Chapter Thirty
Day Of Reckoning
They sat around the table in a room heavy with discomfort.
George was pale-faced, statue-stiff as if carved from a lump of local gritstone.
Hugh, once he had slouched into the room, sat with a measurable, sullen space between him and everyone else, his head ducked.
He looked up once at Darcy from under his disordered hair, but seemed more intent upon studying the patterns formed in the grain of the mahogany tabletop.
Reid sat at Darcy’s left shoulder. Darcy would not ask him to leave, despite the looks from both George and Hugh. John Reid was family. Besides, he doubted Reid would go.
“I was not expecting to see you, Hugh,” George said at last.
Hugh, taut as a bowstring with the arrow trembling on the nock, looked up from his study. “I came because Lizzy said I ought.”
“Lizzy?” George could not speak her name more slowly if it were dragged out of him by a drayhorse. His mouth tightened. “Lizzy sent you?”
Hugh nodded, the movement sharp and jerky. “Damn near ordered me here.” He looked to Darcy again, this time raising his head and making the look direct. “She told me to listen to you.”
George closed his eyes a moment and swallowed visibly. “Oh, Lizzy.”
Darcy watched them with every skill and trick learned from years carrying out the king’s business, years of Reid’s patient teaching.
He could only endure this if he distanced himself.
He would not consider them as friends, brothers, family.
He would watch them as he would watch an opponent in negotiations: with outward calm, circumspection, and a judicious civility that masked caution, taking nothing on trust.
He leaned forward and rested both firearms on the tabletop, clasping his hands.
“I would have convened us earlier, but for Bingley’s excursion.
I wanted you here, Hugh, so we might discuss everything away from Pemberley.
We are unlikely to be overheard or interrupted.
” He paused. “And I am unlikely to be ambushed, the way we were ambushed returning from Tom Wilkinson’s farm. ”
Darcy looked them in the eye, first George and then Hugh. George returned the look readily, though his expression was grim with downturned mouth and the muscles along his jaw taut. His lips were narrow and white. Darcy’s graceless younger brother flushed and looked away.
“Mischance, surely!” George sounded choked. “There were so many men at the shoot…”
“Which of them do you think so foolish as to use his gun miles from the fields and moors, over a well-used road?”
George threw up a hand, and shook his head.
“No. The Lord knows there have been accidents aplenty at shoots, but we were more than two miles from the farm. Whoever ambushed us on the road on Saturday was nowhere near the shoot. He did so from the upper lane, both above us and behind us. How did he not see the gig? How did he not see Elizabeth? The shot came very close to me, but only removed my hat before scoring along the pony’s flank.
How it missed her…” Darcy stopped, swallowed, shook his head, fought for the calm demeanour that would armour him.
“By God’s grace alone, I fear. Not by man’s.
What happened to her was unconscionable, and I blame myself. The fault was mine.”
“How was it your fault? This is nonsense, Fitzwilliam.” But George was watchful, drawn in on himself with his head lowered and his shoulders hunching. Only slightly, but enough for Darcy to mark. Reid would see it too, doubtless.
“Because I failed to listen to my own misgivings. I was unwilling to face the truth, to acknowledge the fire at Michaelmas was deliberate and the fall of the chimney at Hardwick too convenient an incident to be mere mischance. I should have had more fortitude to confront betrayal by someone I counted as family, someone determined to see me gone from Pemberley. Permanently gone. Instead, I pretended all was well, that only my imagination was at fault. Believe me, as I sat on the hillside on Saturday and watched her suffer, with only a pocket pistol between us and whoever had ambushed us, I felt the full weight of that failure. The shot was meant for me, but could have cost Elizabeth her life.”
“It was not me. I was up on the moor.” Hugh was red-faced, but was it with anger or shame? Perhaps both.
“I know. Besides, you would not have missed.”
Hugh’s flush deepened, but the look of startled gratitude he gave Darcy betrayed his surprise.
George made a gesture eloquent of frustration and anger. “This is madness, Fitzwilliam.”
“I wish it were.” The lightest touch on his shoulder steadied him.
