Perilous Siege

by C. P. Odom

  The sight of the pistol caused Darcy to freeze, instantly and completely. The stranger’s dark eyes were locked on him with a dangerous fixation, and the sound he had heard was made doubly ominous because of its similarity to the earlier sound of Brown cocking his pistol.

  “Brown, do nothing!” Darcy barked the command. He instinctively realized he had made a grave error; the strange pistol was not pointed at him but rather at Brown, and the muzzle, while clearly not as large as the pistols with which he was familiar, seemed even more deadly.

  No one moved for a long second or two before the stranger spoke.

  “He’s with you?”

  Darcy gave a jerky nod.

  “I haven’t fired,” the stranger continued, “since the muzzle of your man’s blunderbuss isn’t exactly pointed at me and his finger isn’t on the trigger. Please have him lower the pistol and un-cock the hammer. I don’t want to kill anyone over a misunderstanding, but I also don’t want to die by mistake either. And I won’t warn him again.”

  “Brown!” Darcy said quickly. “Put the pistol away!”

  “Yes, sir,” Brown said reluctantly, and Darcy heard the sound of the pistol being uncocked and the subsequent rustle of cloth indicating it was being returned to its place.

  “And perhaps, if the big man in the red coat might loosen the death grip he has on that large knife he has partway out of its scabbard, I’ll holster my pistol.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Darcy saw Fitzwilliam reluctantly lower his saber back into its sheath and uncurl his fingers from the hilt. He felt a bit of amusement at the way the stranger referred to his cousin’s beloved saber as a big “knife”—though he was not sure Fitzwilliam shared his amusement.

  “Better,” the stranger said, standing up. “Much better.”

  He touched something on the small, black pistol. It made the same snapping sound Darcy had heard previously, and he put it back in the holster and buckled a strap over it. Darcy saw he wore a matching holster with a similar pistol beneath his right armpit, and he also had what might be another rifle over his back under his pack. The weapon was covered by a multi-colored canvas sheath with a long belt-like strap across his chest, holding it in place.

  Clever idea, all those belts and straps, thought Darcy in wonder. It would make sure they stay in place when galloping about a battlefield, but how did he unfasten the strap so quickly when he awoke?

  “I did not mean to startle you,” Darcy said, but the stranger waved away his apology.

  “And I didn’t mean to startle you either, but when I felt something touch my boot…well, where I’ve been lately, you wake up instantly or you might not wake up at all. It tends to make one twitchy when startled.”

  “Ah yes,” Darcy said in confusion. “Twitchy. Interesting word.”

  The stranger looked at Darcy and gave him a crooked smile. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “I have never been so confused in my life, sir,” Darcy answered, and his comment seemed to amuse the stranger further since his smile broadened as he looked about him, taking in the attire of Darcy, Fitzwilliam, and Brown as well as the coach and horses.

  The stranger waved at Georgiana, who was standing beside the coach in wide-eyed excitement and curiosity.

  “I’m sorry if I startled your passenger. I didn’t even know she was there until just now.”

  “My sister.” Darcy glared at her. “I had suggested she remain in the coach while we investigated.”

  “I suppose all of us are completely confused, sir. Me, for example. Not only do I have no idea where I might be, I don’t even know when this is. It’s certainly not where I came from.”

  Brown stood nearby, and Darcy remembered his father’s admonition never to discuss serious matters in front of the staff. Turning to his footman, he said, “Please rejoin the coach and keep a sharp eye out. I think we will be safe enough now.”

  “Aye, sir,” Brown said dutifully, but the tone of his voice made it clear he did not fully agree with his employer. Darcy waited until he had mounted the coach again before turning back to the stranger.

  “You do not know where you are?” Darcy asked, his surprise evident.

  When the unknown man shook his head, it seemed to make him aware of the helmet on his head. He unsnapped the strap and removed it, revealing a mop of dark hair that had not been barbered in quite some time.

