Chapter Twenty
MR. DARCY COULD feel Elizabeth’s terror through the bond. He was swathed in blankets, speaking with the driver of the carriage, who was outside.
“If you can but guide me, I shall get her out of there,” he said to the driver.
“Sir, I am going on my own,” said the driver.
“No, no, I cannot ask you to run into a burning house,” said Mr. Darcy. “I do not pay you nearly enough for that.”
“Well, then, you will give me some more money if I manage it,” said the driver. “But I suspect that if I let you go out there, I may not have anyone to pay my salary.”
Mr. Darcy sighed.
“Ah,” said the driver, “here is your other carriage, sir.”
“Colonel Fitzwilliam!” cried Mr. Darcy.
“Yes,” said the driver. “I think all will be well.”
ELIZABETH HAD MANAGED to get her hand free again and to get the gag out of her mouth. She was, even now, working at the knot that held her ankle to the couch. She thought she might have freed herself in only a few more moments.
But Colonel Fitzwilliam came in through the window in the sitting room, shattering the glass with a shot from his gun. He was across the room and cutting her free in seconds.
“We must go now, Mrs. Darcy,” he cried. “Not a moment to lose.”
She let him pull her through the broken window and they scrambled across the lawn. The house was burning very badly.
“We shall need to call for some help of some kind to try to put the fire out,” said the colonel, breathless.
“Lizzy!” called Jane, alighting from the carriage.
Elizabeth ran to her sister.
They embraced.
Then she ran for the windowless carriage. She banged on the door and said, “Do not open this door, Ty, but I am safe.”
“I could feel it in the bond,” came his voice.
“You are safe?” she said.
“I am,” he said. “You?”
“Caroline is dead,” she said.
“Bingley will be devastated,” he said. “Louisa, too.”
Elizabeth nodded. “I don’t think she really meant it. She tried to take it back at the end, I think. I don’t think she would have ever actually hurt you.”
“Well, she was miserable,” said Mr. Darcy. “Perhaps it’s better, in the end, if her endless life was nothing but pain.”
“Perhaps.” Elizabeth turned to look at the house, which was in blazes, though people were rushing in—the drivers from both of the carriage, the colonel, Jane, and several others who seemed to be from neighboring houses—with buckets of water to throw upon the flames. “Perhaps indeed.”
“YOU MUST BELIEVE I had no knowledge of it,” Bingley was saying.
Mr. Darcy was at the Bingley town house that night. He and Bingley were alone together in Bingley’s study, not even with Louisa or Mr. Hurst. Elizabeth had accompanied him, but she was not with them either.
He felt he needed to speak to Bingley alone about this, for some reason.
Perhaps they had shared Caroline in some strange way and this was best conducted between the two of them for that reason.
“I do,” Darcy said. “My wife says that Caroline called it all off right at the last moment, anyway. She was yelling through the door that she could not actually hurt me. But we do not know what passed between herself and Mr. Wickham behind that door before he flung it open and bathed her in sunlight. She was not thinking clearly to leave herself so vulnerable, anyway.”
“If she had spoken to me, I would have stopped her,” said Bingley. He was grieved. He had looked shocked and blank all evening. “I would have saved her. Hell and damnation, I cannot believe she did something like this.”
“In a way, I cannot help but blame myself.”
Bingley sighed. “Oh, that is like you.”
“I wonder why I could not feel anything for her,” said Darcy, sighing as well. He settled down in a chair and gazed into the fireplace, which was burning cheerily, and it reminded him that Caroline had been consumed in flames, that she had died in agony, screaming.
Of course, that was the only death available to his kind. It must be flames, one way or the other. He grimaced.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Bingley.
“Hmm?” said Darcy, not having expected that response.
“Oh, you are going to say that if you had loved her back, she wouldn’t have been so hurt and angry, and I don’t think so.
Because I did love her, Darcy, and if you had loved her, it would have been much the same.
She would have been bored by you and sought someone else to obsess over.
It was, as you say, that she did not quite know how to feel love. ”
Darcy was quiet, contemplating this. Eventually, he said, “Perhaps you’re right.”
“I don’t know why. Her human life… I think it was harsh.
We rarely spoke of such things, but she was a slave, you know, sold as a child and forced to do all manner of things.
I don’t know if she ever recovered from that, or from the sheer betrayal of it, you know?
Sold by your mother and father for money?
Sold by the people who were supposed to care for you? ”
Darcy grimaced again. “Yes, she suffered.”
“Not an excuse, I suppose,” said Bingley. “Perhaps I made too many excuses for her.”
“No, she was lucky to have you. If she had not had you, would she have survived as long as she did, considering how destructively she behaved? You saved her over and over again, my friend.”
“Yes, and now here I am, alone.” Bingley passed a hand over his face. “That other Bennet girl—”
“No,” said Darcy. “No, I don’t want her tangled up in this. And besides, I think my cousin is going to marry her. After all, I put a great deal of effort into getting all those Bennet girls decent dowries.”
Bingley nodded, looking away. “All right. I shall keep my hands and teeth off the eldest Bennet sister.”
“Thank you,” said Darcy.
“But what about your wife? Are you any closer to turning her?”
“I think so,” he said. “But it will be her own decision in the end.”