by J L Pearl
“I do not believe the clouds will break. Neither will they leave the lane. Soon we will eclipse them or they will turn to meet us, one or the other. Either way we will find our query.”
Davis wheezed some unintelligible reply, which Gerald ignored. His partner often had trouble keeping up on the road.
“Hold.” Gerald held up a hand and squinted, trying to make sense of the tracks. It looked as if one pair veered off into the line of trees to the right, and the second did the same not fifty paces ahead. But the tracks returned to the trail and continued on. The new tracks were composed of many partial prints, as if the travelers had moved with haste after resuming their journey.
“Stopped for a little tryst in the woods, you think?” Davis’ words slurred between puffs of air.
Gerald shook his head. “I think not. See how quickly they moved after? No. They left the path for but a moment, I think, because they saw something.”
“And chased after it?”
Gerald frowned, scanning the ground. Hoof prints were far more common in the lane, and he had not thought to analyze them up till this point as he knew the party they sought traveled by foot. But now he noticed a track heading east, back the way they had come, that had torn up the dirt on the right side of the path. Whoever the rider had been, they had driven their mount at a gallop.
“More like fled from it,” he said. He removed a kerchief and wiped his forehead. A few beads of sweat had gathered in the heat of the day.
Davis saw the tracks. “You think we ought to pursue the rider?”
Gerald cocked his head to the side. “We could split up.”
Davis grinned. “You want to keep after the girl.”
“I do.”
“You devil.”
Gerald tilted up his chin. “I’ll have none of that talk, now. There’s a real devil at work somewhere out here.”
“That’s true enough.” Davis planted his hands at his waist and sighed, looking back the way they’d come. “Alright, then. But I’ll be taking it at my own pace. I can’t trot about all day the way I used to. I’m not a young scrapper anymore the way you are.”
Gerald chuffed. “Be careful, Davis.”
“Aye. You do the same.”
2.
Elizabeth Bennet stood at the stoop, waiting for someone to answer the door. When no one did, she let herself in, frowning.
“Hill?”
There was no answer.
She turned over her shoulder to the kind face of Mr. Bingley, who stood behind her sister, Jane. “Give us but one moment, sir,” she said. “We should inform the house that we have brought guests.”
“But of course, miss,” he said with a bow.
Moments later Elizabeth and Jane had scoured the house only to find it empty.
“In a strange day full of strange happenings, this feels the strangest yet,” Jane said.
“You have not seen what I have seen,” Elizabeth replied. “Still, sister, this does not feel well, you have hit that right.”
“Is everything well, Miss Bennet?” Mr. Bingley called from the yard.
“Hardly, I’m afraid.” Elizabeth returned to the door, Jane at her heels. “No one is at home. It is some mystery, and not the sort we need right now. I only hope they are all well.”
“At least Father is with them,” Jane said.
“I’m not sure,” Elizabeth said. “I believe he was heading out on his own this morning. If the girls went out, it’s likely it was only with Mother. And Hill, apparently.”
Jane’s face fell a little. Both of them knew their mother was the least sensible person in the family—perhaps after Lydia, who at least had the fault of her youth to blame.
“We will remain, as pledged,” Mr. Bingley said. “I will not leave you to an empty house in the midst of all this unpleasantness. But Jane, you look pale! You must sit and rest. What can my companion and I do? May we serve you tea?”
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “You serve us, sir? Is this an activity in which you are well versed?”
Mr. Bingley smiled enthusiastically. “I have had the pleasure of serving my sisters in the past, when the servants were furloughed. It was a sort of game, I suppose. And I will not be along in the task.” He gestured at his companion.
“And you, Mr. Darcy?” Elizabeth asked with a gentle lilt in her voice. Perhaps levity would help dissipate the cloud of gloom and mystery about him.
Mr. Darcy gave a little bow of his head. “I am familiar with the procedure, Miss.”
“Please do sit and rest,” Mr. Bingley said. “We will serve you presently.”
A little while later Elizabeth and Jane had taken seats in the drawing room and the gentlemen brought serving trays laden with tea and biscuits. Then, having no one else to distract them with inane conversation, Jane and Mr. Bingley soon found themselves engrossed in each other’s company, leaving Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy to fend for themselves on the opposite side of the room.
“Where did you find these?” Elizabeth asked, lifting a biscuit and smiling bemusedly.
“A kitchen is no mystery,” Mr. Darcy replied.
“But you are, Mr. Darcy. A man of the kitchen?”
He blew a little air out of his nose. Was it a laugh, she wondered? Like everything else about him, it was reserved, aloof.
Everything except the words he had now denounced.
She frowned at the thought but decided not to bring it up again just now. Her first attempt had yielded precious little of value.
“You are also a mystery,” he said. She looked up from her tea, puzzled.
“How so?”
“I have been spending the better part of a night and day trying to reconcile my observations. You are not the head of this family—indeed, not even the eldest child—but you seem both the most sensible. Do you feel the burden?”
Elizabeth felt her back straighten a little. “Sir, I must misunderstand you. Surely you do not mean to offer me insult.”