  “I’m not at all sure how I came to be here,” the stranger said slowly with visible uncertainty. “If it would not be too much of an imposition, might you first tell me where I am?”

  “You are on my land. This is a meadow on my estate, sir,” Darcy answered with a trace of irritation in his voice.

  “Ah, so I’m a trespasser. Very serious, sir. Very serious, indeed. But since I wasn’t aware I was trespassing, perhaps you might enlighten me as to just where I’m trespassing? I assume your estate’s in England?”

  Darcy openly smiled at the renewed evidence of humor in the stranger’s speech as he had consciously modified his speech to match his own.

  Except for the use of those contracted words, Darcy thought. I know they are becoming more fashionable in these modern times, but still…and that accent of his! It is definitely not one with which I am familiar. Nevertheless, this is an educated man. It shows in his speech.

  “Yes,” Darcy said with a nod. “Pemberley is indeed in England. In Derbyshire to be exact.”

  The man flinched momentarily at this information. “Interesting,” he mused. “I thought I would be in Cornwall.” He shook his head and continued. “The next item to assuage my curiosity is the date—the year to be more specific.”

  Darcy wrinkled his brow in confusion, looking at the stranger oddly for a moment before he replied slowly, “It is Wednesday, the tenth of October in the year of our Lord, 1809.”

  The stranger’s eyes grew large at the information. “It’s 1809!” he murmured. “I thought the stone—”

  Whatever else he meant to say went unsaid, and he shook his head again before standing up straighter.

  “I do apologize for appearing in your meadow, sir, but I assure you I’m as surprised to be here as you are to find me. But as an intruder and a trespasser on your land, I really should introduce myself. Edward McDunn. I’m American despite my Scots name. Brevet Major and late Gunnery Sergeant of the United States Marine Corps.”

  Darcy’s eyebrows rose just a bit at this bit of information, but he was not completely surprised. “I had surmised you to be American from the manner of your speech.”

  “My accent, you mean?”

  “Indeed. We both speak the same language, but you clearly hail from elsewhere. If I may hazard a guess, I would say one of the southern of our former colonies.”

  “South Carolina,” McDunn confirmed.

  Darcy was still confused. What was an American doing in England, much less in Derbyshire? And lying in a Pemberley meadow, especially at this time?

  From what his cousin had told him, bad feelings between Britain and the United States of America still lingered from the Chesapeake-Leopard affair back in ’07. Fitzwilliam worried that the Royal Navy’s insistence on stopping ships flying the American flag and impressing seamen from their crews might eventually cause the two countries to stumble into an active state of hostilities.

  Have we not enough enemies, he thought sourly, with Bonaparte and the rest of his coalition?

  He shook his head at his woolgathering and decided this was not the time to stand on propriety. There was certainly no one to introduce the two of them. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Major McDunn…or is it, what did you say, Gunnery Sergeant?”

  McDunn smiled wryly. “It’s late Gunnery Sergeant, sir. That rank, as well as my majority and my place in the Marines are—well, it’s long off in time and f
ar away. Very much so.”

  “I see,” Darcy said though he did not see at all. “My name is Fitzwilliam Darcy, and as I said, I own Pemberley. And may I present my cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam of His Majesty’s Sixth Regiment of Dragoons.”

  Darcy’s hesitation was due to his decision to include his Christian name as the American had done. It was not usual, but he supposed Americans had different customs.

  Both men gave the stranger a quick bow, but both Darcy and his cousin were taken aback by McDunn’s reaction. His mouth had dropped open slightly, and he was staring at Darcy as though he had seen a ghost.

  ***

  Fitzwilliam Darcy? McDunn thought, so staggered by the man’s name that he questioned his sanity.

  The name “Pemberley” he had put down as coincidence, but it could not be a coincidence that the man who owned Pemberley in this alternate world also claimed the name of Austen’s hero in Pride and Prejudice.

