halt. “They’ve seen us! Run!”
They left the road and ran across the grass, stumbling in their haste as two men left the carriage to run after them. They could hear them shouting, but kept going, tearing their clothes on the brambles and muddying their shoes..
“Georgiana! Elizabeth! For God’s sake, stop running, will you?”
Elizabeth came to a sudden stop. She knew the owner of that voice, even though he was shouting at the top of his lungs.
“William!” Georgiana, too, had at last understood what they were saying. She turned and ran back, straight into the arms of her brother. Elizabeth followed more slowly and stood facing him, panting for breath. “Thank God, you are both safe,” he said. “Are you hurt, Georgiana? Did those men hurt you?”
“No, they would not dare while Elizabeth was with me.” Georgiana laughed, lifting her face from his chest. “You should have seen her, William, she was so brave, like a lioness. And when that dreadful man Dolan went out to the privy, she shut him in so that we could make a dash for it. He’ll be raging by now, even if he has got out.”
He smiled and reached across his sister to take Elizabeth by the hand and draw her towards him. “Then I am indebted to her.” He conveyed her hand to his lips, looking at her over it with an expression she could not fathom. Tenderness? Sorrow? Or was there just a gleam of wry amusement? Could he be laughing at her? “For everything.” The last two words were said with heavy emphasis, confusing her all the more.
“But why did you come in that awful coach?” Georgiana asked him, “It is Mr. Wickham’s. We thought…”
“Come, let us go back to it and you shall hear the story.”
With Georgiana on one side of him and Elizabeth on the other they went back to the stationary coach from which had emerged Bingley and Henry. They were standing in the road watching them approach, smiling from ear to ear. Henry hugged his cousin and bowed to Georgiana, his eyes alight with pleasure. “Thank God we were in time.”
Elizabeth had noticed Wickham sitting in the coach, sullenly staring out at them. “What is he doing there?”
“Oh
, do not be alarmed, he is securely trussed,” Bingley said. “Now all we have to do is wait for the Runners who are not far behind and then we can go.”
He had hardly spoken when they heard the sound of another vehicle arriving. A huge prison van, drawn by two great horses, hove into view and drew up. Three Runners emerged, carrying bludgeons and pistols and they soon manhandled the silent Wickham into the van. “There’s another man back there,” Bingley told them.
“You can safely leave him to us, sir. You be on your way. I dare say the ladies will be glad to bathe and rest.”
“We are not far from Pemberley,” Darcy said, as he and Henry joined Elizabeth and Georgiana in the coach, leaving Bingley to climb up beside the driver. “We will go there for you both to recuperate.”
As soon as they were on their way, Georgiana began a long account of exactly what had happened to them, which made her brother smile. He knew, as the others did, that the sudden relief from tension had made her talkative and she just could not stop.
Elizabeth remained silent. Now all danger was past, she did not know what to say, even if Georgiana had paused long enough to allow her to say anything. When the euphoria of the rescue died down and Darcy contemplated what might have happened and where to lay the blame, he would turn to her, and although she did not think she had encouraged Georgiana in her willfulness, she had not curbed her as she ought.
She dreaded the end of the journey, when he would insist on speaking to her alone and would coldly repeat his proposal in such a way that she would be under no illusion that he meant her to refuse him. Oh, how difficult that was going to be!
Georgiana, having come at last to the end of her narrative, demanded to know how he had known where they were. “Miss Bennet said you would come, but when they moved us, we thought you would never find us. Mr. Wickham seemed very sure you would not.”
“Once we had your message, we were well on the way. From the lad at the orphanage we followed the trail to the man who had given Miss Bennet her directions.”
“But that would only lead you to the tavern,” Elizabeth put in.
“So it did and we searched it, but all we found was a piece of cloth snagged on a broken window and several spots of blood.” He did not tell her what had gone through his mind, seeing that piece of cloth which he had recognized as coming from the gown Elizabeth had been wearing the day he helped at the orphanage. And the spots of blood had set him in a fever of impatience to find who had been hurt. “We feared you may have tried to escape and one of you had been injured but everyone in the neighborhood denied all knowledge of you, even when offered money.
“We thought we had come to an impasse, but we decided to leave a guard watching the place while we looked elsewhere. I went home and found the ransom note pushed under the door. It told me where to leave the money.”
“In a sack in the kitchen of the old orphanage,” Elizabeth put in. “Wickham made me write it.”
He smiled. “The only way was to catch Wickham when he came to collect the ransom. I kept watch with Bingley from across the street, but it wasn’t Wickham who arrived, but another man. We arrested him and inveigled him into telling us where he was meeting Wickham. We told him to go ahead and followed him; when Wickham arrived we arrested him.”
He made it sound easy, but there had been a desperate struggle and several times Wickham had almost escaped before the Runners had arrived to help and the man had eventually been overcome.
“And what about little Richie?”
“His name is Richie, is it?” Georgiana put in. “Is he named for cousin Richard?”
“You know the truth?” her brother queried.
“I do now, Elizabeth told me, but I do think it was despicable of George Wickham to repeat that awful gossip. Do you think we shall ever live it down?”
“Of course we will.” He hugged her to him, while smiling at Elizabeth over her head. “Gossip comes and goes, the gabble-grinders will soon find something else to get their teeth into.”