He frowned. “No, I do not. Did you clearly not hear—”
“I heard you disparage my parents and family and make mockery of me. This was not your intention?”
His face blanched. Elizabeth stood. To his cold credit, he immediately rose as well.
“I thank you for the tea, sir. And I bid you good day.”
“Elizabeth, I—”
She turned on her heel and left the room.
3.
The morning had been warm. As the sun climbed higher in the sky it only got warmer, and soon Inspector Davis was mopping sweat from his brow. Stupid, stupid. He knew he should have requisitioned a couple of mounts. But no, Gerald had been adamant that they get underway without the hassle. Ridiculous. Horses would have saved them time in the end; it wouldn’t have mattered how long it had taken to get them. But a man like that couldn’t be reasoned with.
A man seeking a woman.
“Oh, Lord,” Davis panted, gripping the stitch in his side. “Preserve me.” Heavens knew he’d done nothing in all his years of good living to preserve himself.
His mouth grew dry but he pressed on. His feet, sore, but he pressed on. He could already taste the good English beer waiting for him back at headquarters. But when he began to grow dizzy he paused, bending at the waist with hands on his knees, to catch his breath. No beer was worth passing out on a country lane with a murderer on the loose.
Probably.
When everything grew dim he grew truly concerned for the first time. Had he pushed himself that far, really? He gazed up, ready to blink away the sun, but found a strange sight. He wasn’t losing his vision. Clouds, dark and ominous, had rolled in seemingly from nowhere to obscure the light. The country lane took on an eerie shadowed hue, feeling less like a backwoods trail and more like a city alleyway. Davis drew himself up with a sniffle.
“Odd,” he muttered.
Then the ringing started.
He spun around looking for the source and found nothing. He swatted at his ears and earned only a very brief r
espite. Was it from within or without? He wasn’t sure. But it was growing. If it kept up its maddening crescendo all the way to headquarters, he’d go deaf by the time he arrived. Or mad.
He didn’t have to bother with it for long.
Soon a new sound emerged from the steady tone. Hoofbeats.
“Ah,” he said, crouching in the middle of the lane. “Someone’s in a hurry. But are you friend or foe?”
The moment he spotted the rider he felt chill, but he brushed the feeling aside. He’d been sweating for hours and was just now standing still. It was only natural he’d catch a chill in the sudden shadow. Nevermind, he thought. Soon he’d be plodding on again.
But the speed at which the rider approached was unnerving, he had to admit. He drew himself up again to his full height and held both hands out.
“Ho there,” he shouted. “Slow down! A few questions, friend!”
The rider rode a black horse and was himself dressed darkly. A black hooded cloak concealed his features, and he did not slow as he approached, but barreled directly toward Davis.
“I say, slow down!”
The black horse neighed and its rider spurred it forward, digging in his heels with a little kick. Davis’ eyes widened at the sight. The man had no intention of stopping to answer his questions. Rather, he seemed determine to run him down in the road!
“Goodness!” He leapt to the side just in time to avoid being trampled and fell hard on packed dirt, losing his wind and twisting something in his arm. “Gah!”
He lay there a minute, trying to catch his breath, before he realized two things. First, that the ringing had intensified. Second that the sound of the galloping horse had vanished.
“What the…?”
Then he heard a new sound.
The rider was slowly returning.
4.
Elizabeth sat at the table before her mirror in her bedroom. Her cheeks were far too flushed for her taste.
Why did he affect her so?
There was no reason. No reason at all. He was proud, arrogant, rude, inappropriate, insulting. His lewd comment and his repugnant denial, his aloof detachedness until he had a moment alone with her by the lane, when he held her body close to his under the pretense of protecting her, and now his affront to her family, and spoken plainly to her face, no less—it was all simply beyond the pale.
So why was she so flushed?
It was anger, she told herself. The very existence of such a man, let alone her unwelcome insertion into her sphere, was an abhorrent thing. Who of rational mind and pleasant disposition would feel otherwise?
Mr. Bingley, perhaps.
But he was blinded by friendship. Ah, and he was just the sort to be blinded by such, for he and Jane were too alike; both always eager to see the good in everyone, and to augment it in their own minds, so that they could fairly convince themselves that anyone was in possession of a character of quality.
Such was surely not the case with Mr. Darcy. Of that she was now all too sure. How foolish, how childish of her to have played the damsel and the hostess and to have entered into his games. No more would she allow him near her. Nevermind the warmth of his hands, the strength of his arms, so manly in every way, or the wild, musky scent that drifted just beneath the gentlemanly air about him.
She sighed in exasperation, noting the faint color rising to her cheeks once more as she thought of him.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a gentle knock at the door.
“Miss Bennet?” a man’s voice called.
Mr. Darcy’s voice.
Elizabeth’s breath caught. For a moment she felt like a hunted animal, alone in her room with the unwanted man at the door. Good heavens! The impropriety! Had he even stopped to consider it?
“Yes?” she finally answered, having realized she had been silent some time.
