Like Thieves in the Night
Napoleon’s reaction when it is revealed that Colonel Fitzwilliam and Lydia are gone.
His new champions were late to breakfast, and to be shown off for those who had not been present for their arrival.
Napoleon drummed his fingers against the arm of his throne, there was only so much time in a day, and he needed to plan how best to use his magicians against the eternal thorn in his side.
“Send a servant to go fetch them.”
A merry voice instantly set his teeth on edge.
“I’m afraid the lovely young couple won’t be coming.
In fact, they are quite some distance away, and I’ll be joining them shortly.”
A woman walked through his court, the crowds parting before her like the Biblical Red Sea.
She wore a simple dress that glimmered with magic just like young Mrs. Wickham’s had when she demonstrated her transformation for him, and an infuriating smirk.
With an effort, Napoleon unclenched his jaw and managed to speak calmly and politely.
Emperors given to sudden fits of rage tended not to last long, according to the history books.
“I did not give them permission to leave. Miss…?”
She bowed, but not even a fool could think it respectful.
“Pandora. I see your confusion: you thought that you actually had a say in all this! No, my dear fool, the cards were always in my hands.”
Napoleon roared with fury, and his guards finally caught on and charged at the insufferable woman.
She waited until they were almost within arm’s reach, then darted toward a window.
A soldier lunged, and she dodged, brushing against a freestanding pillar that held a large ornamental vase.
The soldier was not so quick, and collided with the pillar, knocking the vase down, where it rolled across the floor, impeding pursuit.
By the time his guards had picked themselves up, the woman was out the window.
By the time they reached the window, she was out of range for an accurate shot.
"Rouse the army! I want her head on a pike!"
In every loss, every thwarted plan, every failure, enough digging revealed a single name in common: Pandora.
A fitting name, for the amount of trouble she brought with her.
Never the main actor, but the metaphorical distant butterfly whose fluttering wings caused disaster elsewhere.
A bit of supposedly secret information dropped in the last ears that Napoleon wanted to hear it.
A subtle but mostly rational change that just so happened to stymie, block or out maneuver one of the Emperor’s plans.
Now, this.
His prize, his trump card to win the war, snatched from him in the dead of night! Behind it all, this slip of a woman who dared to laugh at him even as she ruined his plans!
At least there was one small consolation: Pandora was Gifted, which meant she had required supernatural means to stay ahead of his spies all these years.
Small wonder they had never caught the wretch until now.
Napoleon went to change into his uniform while his forces were mustered.
That would change.
She had only a few minutes head start this time, and fresh tracks.
Napoleon had Cavalry.
Pandora’s sister met her at the edge of the woods that Napoleon and his court used for Hunting, mounted on the swiftest horse they had.
“They got out?”
Tiresias nodded.
“Orpheus got them to the Bay.
They’re on the way back to England now.
How far behind is your pursuit?”
There was a cloud of dust on the horizon.
Even at Napoleon’s most infuriated and vengeful, an army could only move as fast as its slowest member could be ready.
“About an hour, I believe.”
Tiresias squeezed her sister’s hand lightly.
“I’ll run on ahead and make sure the trap is set.
Be careful; I want to see you again at the end of all this.”
Pandora smiled, and promised nothing.
They’d lost too many people to fall victim to overconfidence now.
From her sister’s sad smile, she knew it too.
Miss Lydia and Colonel Fitzwilliam had been essential to bait the trap, but the trap itself was the culmination of years of espionage work.
Of risks and losses and ceaseless danger.
Of planting the right rumours and making sure they reached the correct ears, to convince Napoleon and his generals that the only reason England had lasted so long was the presence of the Gifted in their armies, to stop State Persecution and convince the emperor that he needed Gifted of his own.
Careful counter-intelligence to keep the presence and movements of the Sixth Cotillion obscured.
Napoleon had defeated Cotillion forces in several battles earlier in the year, but now, he was too enraged to wait for scouts to report that he was outnumbered.
If something went wrong now… but that sort of hopeless thinking was just as dangerous as overconfidence.
Pandora smiled in what she hoped was reassurance.
“I shall see you on the other side.”
Her sister galloped away, vanishing so fast that Pandora suspected the horse wasn’t entirely mortal, either.
The young Gifted who had provided the mount had been far too silently smug about the steed’s breeding.
Pandora wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Pandora waited, and prepared a spell.
One that would increase her speed and stamina temporarily, allowing her to outrun any horse.
She would keep ahead of Napoleons forces, even at full gallop.
But there was a cost.
Even among the first Gifted, the Demigods of legend and myth, there came a point where even the mightiest fell.
