Chapter Twenty #2
Her reply was bracing in its common sense, though her voice shook. “Thank heaven it fell far enough away from you to avoid causing injury, and Mr Reid was very quick to pull you back out of possible harm’s way. He is still your guard, at heart.”
“Yes.” Darcy was too thankful to be loquacious.
She looked at him sidelong, and took in a long breath. “What does Mr Reid seek?”
He would not lie. Not to her. “He went to see what went amiss, what brought down the chimney.”
The sidelong look became a frown, and when she turned her head to face him, her eyes were steady and level, her lips pressed into a thin line.
The trembling in her fingers had lessened, but they tightened on his forearm for an instant, a touch so fleeting he might have imagined it.
“I see. Mr Reid’s range of expertise is wide, then. ”
He merely inclined his head, and indicated they follow in Bingley’s and her sister’s wake.
“Of course.” She blew out a quiet, but audible breath not quite as steady as her gaze. “With high winds and storms, such a mishap would not be hard to explain, but on a day as mild as this?”
“It is an old place, after all. And in a parlous state, apparently, no matter what the gardener thinks.”
Her frown deepened. “A ruin in one’s gardens is a fashionable conceit, of course, however alarming to one’s guests or heedless of their safety.”
“A ruin this gigantic shows considerable conceit.”
She smiled at last, as they walked out through the gate into the lane, their pace quite brisk.
“One of ducal proportions. Does the size of the ruin decrease as one works down through the ranks of the nobility, do you think, with a vast one such as this for a duke down to a mere cottage for a gentleman? Where would a hermitage fit within such a scheme?”
He found himself laughing. He could trust to Elizabeth Bennet to lighten the load on him, and here was more proof of it.
“And all we have at Pemberley is the gazebo my father built. How insufficiently romantic we are!” He nodded at her.
“Will you be well if I leave you with your sister, Miss Elizabeth? I must do what I can to rescue our outing, and assure everyone that a trifling accident should not cast a damper upon the day. What a thing to happen!”
“An accident,” she murmured.
Perhaps he had aroused her suspicions, he and Reid between them, but she nodded back and released her hold on his arm, going to join her sister without fuss.
Darcy took a step forward to face the assembled party. “I am sorry indeed that our pleasure today has been marred by this unfortunate mishap. Please do not let it overpower you. As soon as the coach arrives, we shall set off for Chesterfield and put this unpleasant experience behind us.”
“You are all kindness and consideration, sir,” Miss Bingley responded.
She made a motion as if to come and join him, but her sister had one hand fisted in Miss Bingley’s pelisse, holding her fast. Miss Bingley shook her pelisse in an irritated manner, as though to free herself, but it seemed Mrs Hurst had a strong grip.
Darcy disclaimed any particular virtue beyond his responsibility for his guests.
He looked the ladies over carefully. He was the recipient of Miss Bennet’s serene smile before she turned her attention back to Bingley.
Miss Bingley looked exasperated, and Mrs Hurst, seated on a large stone, sipped from a silver flask held in her free hand.
Miss Elizabeth, seemingly her usual cheerful self, went to join the Bingley ladies; he heard her murmured offer of assistance and enquiries as to whether they should seek restoratives and composers from the housekeeper.
But Mrs Hurst apparently found the flask’s contents quite restorative enough, given the eager manner with which she used it.
Darcy was certain her husband would agree.
From previous observation of Hurst’s habits, Darcy concluded the flask was as dear a companion to him as Mrs Hurst herself.
Darcy beckoned unobtrusively to Hurst and Bingley and they walked a few yards off. “Hurst, would you prefer we stay at the inn if they can provide us with rooms? Your wife is overset, and she may not wish to spend an hour or more in the coach before she can rest in comfort.”
Hurst glanced over at the Hall. “They cannot accommodate us here?”
“I would prefer not to ask. The staff might feel constrained to agree, but it is presuming a great deal on the duke’s good nature.”
“Even with the accident happening on his grounds?”
“Even so.”
“I can quite see that,” Bingley said at once, before Hurst could say more.
“We must not inconvenience the staff more than we have already. We are a large party, after all. The inn may not have rooms enough for us all to be quite comfortable, though. We gentleman may be required to sleep in the tap room.”
“Nor will dinner be more than adequate,” Hurst grumbled.
Darcy nodded. “Chesterfield it is, then. We shall set off as soon as may be.”
His companions agreed, and returned to their respective ladies with differing degrees of alacrity.