Darcy took in another long breath. John Reid was where he would always be, at Darcy’s back.
If there were a true friend in the room, he sat behind Darcy, more powerful for his quiet fortitude than blustering protestations could be.
“Hugh was up on the moor, and you, George, were with Tom Wilkinson. Whoever took that shot was neither of you.”
“Of course it was not!” George snorted with derision. “I cannot believe it was anything other than the most dreadful mischance, and that you believe it was deliberate makes me fear for your reason!”
“We shall see. Let us put it aside for a moment, and consider Hardwick.”
Another derisive snort. “I wish I had been there, if only to help you see these fevered imaginings for the fancies they are!”
“I think someone was there. Someone who waited until Hugh had walked down to the inn to fetch the coach, and was gone from sight.” Darcy frowned.
“But, after consideration, I do not believe it was a sincere attempt on my life, but a chance to create more dissent, to widen the breach in the family, to feed the impressions I was gaining and bolster the rumours of conflict with Hugh. From above, from the scaffold on the walls, it must have been obvious no one would be hit by the falling masonry, but with Hugh half a mile away and out of our sight, a chance was snatched to sow more suspicion and distrust.”
George threw up both hands this time, as if miming despair. “Sow distrust…” He allowed his voice to trail off, and shook his head.
“Successfully, I might add, when even Standley speaks to me about the dissent in our family being whispered about all over north Derbyshire.”
Hugh leaned in closer, his expression intent. “You were sharp with me at Hardwick, I remember. I did not quite understand… well, not until I poked my head in through the gate before we left. There was a lot of masonry piled up on the ground.”
Reid spoke for the first time. “I went up the scaffold to see what I might find. The wall had a lot of loose stones, and tools were left close by. Bringing down the chimney would take but a moment.”
“Or,” said George, “it was ripe to fall in any event.”
“Yes, of course. It is entirely possible it truly was mischance and ill-luck, that it was not deliberately levered out of place, and I am placing more weight upon it than it can bear. The Old Hall is indeed ancient and ruinous.” Darcy raised one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.
“I have, of course, considered all that, George.”
“Of course.” The family resemblance could not be mistaken. George was indeed a Darcy, no matter what surname he bore, and could sulk every bit as well as could Hugh.
“The fire?” Hugh’s gaze swivelled between the pair of them, his expression unreadable.
“Neither Reid nor I can account for it. We had banked the study fire, and it was low in the grate. How did an ember fall forward far enough to reach the hearthrug, and I too insensible to know it? Why was it so difficult for Elizabeth to rouse me?”
“I remember you saying you and Reid shared some brandy,” Hugh pointed out.
“A couple of glasses each, yes. Not enough for either of us to be foxed, and believe me, John has a far harder head than I do. He would not be affected by a glass of brandy, and yet, John, did you not say you too were hard to rouse that night?”
“The footman put some effort into it,” Reid said, tone dry.
“Either or both of us would have tasted laudanum.” Darcy raised his left hand and briefly touched his right upper arm, where the puckered scar of one of their Indian adventures scythed down from shoulder to the elbow.
“Its bitterness is hard to hide in any form of drink, as I know. I do not believe someone put laudanum into the brandy.”
“But you still suggest you were drugged?” George no longer sounded incredulous. Perhaps he had lost the capacity for it.
“I cannot think of any other reason why I slept so sound while the hearthrug was ablaze at my feet.” He touched an ear. “But for Miss Elizabeth, I might have been hurt or dead. She put herself into danger to aid me. I do not forget that.”
George’s sigh was strong enough to make sails billow. “And yet, as you say yourself, you would have tasted laudanum. This is a quite pointless argument.”
Hugh watched them steadily, no longer a sulky boy. “What do you think it was, Fitzwilliam?”
Darcy took the maifesan from his pocket in its twist of paper, and put it onto the table. “Elizabeth suggested the Chinese powders used by our father. And by yours, George.”
“Lizzy?” George started visibly.
“Yes.” Darcy added, keeping his tone as level as he could make it, “I fear it nearly broke her heart to tell us.”
George looked away. His Adam’s apple bobbed, the only indication of consternation.