The human body had limits, and while magic could suspend those limits for a time, the price always came due.
For the rest of her life, Pandora’s legs and lungs would be limited from what they were now.
Pushed beyond their natural limits, they would never regain full function back to the peak of health.
How that manifested was yet to be determined.
Pheidippides, who first used it to run from Athens to Sparta and back, had died shortly after.
Others who had used the same spell and bothered to write down the effects claimed that it varied depending on fitness, how far and fast one pushed beyond their limit, and the power they commanded.
One person’s debility was a small price to pay for the sake of peace, and Pandora would pay it gladly.
She finished the spell as the first Cavalry riders caught sight of her, her costume vivid against the green and brown of the woodland.
Projecting her voice to carry, Pandora laughed with an assurance and gaiety that she did not feel, and ran with a speed and endurance that would come at a cost.
It was over a year before she could walk unaided.
A year in which Napoleon had abdicated, been exiled, attempted to re-take his throne and failed miserably.
Honestly, could a spy-mistress not turn her back for a minute without everything going to pieces? Pandora cast aside her walking aides a mere day before Napoleon abdicated for the second time, which she was a touch annoyed about.
Orpheus, steadfast at her side in disability as he was in health, only laughed at her grumbling.
“He has never bested you before, my hope.
Perhaps he abdicated rather than lose again.”
If that were the case, the little Tyrant should have stayed on Elba.
Pandora said as much, and smiled as her husband laughed.
“I imagine that the new regime will be anxious to reward us with a long holiday as far from them as possible.
Proven opponents of a past regime are not popular.”
Tiresias entered the room with news, “Colonel Fitzwilliam is a Baron now, and has finally stopped pestering me for advice on how to woo that Dancer of his.
Just in case you needed suggestions for a destination.”
‘Dancer’ had been the codename they had assigned Miss Lydia Bennet, however temporarily.
Great Britain was further away than the other countries of the Sixth and Seventh Coalitions, and several of the Field Generals of the Army could vouch for Pandora.
For a very brief moment, Pandora wished that she’d remained disabled a few more days.
“We had better get packing.
I’d like to be ready to leave when a vacation is suggested.”
They Also Serve, Who Wait In Vigil
A Peek into what was happening at home while Lydia and Colonel Fitzwilliam were in France.
“May I say that I do not like this?”
Elizabeth Darcy, formerly Bennet, had never handled the feeling of helplessness well.
In the past, she had rarely had to.
She and her sisters fought as a team, and Elizabeths own skill with a blade ensured that she could rarely be described as helpless.
Perhaps for a few months the year before she came out, when she broke her leg falling out of a tree and had been confined to gentle exercise until even gentle, loving Jane - another who was more comfortable helping than being helped - was ready to shake her for being “the most insufferable patient in the history of medicine!”
The expression Jane wore now reminded Elizabeth quite a lot of those trying months, despite her increasing waistline.
“If it makes you feel better, you may, for all the good it will do.
We are all worried, Lizzy, and none of us like the idea of Lydia off in France.”
Elizabeth's husband, as solid and taciturn as she was quick and witty, raised an eyebrow.
“Only Lydia?”
He could not be any easier than she was, with the cousin who was as close as a brother also absent.
“Well, one presumes that the Colonel can take care of himself, from what you have told us.”
Mr. Darcy crossed the room to take her hand and stroke it gently.
“Then trust that he can also take care of Lydia, especially with the assistance of the Continental Triad.”
Elizabeth paused, trying to put her feelings into words.
"This is the first time I have had to entrust my sisters' safety to others.
Even in Brighton, we were within an easy distance..."
He nodded, his dark eyes understanding.
"...and now they are far away, with miles of enemy territory between them and any additional aid that they might summon, and there is nothing to do but wait."
She supposed that he must know the feeling.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was not in the Home Guard, and knew Pandora and her team personally, which meant that he must have been deployed to the Continent at least once before now.
"Forgive my impatience, my dear."
They were surrounded by their sisters, so he felt no discomfort in wrapping an arm around her, as he might in a more public or unfamiliar setting.
"You were never made to bear your feelings stoically, my dear.
I was not precisely calm at Jasper's first deployment, either."
Georgiana piped up from her seat near Kitty.
"Oh, he was a black cloud for simply days, and I was little better, moping all over the place.
Papa was quite put out with both of us, saying that we could not always be together, and Jasper must be allowed to make his own way."
Kitty giggled.
"It is difficult when one's parents do not understand the additional dangers, is it not?"
Georgiana nodded, "Aunt and Uncle Matlock, and Aunt Elena, were the generation before us.