  What in the seven levels of hell is going on here? Darcy! And Colonel Fitzwilliam! And that has to be Georgiana by the coach! Has that Siege stone sent me to a world of fictional characters? Characters created in the imagination of an unmarried author of old-time novels? But this man, this Darcy, said this is his estate! Pemberley in Derbyshire! I know Kaswallon said there were an infinite number of alternate possible worlds, but still—! This is not bordering on the ridiculous; it is so far beyond such boundaries, it’s ludicrous!

  Why would this be the world where I belonged? I would have thought it would be fighting Nazis or maybe the Japanese in World War II! At least, in that war, I always thought it would be easy to figure out who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. You didn’t have to protect yourself against men who weren’t wearing uniforms unless you found out they were spies, in which case you just stood ’em against a wall, shot ’em, and moved on!

  His realization put a different complexion on what he could or should tell this man to answer his questions. If Kaswallon’s rock had just sent him to an earlier time in his own world—the concept referred to as time travel—he would have worried about changing the future by something he did in the here and now. Not that such a course would be a bad idea, seeing how things turned out! But because this world, this world of Pemberley and Darcy, never existed, he did not have to worry about such eventualities. This world was a fictional construct, for God’s sake! It meant he could tell whatever seemed prudent without worrying about changing the future of the world he came from.

  McDunn knew complete honesty would not work. Not only that, but it would be dangerous. If Darcy was who he appeared to be, it placed limits on certain parts of his explanation. The idea of this world being modeled after Austen’s England was one he simply couldn’t reveal—not just to this man but to anyone in this world. Ever! He simply couldn’t chance being judged insane by telling someone that the world they lived in was similar to a novel he had read in a far-away parallel world!

  How could this man ever believe such a fanciful tale? That the world in which he lives ought never to have existed at all, save in the fertile imagination of one Jane Austen who actually did exist? Yet this world is real! It exists! Unless I am off my rocker! I’ll have to exercise careful control over my mouth!

  McDunn realized he had been thinking for long moments while the other men looked at him with a mixture of surprise and…was that disapproval?

  “Sorry,” McDunn said. “Somehow, everything that’s happened to me hit me all at once. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam. Very pleased indeed.”

  McDunn stepped forward and extended his hand.

  “Ah yes, I understand. You Americans shake hands,” Darcy said, taking the proffered hand, his expression showing his bemusement.

  McDunn was careful to control his strength as the two men shook hands. Darcy’s handshake was not weak, not at all, but he had not lived as McDunn had for much of his adult life.

  However, he was somewhat taken aback when he shook Fitzwilliam’s hand. He was used to moderating his own handshake since he was usually much stronger than other men, but he instantly realized that Darcy’s cousin was doing the same. In fact, he did not think he had ever before felt a harder grip, and a quick glance at the other man’s wrist above his gloved hand revealed a wrist thicker than he’d ever imagined a man of his size might have. Clearly, it was the result of a lifetime’s constant use of a sword, and since his left wrist was as large as his right, he must practice with both hands. With a wry thought, he vowed to refrain from a contest of strength with the good colonel!

  “But the question remains,” Darcy said, his brows furrowed, “if you are an American, how do you come to be on my estate?”

  McDunn looked pensive for a few moments, musing over his alternatives while staring intently at Darcy’s coach and the two men before him.

  Finally, he shrugged somewhat helplessly. “That’s a long story, and it’s likely to leave you even more confused than you are now. That’s if you believe me at all.”

  Darcy thought for a few moments. “Then, rather than continue this discussion in an open field, Major, perhaps it would be best if we repaired to my home. I hope you will not consider it impolitic when I say you look as though you might welcome a bath. And some clean clothing.”

  “Far from being impolitic, Mr. Darcy,” McDunn said fervently, running his hands over his bearded cheeks, “I cannot think of anything I would appreciate more than to scrub off this dirt and get this fuzz off my face—unless it’s to get out of these BDUs.”