Perhaps Hurst went to rescue his flask. Darcy was left to stand in the gathering dusk, and, now his heart had ceased hammering and the sudden sharpening of every sense was lessening, he quite envied Mrs Hurst. A nip at Hurst’s flask would be comforting indeed.
Reid appeared at his elbow and drew him away to one side.
“Nothing useful to report, sir. If anyone was up on the scaffold, he had plenty of time to make his way down and escape into the woods before I got around to that side of the old house. I climbed up there myself. The wall is perilous, with loose bricks and hollows everywhere. It moved when I pushed against it, and how none of those masons have come to grief is beyond me.”
“It could have been deliberate then?”
“There are tools left aplenty. T’would be simple enough to apply a crowbar between the bricks and jemmy them from their place.” He scowled. “I am sorry indeed I did not look up when it happened. I might have seen him dodge away, if indeed someone sent that masonry down on our heads.”
Darcy nodded. They would never know if the chimney had been helped to plunge to earth. “Your concern was for me, John, and do not think I did not see it.”
“The coach is on its way,” Bingley called, and pointed down the hill. “And grooms with our horses.”
Darcy turned to look. The coach was indeed lumbering up the narrow lane, and behind it came a pair of grooms leading five horses. There was no sign of Hugh.
“And where is that brother of yours?” said Reid, at the same instant Hugh came into sight far down the lane, sauntering out of the dense woods cloaking the hillside below the ruin.
Darcy handed the last of the ladies up into the coach, and turned to join the other men with the horses. “We will need the links before we reach Chesterfield.”
“I have a tinderbox,” Reid assured him.
Of course he did. The day John Reid was unprepared for any eventuality was the day the world ended.
Darcy stared down the lane. “All the same, let us stop at the inn and light a link there. I would rather not be halfway to Chesterfield and trying to spark a flame in the dark.”
Reid nodded and half-turned his head to watch Hugh, who was running uphill towards them and waving one arm above his head like a madcap boy playing a game. Darcy had seen that expression more than once in the woods of Canada and the Bengal hills. Hugh was in Reid’s sights now.
“Very wise,” Bingley agreed, put one foot in his stirrup and heaved himself up into the saddle while one of the grooms held his mount steady. “Oof! A mounting block would not go amiss!”
Darcy gave him a hard look. “You are getting stout and lazy.”
“What does it matter? These days, my life is not in danger from prowling brigands or tigers,” Bingley retorted.
Could Darcy say the same? He was reminded of a conversation with Miss Elizabeth, several weeks ago now, and her assertion that not all ravening tigers wore striped skins and walked on four legs. True words.
Reid leaned in close. “I will be watchful.”
Darcy could only conclude he was becoming so used to tigerish ways that those simple words were the most reassuring he had ever heard.
Hugh arrived in a clatter of boots against the stony lane. “I thought for a moment you were about to mount up without me!”
“You were farther down the hill. You might have waited, since we would have to pass you on the way to the gates.” Darcy caught at Hugh’s arm as he turned to take his horse’s reins from the waiting groom. “Where were you? I expected you to be with the horses.”
Hugh huffed. “I desired to clear my head with a short walk. What does it matter? I sent them up with the grooms.”
“Clear your head,” Darcy repeated.
“What of it?” Hugh’s sidelong glance at Bingley was stiff with offence and dislike.
“Nothing.” Darcy turned away and reached for Ram’s reins. “You merely missed our adventure. At least, I shall suppose you missed it.”
“What adventure?”
“You don’t know? Sir.” Reid looked at Hugh, expression cold, and he left a noticeable pause before the honorific.
Hugh flushed. “What? What are you talking about?”
Darcy swung up into the saddle, and turned Ramesses towards the inn, ignoring Hugh’s frown.
“Fitzwilliam?”
“It is of no moment, Hugh. Enough. Now we are all clear-headed, it is time to leave and get the ladies to more comfortable quarters where they may recover in peace.” Darcy cast a glance at Reid, who inclined his head, and touched his heels to Ram’s side.
“Walk on, Ram. Gentlemen, let us be on our way.”
Ramesses started down the hill. Darcy looked back once, to ensure the coach was following, just in time to see Hugh scramble up into his saddle. He turned away again before he could catch Hugh’s eye.
He would suppose Hugh’s story was true. He would. To think Hugh a liar and… no. He could not believe it of his brother, no matter how estranged they might be.