“It would give me great pleasure if you would rejoin me downstairs, where I wish to make my apologies in earnest. After this I will leave you to your thoughts if that is your wish.”
She paused, considering a response, and heard his footfalls as he left her door and took the stairs back down.
So there was something of a gentleman in him, after all.
Ten minutes later, after regaining her composure and refreshing herself as best she could, she descended to find Mr. Darcy playing chaperone to her sister and her suitor, who continued to speak and laugh in animated voices, without a care in the world.
Upon seeing her, Mr. Darcy rose. He didn’t smile, exactly—not as his jovial companion, at least—but there was some pleasant grace about him, some tell in his eyes that he was made happy by her presence.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said, his eyes on her own.
“Mr. Darcy.” She made a small courtesy.
“I am most pleased you have returned.”
She almost replied that she could tell, but thought better of it and bit her tongue. She had made up her mind not to engage in playful banter with him, no matter how sharp his wit. She would not be seduced.
Instead, she took a seat and resumed her tea, still on the tray beside her. “Has there been any news?” she asked.
“None.” He gave a small shake of his head. “The house remains empty, but for the four of us. And the day begins to grow long. I am most anxious for the safety of your family.”
“Truly? I was under the impression you found them a most insensible lot.”
“Those were rude words. I… I was rude. I should not have said them. I beg you accept my apology.”
She waited, breathing shallow. She had not seen this side of him and was unsure whether to trust it or not.
“I hardly know them, Miss Bennet, I hardly know you. I have no right and no cause to make such implications, and I am sorry I did so. But even if I were not sorry, I would still wish them no harm. And to know how it must vex you…”
His eyes dropped. Why? She waited until they met hers again. When they did, he had dropped all pretense. Some enormous wall had fallen down to dust, no less than the wall of Jericho. She saw him.
“It brings me sorrow,” he finished. Then he was silent.
“Mr. Darcy,” she finally said once she believed she could trust herself to speak. “I believe you are being genuine with me for the first time.”
“Say it not so, Miss Bennet! Say rather I have been proud and lacking understanding, but never a deceiver. That has never, could never be my aim.”
She nodded, taking the measure of him. “You have taught me, I think, something of yourself today, at any rate.”
“And what have you learned? What is your conclusion?”
The man sitting before her, humbling himself—this was no scoundrel. The memory of what he had said to her had grown jumbled. Had he ever said it? Had she misheard, or misconstrued? Or perhaps—she blushed at the thought—perhaps it had all occurred in her imaginative dreams, when her wanton sensuality had taken full sway over her senses. Perhaps she had only ever wanted to hear him say that he wished to taste her.
Now he sat, his own breath held, a faint glimmer of reserved hope dancing in his eyes, and she could help but smile to see him so.
“My conclusion… is not altogether unpleasant.”
5.
Inspector Gerald was not having a good day.
He’d followed the tracks for nearly an hour before realizing, through the process of deduction, that he had made a critical error and was in fact following the prints of a different party altogether, one composed entirely of ladies. While any other day he might have smiled at the thought of that group skipping down the lane, today there was no time for levity. He cried out, kicking a tree root in frustration, then cried out again at the pain.
It was a solid tree root.
“Back to the tryst,” he muttered, jogging back the way he had come. When he reached the spot where the tracks had initially left the path, he discovered, searching more carefully this time, that they had backtracked, the same as Davis, from that point, heading back east. “Pe
rfect,” he growled, catching his breath. He thought he had been sending his friend off in search of a mad horseman and that Davis would likely have settled in for a mug at headquarters by this time, but now it seemed more likely his partner would be the one to discover the missing party.
He could not have been more wrong.
The trek back east seemed to take twice as long, and by the time he was nearing the house, darkness was creeping into the sky ahead. The sun, setting behind a gathering of heavy clouds, did little to illuminate the landscape.
More rain, he thought, would be just his luck.
But before the rain could break, and before he reached his starting point again, the setting sun gave him just enough light to uncover a disturbing tale in the tracks around him.
Dirt had been kicked up rather violently, as if by the mysterious rider they had tracked earlier, until the horse had come to a stop and turned. Then it had sped ahead once more, leading to a very strange track indeed. A long smear ran through the dirt, cutting across all the way to the north side of the lane, where it disappeared into the grass. It looked as if someone had been forcefully dragged across the ground. Gerald frowned, considering the tracks.
The smear was quite large.
He followed it back to a set of tracks he could have recognized almost anywhere, and cursed beneath his breath.
“Davis?” he called into the gathering gloom. “Davis, are you there?”
Holding his breath, he stepped off the path and into the tall grass beneath the tree line.
6.
The day passed.
If not with complete ease—for Elizabeth remained uneasy at the absence of her family during such a time—it did pass with some pleasure. Mr. Darcy turned out to be a most agreeable conversationalist, once past his taciturn shell, and they shared a few especially electrifying smiles. At one point he even laughed aloud, though the sound was still gentlemanly, as she told a tale of another country dance she had attended. The sound filled her belly with warmth, like a good meal, and his smiles made her head light, like a good drink.