They had been passing through cultivated countryside while they had been traveling and now they entered a village, and a few minutes later, rattled through the wrought-iron gates of Pemberley. “Home,” Darcy said.
Although the housekeeper had not been expecting them, the ladies were soon stripping off their filthy clothes in their respective rooms and enjoying a hot bath, while down in the kitchen a meal was prepared for everyone.
Georgiana had been right; everything they had been wearing had to be destroyed, but fortunately the girls found a green gown, though slightly too big for Georgiana, it was a perfect fit for Elizabeth. Without a maid to arrange her hair, Elizabeth had brushed it and left it loose, held back by a simple ribbon.
The meal was a noisy and cheerful affair with everyone adding to the enjoyment, but at the end of it Georgiana pleaded fatigue and retired to bed, leaving Elizabeth to make her way to the drawing room alone. She had not been there five minutes when Darcy joined her.
“You did not spend long over the port,” she said, looking past him for the other two.
“No.” He shut the door behind him and came to sit next to her. “I prefer the company in here.”
“Oh.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“What would you have me say? That I am sorry?”
“You are sorry that I prefer your company?”
She realized he was teasing her, but she dare not turn to look at him and kept her face obstinately forward. “No, I did not mean that.”
“What did you mean, then? What have you to regret which I do not regret even more?”
“Yes, I thought you might. But have no fear, I shall tell no one.”
“Now you are talking in riddles and I am not in the mood for conundrums, so please explain what it is you are not about to tell.”
She turned to face him. He was looking down at her with such intensity, his eyes seemed to burn into her. His mouth, which she knew could be soft and gentle, looked hard, as if he dare not relax. She took a deep breath to steady herself. “I shall tell no one of our conversation last night and that you offered me marriage.”
“Why not?”
“I would not wish to embarrass you in Society when the marriage does not take place.”
“It is not to take place?”
“No, and you need not sound so relieved, you should know that I would never hold you to it.”
“Why not?” His tone, which until then had been gently mocking, was suddenly hard.
“You know very well, Mr. Darcy,” she retorted angrily. “I have been a thorn in your side ever since I came to London. Not that I intended to be, for I did not know you were come and I dare say we would never have been more than polite acquaintances if you had not brought Georgiana. So do not blame me for it.”
“Blame you for what?”
“The way Georgiana has behaved, for condoning her mischief, taking her to the orphanage, sending her home in a cab with Henry…”
“Do you think I should blame you?”
“No, but I know you do.”
“I see you still imagine you can read my mind.”
“So I can.”
“Then tell me what I am thinking now.”
She smiled wanly. “You are thinking what a lucky escape you have had…”
“No, what a lucky escape you have had.”
“That too, of course, and it is polite of you to say so, but…”
“No, it was not luck for it was down to your courage. You could have been killed. Georgiana could have…”
“Oh, you blame me for that too.”
He took her shoulders in his hands and turned her to face him, shaking her gentle. “Elizabeth, my love, stop this nonsense. Don’t you know that I blame you for nothing? Nothing except making me see sense. If you had not taken my sister under your wing, I would never have come anywhere close to understanding her. Nor understanding myself either. I came to London a month ago, a lonely and embittered man, determined to
do my best for my sister with no more idea of what that best was than that teapot there. And when I saw you with your cousin…” He chuckled. “I was jealous, I admit it.”
“Mr. Darcy… how could you be? I love my cousin, but like a brother and nothing more.”
“Don’t I know it! But do you not think you could spare a little love for me?”
She looked up at him and saw the soft gleam in his eyes and the wry twist to his mouth which told her that he was in earnest and no longer teasing her. “It is not a question of sparing it, Mr. Darcy. The love I have for you, is a woman’s love for a man.”
“I know,” he said softly. “But did I hear aright? You did say the love you have for me?”
“Yes.”
“And do you still mean to refuse my offer of marriage?”
“Do you wish me to?”
“No, by God, I do not. Nothing will make me happier than for you to say yes. And we can be married as soon as may be.”
She was suddenly as shy as a schoolgirl and looked down at her hands, one of which was bandaged. “Very well, I accept.”
“Oh, Elizabeth!” He laughed aloud, seized her hands and turned her to face him. “Oh, thank heavens! You can be so inscrutable at times, I began to wonder if I would ever break the ice.”
She laughed as he took her into his arms and kissed her soundly. This led to another and another, until Bingley and Henry, having consumed the better part of a bottle of port between them, decided they had been left out in the cold long enough and joined them, making as much of a noise about it as they could to give the lovers time to break apart.
“I can see felicitations are in order,” Henry said, crossing the room to kiss a flustered Elizabeth on the cheek. “I wish you happy.” Then he turned to shake Darcy by the hand. “Congratulations, sir.” He grinned teasingly. “But as family, I would expect my approval to be sought…”
Darcy laughed. “And do I have it?”
“If you make my darling cousin happy, then you do.”
Bingley came forward and added his congratulations, a toast was suggested and drunk and the hilarity brought Georgiana down in her dressing gown, saying they had woken her. “Not that I mind,” she said. “For I was having a dreadful nightmare.”
Mr. Darcy's Scandal Page 8
