Some Particular Evil

Chapter 38

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

E lizabeth knew Anne de Bourgh would show up at the parsonage the moment she was not there to protect her friend. Anne’s attentions towards Charlotte had been too pointed to be benign; she was scheming something. And Elizabeth was half a mile away behind the walls of a mansion so expansive, it would take them several minutes just to reach the front stoop!

Darcy’s hand never left hers as they ran through the halls and down the grand staircase. Flying through the doors, the pair untied and mounted the waiting horse and raced to the parsonage.

A scream sounded through the cottage window.

Attempting to burst in, they found that the door was blocked from the other side. With some effort, they heaved through it, and Elizabeth was horrified to see Maria Lucas’s unmoving form crumpled on the floor in front of them. Momentarily stunned, Elizabeth bent to see if she was wounded—or worse—when a grunting howl from the back sitting room caught her ear.

“So… weak ,” the voice growled, drawing out each word through snarling teeth.

Elizabeth led the way to Charlotte’s private parlour, only to find a seething Miss de Bourgh positioned atop Charlotte, who held her wrists with both hands, much as Darcy had done with his aunt. She was not deflecting a dubious embrace, however, but a long jewel-handled blade issuing from Anne’s right hand.

Charlotte, red-faced and perspiring from the effort of warding off her attacker, did not spare them a glance, but Anne turned to look at them. She only smiled, turning her attention immediately back to her quarry.

Darcy did not speak to his cousin; with an agility Elizabeth admired, he rushed towards Anne, grasped his cousin around her waist and bodily tossed her off Charlotte. Without realising it, however, he threw her in Elizabeth’s direction.

Elizabeth narrowly missed a collision with the hard-flung lady, but she was not so fortunate as to evade the knife. She felt the cold metal slash through the skin of her arm as she rushed to her friend. She forced herself not to regard it, however, choosing instead to wrap Charlotte in a protective embrace. She cradled her friend’s head to her bosom as Charlotte wept.

Darcy rushed to the wall Anne had ricocheted off of, climbed atop her, and pounded her wrist against the doorjamb until the knife flung out of her hand and skittered across the floor. Elizabeth breathed a deep sigh of relief herself when she saw that the mad woman had been disarmed.

Gazing up at Darcy, his chest heaving from exertion as he pinned his recalcitrant cousin to the ground, she thought she had never seen anything so beautiful.

When he finally met her eye from his perch atop Anne’s torso, he must have noted the blood running down her arm, for his expression changed from victory to immediate anxiety. “You are hurt!”

Just then, they heard Mr Collins enter through the kitchens, calling out, “My dear Miss de Bourgh! Please allow me to tell you how mortified I am that I was not here to greet you myself when you?—”

The parson’s conciliatory salutation was cut short when he walked through the door and took in the scene before him. Mr Collins furrowed his brow at Elizabeth and Charlotte, huddled against the opposite wall, and then caught sight of Darcy and Miss de Bourgh. The rector made a horrified gasp, intending to use the breath to enquire as to what had happened, no doubt, but Darcy did not let him speak.

Instead, he grabbed Collins’s arm and none too gently pulled the man towards him, handing off the guarding of Miss de Bourgh. “Hold on to her,” Darcy commanded as he scrambled to Elizabeth’s side. “Whatever you do, do not let her go!”

Elizabeth finally felt the pain of the laceration as Darcy neared. Tearing his neck cloth off in one motion and slipping it under her elbow, he positioned it above the cut and tied it tightly.

“Does it hurt, my darling?”

“Would you believe me if I said it does not?” she answered with a wan laugh.

“Not a bit,” he said, flashing her a half smile as he tore his coat off and looked about, no doubt seeking something to staunch the blood pulsing from her wound.

“My gown,” she offered. “It is ruined any way.”

He looked at her as if to make sure, then lifted the top layer of her skirts and proceeded to rip a strip off the bottom of her petticoat. Bunching it up, he pressed it hard against the injury. Then he turned his face towards Charlotte, who was still ensconced in Elizabeth’s arms.

“Mrs Collins, are you hurt?”

“No, but my sister?—”

Charlotte’s reply was interrupted by the nasally intonations of her husband from behind their little huddle. They had not realised how quiet the room had become. Miss de Bourgh had paused her ranting upon being handed over to Mr Collins, and that man was now ready to make his opinions known on the scene he had walked into moments before. “Sir! I cannot abide such behaviour from any person in my parish, much less a common farmhand. Why, for you to behave in such a way towards the exalted daughter of my noble-born patroness is absolutely unconscionable!”

In hindsight, perhaps Mr Darcy should not have entrusted to the toad-eating little man the restraining of a lady he so revered. After all, Mr Collins could not know that she was the cause of the chaos before him.

Darcy, Charlotte, and Elizabeth looked up, astounded to see Mr Collins standing above Miss de Bourgh, facing them and gesturing enthusiastically with both hands—both empty hands—as he continued his vociferous reprimand. They watched as the madwoman slinked about behind him, as silent and predatory as a cat on the hunt. All three immediately began shouting to Mr Collins to turn around, to be careful, to “ grab her !” Alas, their shouts fell on wilfully deaf ears.

“To manhandle a delicate lady in such a brutish manner is unpardonable in the extreme. You, sir, should learn to respect your betters! How Lady Catherine will react when she hears of this atrocity, I cannot begin to?—”

Mr Collins did not finish his sentence. With a shocked grunt, his eyes went wide, then rolled back in his head as he uttered, “But...but Lady Catherine … ”

Those words would be his last.

As his body fell to the ground, Miss de Bourgh rose up from behind him, eyes wild with murderous glee as she homed in on the three of them. No, not the three of them.

Charlotte.

She focused on Charlotte once again, as if Darcy and Elizabeth were not even in the room, and a maniacal cackle emanated from deep within her small frame. She lunged towards the settee that stood between her and her target, knife held high, still dripping with the blood of Charlotte’s husband.

Before she could move two steps, however, a roar of fury and a flash of yellow burst through the door into the parlour, and a whipping crack resounded through the room. Anne dropped to the ground.

There, standing above her prone figure, brandishing a fire iron and panting in agitation, was Maria. She must have come to just in time to grab the poker and run after her sister. Elizabeth was glad she and Darcy had been there in time to save Charlotte, but it was Maria’s sisterly love and protection that had put an end to their harrowing ordeal. Her huge eyes were weary as she stared down at her waylaid victim.

Maria paid no heed to the eerily still body of her erstwhile brother, whose prone figure lay before her, but stepped over him and plodded, exhausted, to her sister.

Elizabeth handed Charlotte over to her care, or she gave Maria over to Charlotte’s. Relinquishing her role as comforter, she heartily accepted the mantle of the comforted as she sank into Darcy’s waiting arms.