Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“You’re welcome, Miss Lizzy.” Reid handed Darcy the flask. “Right then, I’ll be off to find the horses and get help from the farm. With luck, it won’t take long. You keep down, keep alert and listening, and don’t hesitate to use that if need be.” He nodded at the pistol.
Darcy nodded back. “Be careful, John.”
“You too, lad. Confound it, but I hate leaving you.” Reid clamped a hand onto his shoulder for an instant. And then he was gone, angling his way up through the trees to reach the road beyond the curve that had been the undoing of Elizabeth’s gig. The bulk of the hill should protect him.
If the shooter had not moved.
Please God, the horses had not run far. They were ordinary English hunters, as senseless as most horses when faced with danger, not cavalry mounts trained to stop when their reins trailed. He could only pray Reid would find one of them quickly.
Elizabeth stared at the pistol. She rolled her head on the makeshift pillow to look at him, and despite the dirt, bruises and the unmistakable signs of the pain she endured, she raised her eyebrows. “An accident.”
He raised his hands in a helpless shrug.
“The truth, Mr Darcy?”
He grimaced. Sighed. Grimaced again. “The truth is a stray shot came our way, and startled the horses. That is why… Puck is it? That is why Puck bolted.”
She could not lose any more colour, for she had none left. She was already white. But she gasped, and her eyes were suddenly so wide he could barely see even a rim of dark grey against the blackness of the pupils.
He put his hand on her uninjured shoulder again, and again could not swear who would gain the most comfort from the gesture. “I will keep you safe, I promise.”
She closed her eyes, and he was horrified to see the wetness underneath the lids, but when she opened them again, she managed a nod. “Forgive me. I am a poor creature to be overset.”
“Nonsense. You are hurt, I am certain you are in great pain, and, well, I would wager you have never before had to deal with such a situation.”
“An experience both new to me and one I could happily forgo. I dare say from your manner and Mr Reid’s that it is not a new experience for you.”
“No.” He hesitated, but she was a valiant girl, his Elizabeth, and it was better to keep up her spirits by talking.
As he spoke, he kept an eye on the hill above them, watching for movement, listening for danger.
“Our duties have been varied over the years. I have many a lively memory of nights when we spied on troop movements and deployments along the St Lawrence River, or once in the hill country of northern Bengal. When you talked of mud with Miss Bingley, I had great sympathy. I am not unfamiliar with the substance. Spying is not at all a glamorous or glorious occupation, you see. It involves a lot of crawling on the ground under cover, and lying down to peer over the tops of logs or around tree trunks while taking scribbled notes of numbers and tactics.”
“It sounds dangerous.”
“It can be. Once we were almost captured by American militiamen, and escaped only after a wild ride at night through the woods. Very wild.” He added, “Lower Canada has an excessively copious quantity of woods.”
She let out a soft laugh, her eyes fixed on him.
“John Reid got me to safety that night. We rode ventre à terre for what felt like hours, until we reached one of our forts. The one at Pohenegamook.”
“Poh— no! You must be jesting. I cannot believe that is the name.”
“I am afraid it is. A rude and unsophisticated place, but I assure you I was very pleased to see it and the redcoats who called it home.” A musket ball had come close to parting Darcy’s hair, and only Reid’s marksmanship persuaded their pursuers the game was not worth the candle.
“How dull your life must seem now. Although”—and here she managed a wry smile—“perhaps not, given everything that has happened. The fire, Hardwick… and now this.” Her little frown was ridiculously attractive.
“The night of the fire, when I thought I heard someone go out through the servants’ door… I probably did, did I not?”
“Reid thinks so.”
“You were so hard to awaken, and I was terrified.”
“You were very brave.” He sighed. “Reid and I both speculate about the cause of the fire, since neither of us can understand how it happened nor why we were both lethargic and overcome.”
“Papa always said brandy was deceitful.”
“We had not drunk enough of it to be overcome, I assure you, and Reid has the hardest head I know. And yet, I fell asleep at my desk, and you had such difficulty rousing me...” He raised his free hand to his ear, as though in protection.
She had tweaked his ears unmercifully. “I suspect now the bottle of brandy on my desk was drugged. Perhaps laudanum, although I think John or I would have tasted that, but something made me sleep so soundly I heard nothing of anyone setting a fire. Reid has a finely developed sense of caution. All his years of service, and his sense of duty instilled it. He is uneasy.”