I don't remember Aunt Elena, our Papa’s sister, very well, she died not long after Fitzwilliam and Jasper left for Eton, but Aunt Matlock's Gift was why the Fitzwilliams approved of an impoverished Baronet's daughter marrying an Earl's heir."
This tradition of first sons and maiden names really could get confusing.
However did the Darcys' maternal relations manage when the maiden name was something like Longbottom or King? A pet name or second name was always a possibility for everyday use, but a surprising number of things required a legal name.
"I will approve Bennet as a middle name for our future son, my dear, but I shall insist on his Christian name being something sensible that he will not curse us for in the future."
If their children were Gifted, the risk of curses became a lot more substantial, and Elizabeth preferred to earn her enemies honestly.
Being cursed because of a naming tradition did not qualify.
Her husband laughed, and the tension was lightened, just a little.
Elizabeth would worry until her sister was firmly back on English shores, but there was little to be done about it now.
"Oh, Mr. Bennet, Lydia invited to a house party, how wonderful! And Mary being courted! Did I not say that this holiday of theirs was a good idea?"
Mr. Bennet, reading the newspaper in the parlour, rather than his book room, made a vague noise of husbandly agreement.
Longbourn was very quiet, with all five daughters elsewhere, so quiet that he found himself seeking his wife's company, rather than remaining in his book room, which was too quiet without the distant sounds of Elizabeth's laughter, Mary's music efforts or his youngest's chatter drifting through the walls.
His wife of almost a quarter-century continued reading the letter, keeping up a running commentary.
"I knew Jane and Lizzy marrying so well was sure to throw their sisters in the way of eligible gentlemen!"
Eligible, perhaps, but if they were gentlemen worth the name, he should have heard something about it from the young man in question, rather than secondhand through letters between mother and daughter.
Mrs. Bennet often let her excitement get ahead of her.
"I shall not count it as certain until I receive a letter or a visit from the gentleman in question."
His companion in solitude laughed.
"Oh, Mr. Bennet, how you tease me.
There is at least one letter waiting for you to finish the newspaper."
Lowering the paper, Mr. Bennet noticed that she was correct; two letters lay on a small tray on the side table.
One bore Elizabeth's distinct hand, she had been writing with book recommendations from local authors from each stage of their tour.
The other was an unfamiliar script in a more masculine style of writing, eschewing the flourishes common to the literate upper class in favour of a scholar's hand.
That was to say, mindful of the economy of space and paper and very accustomed to making notes.
Well, whoever Mary's suitor was, she had good taste in admirers.
Mr. Bennet affected a lackadaisical attitude toward his estate and parenthood, but his indifference came not from laziness, but uncertainty.
He’d known something was different about his daughters, in the same way something had been different about his Great-Aunt Isabella Bennet, who had died at a great age when he was at school, leaving behind a full three trunks of fantastical journals, books on folklore and mythology and Astronomy, and on the subject of magic.
His daughters had read those books frequently, with a seriousness unsuited for fairy stories.
Mr. Bennet was a heavy sleeper, but no one had ever reported his daughters sneaking out at night, or fears of witchcraft like those that had plagued the Kingdom and Continent a century earlier.
He noticed that some mornings his wife came downstairs looking as though she had slept not at all, but she was a woman of high nerves and limited understanding.
Mrs. Bennet was not cruel or vicious, but she could never grasp that the world did not function according to what she saw as making perfect sense, and others viewed as absurdity.
What could she have seen and understood that he did not? Mr. Bennet’s father had taught him about crop rotations and managing an estate, but how did one manage what they had never known to exist? Perhaps it was time to start taking a more active interest in the lives of his younger daughters.
For lack of better options, he opened the letters.
“Elizabeth writes that Mary has had her fill of travel and will be returning home soon, while Kitty asked to stay with the Darcys for their annual visit to Kent.
They anticipate Lydia’s house party to be of at least six weeks duration.”
There had been an undercurrent of worry in Elizabeth’s letter, but nothing so great that she felt the need to commit her concerns to paper.
He reached for the second letter just slowly enough to make Mrs. Bennet wiggle in her seat in anticipation, then opened that one, too.
“A Mr. Crawley introduces himself and requests my blessing to court Mary.
He is the fourth son of a Baron -“ He ignored his wife squealing with excitement with the ease of long practice.
“- and until now has had a career in the Home Office.”
Mrs. Bennet nearly swooned.
“A Lord’s son and an officer! La, who would have thought it of Mary? I shall write to her at once.”
Mr. Bennet had always preferred conversations to letters.
It was so easy to misinterpret words on a page, without the ability to parse someone’s reactions in person.
Mrs. Bennet would tell him what Mary wrote in reply, and he could speak to her when she returned.