  “BDUs?” Darcy asked in confusion.

  “Battle Dress Uniform. It’s what we call it,” McDunn said rather absently, running his hand over his clothes. He suddenly froze as his fingers found a score of rips in the abdomen of his jacket just below the chest plate of his body armor. A strange look came over his face, and he pressed his hands against his stomach, gingerly at first and then more firmly. He unsnapped several straps before dropping his pack to the ground and laid the canvas-enclosed rifle more carefully beside it. His bulky vest came next, but he made no attempt at delicacy, simply dropping it to the ground with a heavy thump. He felt all over his torn and blood-marked tunic, pressing inward with a look of wonderment on his face and even lifting the bottom edge up to examine an even more heavily stained and rent undergarment.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said finally with a rather sheepish look on his face. He had presented a rather strange and comical spectacle by examining himself in front of these proper English gentlemen. “I just suddenly realized—” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “Is something wrong?” Colonel Fitzwilliam asked carefully.

  “Actually, no—everything’s all right. Yet, that’s what’s wrong since I shouldn’t be all right. Before I woke up in your field, I was wounded in battle. I had a belly wound, a bad one—a mortal wound, in fact, since all our medical staff was dead, and their medical supplies were exhausted anyway. Even if our surgeon had survived, which she didn’t, poor woman, she couldn’t have saved me. You can see from the bloodstains how much blood I lost.”

  He waved at his clothing and continued. “But now, not only am I not mortally wounded, there isn’t any tenderness. I wonder if I’ll even have scars. And I was wounded in Cornwall, but I woke up in a field in Derbyshire. Very strange, don’t you think?”

  “Cornwall!” Fitzwilliam said. “I have heard of no violence or unrest in Cornwall.”

  “It was not your Cornwall, sir,” McDunn said softly. “Another topic for which I am not sure I have an answer.”

  “Ah yes,” Fitzwilliam said doubtfully.

  “You two are really showing remarkable steadiness in the face of such mysterious happenings. I couldn’t blame either of you for wondering if this strange man who babbled such nonsense wasn’t just a little bit crazy.”

  Darcy thought over this comment for a minute before looking at his
cousin, who slowly shook his head. Then Darcy nodded in agreement.

  “Perhaps I ought to think so, Major McDunn, and I freely admit to being both confused and mystified. Yet, neither Richard nor I think you are deranged, possibly because you freely admit to being as confused as we are. In any case, I believe you are telling me what you know and what you believe. I would very much like to hear more of your tale and possibly, if I can, assist you in resolving some of the mysteries you represent.”

  Very much like the Darcy Austen imagined, McDunn thought. Fair in his dealing with his peers, respected for his opinions, and judged to be honorable and honest. Damn it! I like this man already whether he’s a fictional character or not. And you can’t doubt everyone. Sometimes you just have to take a chance on your judgment and trust someone.

  “Fair answer,” McDunn said at length, “and a generous one. Very well, I’ll respond in kind. I’ll tell you my tale, at least as much of it as I know for certain.”

  Except for the fact that you shouldn’t exist! he thought sardonically.

  “And I pledge to meet fairness equally and share what I can with you,” McDunn said, continuing his thought. “But I have to warn you: I’m quite confused myself about many parts of my story.”

  A mischievous twinkle came to his eyes. “As an American, I suppose I’m not what you English would consider a gentleman. So I won’t mind in the least if you put me up in the stables. After sleeping in a hole in the ground for months, I would find a stable to actually be quite comfortable.”

  Darcy smiled, and he looked more relaxed. “I believe we can do better than a bed of straw in the stable, Major. And you look to be of similar size to my cousin. Some of the clothing he keeps in his rooms might be suitable for you.”

  “I do appreciate your hospitality, sir,” McDunn said, giving Darcy a quick bow.

  “And your generosity, sir,” he said, giving Fitzwilliam a bow of his own.