“And then, Hardwick.”
“The gardener’s horror at that chimney’s fall was unfeigned. He did not believe the walls to be so unstable. Reid’s suspicions are growing, and I admit I am accustomed to entrusting my life to him. I rely upon his judgement in such matters.”
“Now, this. You suspect Hugh, do you not?”
“I do not want to, but he stands to benefit. He is my heir.”
She frowned again, deeper this time. “If Hugh shot at you, he would not miss. I heard my uncle many a time boast of how Hugh is the best shot he had ever come across.”
“Standley said something of the same at the assembly. That is a point, indeed.” Darcy stared off uphill. Was that hoof-beats?
It was. A moment later, a rider came to a halt on the road above them, and John Reid yelled to say he had Ramesses, and would be back with help as soon as he could do it.
“Be careful!” Darcy roared back at him, and scowled when Ram started up again, and the hoof-beats faded. He waited with bated breath for the sound of a shot, but heard nothing but the hen harrier and a curlew or two.
“Thank heavens,” Elizabeth said, softly. “I must admit I am not very comfortable.”
“I believe it, my poor girl. John will be as swift as he can, and will bring us help to get you back up to the road and then home.
“You look upwards all the time. Is that where he was? The man who shot at us?”
“Yes. Somewhere up on the higher reaches of the hill, among the trees.”
“There is another lane. Much farther up the hill, where the moorland starts. It runs across the moors to join the main Stockport road, and then on to Manchester.”
Across the moors where Hugh was shooting.
“It would be easy for him to make a quick escape, then? So be it. While I would like to lay him by the heels, I want him far gone from you. We must get you home, and all else must wait.”
“Home,” she said, with a small, longing sigh. She brightened. “I shall be in Miss Bingley’s black books if I am carried into the house in all this dirt. I imagine I look disreputable enough to scare crows.”
“You are a touch dishevelled, but I assure you, you are not the least disreputable.”
Elizabeth sighed again. “So you say. To comfort me, I dare say. My reputation will be quite sunk in Miss Bingley’s eyes. She thought a mere six inches of muddy hems to be dreadful enough, and will near swoon to have an Aunt Sally carried into the house.”
“You are no more than a little dusty in places, and bedecked in leaves, as befits a wood sprite.” Darcy flicked a couple of dead leaves from the skirts of her pelisse and held one up to show her.
Her smile was his reward, and the spiky ice clutching at his heart softened and warmed at the sight.
“Well,” she said, “At least we may comfort ourselves it is merely dust and leaf mould. Not nearly so pernicious as mud.”
It was unlikely she slept, but soon after she closed her eyes and lay quiet and unmoving.
He let her be, sitting by her side with her free hand in his—somehow it had made its way there while he told of his adventures in the king’s service—while his other hand rested on the pistol grips.
He gave most of his attention to watching and listening.
Two miles at least to the farm. Reid would push Ram as fast as he could, but was too canny a rider to gallop him the entire distance and risk exhausting the horse.
Canter, walk, trot—ten minutes, perhaps, then as much time back.
Preparing one of carts to carry her, too, would take a few minutes.
Half-an-hour after Reid set out, if their luck held, Darcy might hear their horses and the rumble of the cart, and he could begin to think she would be safe.
His sense of time was all at sea, minutes stretching into hours.
He released the pistol for a moment, and extracted his watch from its pocket, but of course, he had no idea when Reid had left.
How was he to calculate when help would come?
Nothing to do but watch, and endure the wait. It was nothing to what Elizabeth must be enduring. He had never had a shoulder out of joint, but he had heard the heartfelt, profane complaints of men who had. She must be in great pain, and bore it with fortitude.
Far back down the road to the farm he heard something. A horse, he was certain. Two? John Reid was as dependable as… as whatever the most reliable thing was in the world. Darcy owed him so much. Reid would never let him down. Never.
He bent to say in her ear, “They are coming, Elizabeth. Help is at hand. Bear up, my girl. Only a moment or two now.”
Her fingers tightened on his in response.
Horses coming in fast. The noise of someone flinging himself off onto the road, and George Wickham’s voice, loud with fright, harsh as grating metal.
“Lizzy! Lizzy!”
“Here!” Darcy squeezed the hand he held yet in his own and released it. She did not respond.