Chapter Twenty-Nine #3
He hunched the nearest shoulder to her. “He was here a few minutes ago. Some hum about me going down to Sparrowhill—”
“You should go.” She had no qualms about interrupting, and put as much force and sincerity in her tone as she could manage. “You must go.”
He cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowing.
His hands dropped to his sides, leaving his hair looking so dishevelled and blowsy, quite half the maidens in the district would offer to smooth it down for him.
The Harriet Standleys of this world were such bitter creatures because Hugh, like most of the district’s eligible bachelors, had eyes only for Jane.
“Why should I ride down to Sparrowhill just because Fitzwilliam demands I do? What is it to me?”
“Perhaps everything. It is difficult to speak of it.” Elizabeth gave Tom a look she hoped was significant and, yet, imploring.
Tom flushed red, grimacing. “I should… Do you know, Miss Elizabeth, I think…” He stopped and threw up his hands. “I will await you outside the door, Hugh.”
“What? No need for that!”
“Stop being a chucklehead! Miss Elizabeth wishes to speak to you privately.” And, as Hugh turned fulminating looks on both Elizabeth and him, Tom went on in trenchant tones, “And do not take one of your pets with me, Hugh Darcy! I will not quarrel with you. You are not a boy now, to draw a man’s cork out of sheer ill temper! In any event, it will not be mine.”
Poor Tom. He must often feel he was being dragged by the wheels of Hugh’s chariot and it was heartening to see him take a stand, even if it were only to prevent having his nose bloodied. He bowed to Elizabeth, extravagantly ignored Hugh, and left at once.
Hugh stared after him, although Elizabeth could not tell whether his hard, narrow-eyed expression was one of outrage or shock at Tom’s defection. He turned the expression to Elizabeth. “Lizzy?”
“It is about Saturday, Hugh, and what happened then, and the other things that occurred before then. The fire. Hardwick. The story is not mine to tell, but you should go and join your brother. You must see that things cannot go on as they are.”
He glowered, his frown deepening and his mouth turning into a familiar obstinate line.
“Oh, you men.” Elizabeth blew out a hard breath. “I did not lose control of Puck for no reason. We were fired upon, and the ball skimmed along Puck’s flank. Fired upon, Hugh.”
Hugh flinched visibly.
“You know that, though, do you not?”
“I heard some fudging story yesterday over at Bagshaw’s farm.
He was full of it, but he is ape drunk half the time and I did not credit it.
I will not credit it. Truly, why do we let him keep him his tenancy?
His fields are—” He choked off the spate of words, reddening. “It cannot be true. It cannot.”
“But it is. Go to Sparrowhill as soon as may be.”
“But who would do such a thing? What idiocy is—”
“Listen to me. The shot came from the upper road, but missed us. It hurt Puck instead, and he bolted. I could not hold him. Over the gig went, and me with it. I was terrified, Hugh.”
“The gig was firewood, after.” Hugh’s eyes darkened. Fear? Regret? Anger?
She gestured with her free hand to the sling cradling her right arm. “I was fortunate. This will heal, but it might have been very different.”
“This is madness! It must be.”
“Think, Hugh. Think. It is not the first incident in the last few weeks. Neither your brother nor Mr Reid are fools, and neither believe these incidents can be accidents. This must be stopped, before someone does die.”
“It was not I who shot at you!”
“Of course not.”
Hugh snorted. “Well, your partiality is welcome, at any rate. I do not think he shares it. He does not trust me. That man of his. Reid. He watches me.”
Elizabeth bit at her lip and tried to keep her tone gentle. “I will be blunt, Hugh. My father would have described you as hot-at-hand.”
He snorted again, but did not look displeased at the description.
“Whereas I would say, sometimes you could not behave with less thought and maturity if you were yet unbreeched.”
“I thank you for the compliment!”
“You have earned it. Listen to me.” Elizabeth caught his hand in hers.
“You and I, we are dispossessed of the places we once called home. You are luckier than me. You still have Pemberley, even if you cannot call it yours alone, and you have Shireoaks. I would give anything for a Shireoaks to call my own. But I do understand your disappointments. Truly I do. But remember your blessings, too. You cannot still act the undisciplined boy, Hugh. Too often you are both stubborn and cross, and sometimes I despair of you, but I would never believe you have an ounce of real vice in you.”
“Generous of you, indeed, to stand my champion so!”
“As Tom said, do not fly into a pet with me, and stop puckering up in offence. I am not trying to offend you. Far from it. Please go to Sparrowhill, with as much haste as you can. Talk with your brother.” She stopped, pressed her lips closed until they hurt, and then opened them enough to add, “Talk with George.”
“I cannot believe…” His voice trailed away and he closed his eyes for an instant. “You are quite serious.”
“It is time to cease being petulant and ill-tempered about things you cannot change, and remember you are both Darcys.”
He stared down at her for a moment, his frown carving valleys into his brow almost as deep as the one she had tumbled down.
If he tightened his hands into fists with more force, he would break his own fingers.
He clenched them, over and over, his arms held rigidly down his sides, his chin thrown up.
His face was his father’s in its last rictus, stiff and white and unyielding.
What he felt and thought she could only guess, but perhaps it had come home to him at last that this was no disordered dream of hers, no ill-effect of the Chinese powder on an overheated imagination, no baseless tale over which a drunken tenant might gossip.
In the end he nodded, and did as she bade him. He took in a ragged, hitching breath, relaxed his rigid stance enough to catch her into a gentle embrace, careful of her shoulder, and was out the door before she could speak again.
She watched the door spring back with the force of his passing.
Well.
She sighed. Every thought ran up into a wall of disbelief and aching hurt.
But it was a relief that Mr Darcy had John Reid at his back.
She had great faith in Mr Reid. Great faith.
Nothing could happen to Mr Darcy while John Reid watched, and she thanked God for it.
And now Hugh had seen sense, perhaps hope might accompany faith, after all.
Half a dozen old cloaks and bonnets hung in a closet near the garden door.
One would fit her, and she would claim Tom Lackenby’s escort to the sunken garden.
It would be sheltered enough there, yet still she would feel fresher air and the day’s light breeze on her face.
If not a comfortable place to practise patience in the thin sunshine, it was a little less tormenting than St Laurence’s gridiron. A very little less.
There she could sit, and think, and wait.
She opened the door and called for Tom.