Chapter Fifteen #3
She looked up at him and smiled. “And how shall you occupy yourself, while I ponder the many revelations that have confounded everything I thought I knew of myself?”
“Hmm.” He reached up and stroked his chin as if contemplating. “I could read you poetry – but wait, that would never do. It should only drive away your love, is that not so, my dear one?”
She laughed. “I had always thought that I should only laugh at any man reciting verse to me, which may prove to be the case. But then, I had never imagined I should love a man of such gravitas; the attempt may be worth proving me wrong.”
“I would never dare do that,” he drawled. “I have heard much of Bingley’s philosophy, which is that a wife is always correct in all things.”
“In his case, I am sure that is just; Jane is without flaw. I am a different creature entirely, and I was utterly wrong about you.”
Mr. Darcy smiled warmly at her. “You believed me to be without any proper feeling, I daresay.”
“I thought you quite a villain, and I am very well pleased at being proven utterly wrong. You challenge me, sir, and I believe that must be your philosophy in our marriage.”
“I will quarrel with you unrelentingly,” he chided her. “What did you say to me when we were walking together? Anything but an agreeable man?”
Elizabeth boldly raked her eyes down his chest and then back up, smiling brightly as she met his eye. “Having just seen you chop wood in your shirtsleeves, I cannot be trusted to recall anything else from that occasion.”
“Minx,” he breathed.
And then the sound of quarreling grew louder; the gentlemen had returned.
“But I do not not understand,” Mr. Tilney said to Mr. Bertram, as they lingered in the doorway. “If you were taking a headache powder, why would you have come from Crawford’s room?”
“It was closer than my own, and I knew he had some powders,” Mr. Bertram said.
“You could not have taken another twenty paces to your own room?” Sir Edward furrowed his brow and scowled at Mr. Bertram, who began stammering indignantly.
“But… I… well… you see….”
“What is this about?” Lady Susan still lingered near the door, and she addressed the gentlemen as if invigorated by this fresh intrigue. “Mr. Bertram, were you not assisting the other gentlemen in locking Sir Walter away? After a sound thrashing, I hope.”
Sir Edward looked sharply at Mr. Bertram as the gentlemen stepped into the room. “No, he did not come to assist us. We discovered him in the corridor, sneaking out of Crawford’s room.”
Mrs. Rushworth charged at her brother. “After we agreed to search the guest rooms? What are you about, Tom? Planting evidence against Henry?”
Mr. Bertram looked panicked as his sister flew at him.
He shoved her away, and grabbed Mr. Tilney by the throat, pinning him against the door jamb.
He reached into Mr. Tilney’s coat and retrieved the keyring, then pushed the flailing Mr. Tilney aside.
He hastened into the corridor, slammed the door shut, and locked them in.
Mrs. Rushworth and Mr. Tilney were in a shambles on the floor, but Mr. Willoughby clambered over them to move into the parlor. That door slammed shut as well; he pounded on it, screaming oaths at Mr. Bertram.
“Cathy, you have the other set of keys,” Lady Allen said.
Cathy groaned. “I left them in my room for safekeeping.”
“We cannot be really locked in! The servants’ passage,” Miss Denham cried, tugging Mr. Parker’s hand as she led him to the small doorway at the back of the room.
Mr. Crawford assisted Mrs. Rushworth to her feet as Lady Susan laughingly pushed past him to hasten into the narrow corridor where the servants decanted the wine. Mr. Crawford steadied Mrs. Rushworth, then gestured angrily, “He means to frame me! The devious bastard!”
“He means to escape,” Elizabeth said. She looked over at her uncle. “Was he not with you when you constructed the raft with Sir Walter?”
“Yes, and Mr. Parker, too,” Sir Edward replied gravely.
“Can you not see this is proof of Henry’s innocence? Tom wished to set him up, because he does not approve of us being together,” Mrs. Rushworth cried.
“We can see that, but he is getting away!” Emma made a flippant gesture at the desperate widow before pursuing her aunt through the servants’ passage. Harriet and Lady Allen hastily followed.
Elizabeth reluctantly released Mr. Darcy’s hand and began examining the window latch.
It was rusty and required a little finesse, but she managed to open the panes and she peered down, wincing at the sight of the moat.
Mr. Darcy rested a hand on her shoulder, and leaned further out the window.
“We have a clear shot if they make for the raft to escape.”
“That is surely what they intend. I presume all the gentlemen are armed?”
“I should think so,” he said before calling after the rest of their party. “Listen, we need not pursue Mr. Bertram. He intends – and I daresay Miss Denham and Mr. Parker have the same idea – to escape on Sir Walter’s raft.”
Cathy gasped. “Can we stop them?”
Mr. Darcy and Sir Edward drew their pistols, and Mr. Tilney gave a nod of understanding as he unlatched the other window. “Miss Morland, would you please go after the others, and bring them back here? If we must shoot, it would not do for them to be in harm’s way.”
“Of course,” she said, and hastened in pursuit of their companions, calling out for them to return.
Elizabeth stepped away from the window, making way for Mr. Willoughby to take her place beside Mr. Darcy. Both men were ready to shoot, and Sir Edward and Mr. Tilney took aim out of the other window.
“Oh no, you cannot mean to shoot him,” Mrs. Rushworth wailed, still clinging to her lover. “Please! He is still my brother!”
Elizabeth gaped at her. “But he killed your husband and wished to incriminate your… Mr. Crawford. We cannot let him escape!”
Mr. Crawford released his lady from an embrace and moved to the table, which was in disarray with the fallen chandelier in the middle of it. He picked up a large candlestick and tested its weight, then gestured to the window. “The raft is down there?”
Mr. Willoughby stepped aside to afford the other man a glimpse down at the raft. “Do you think to simply throw things at them?”
Mr. Crawford gazed out the window, his arm mimicking a throw as if testing to see what distance he might launch it. “Perhaps. If we shoot them, we are killers, too. It may be better to incapacitate them and lock them up with Sir Walter.”
“I agree,” Mr. Darcy said. “We need not shoot to kill.”
“You could shoot at the raft,” Mrs. Rushworth said. “Quickly, before they reach it. Put a few holes in it, and it will not float.”
“We may need it,” Elizabeth said. “We cannot know when we might get free of this place. Those of us who can be trusted ought to go for help, instead of waiting for rescue to come to us.”
Mr. Tilney turned sharply toward the window. “Here they come. What is our plan? We have but a moment.”
Mr. Crawford hurled the candlestick and then turned and grabbed another one off the table before doing the same. There was a loud grunt from down by the moat, and Elizabeth took a few steps toward the window to see the silhouette of a woman toppling into the muck along the edge of the water.
Elizabeth studied his form as Mr. Crawford hurled a large brass vase of flowers out the window, and it landed at one of the feet of one of the fleeing fugitives.
Feeling a rush of confidence, she seized another candlestick off the table, imagining herself a spear-wielding warrior, and she hurled it at one of the shadowed figure pushing the raft into the water.
The candlestick stuck him in the chest and he toppled backward into Miss Denham, who screeched.
The other man had made it onto the raft, and had some object in hand to use as an oar. “He is getting away,” Sir Edward said. He and Mr. Tilney fired their weapons, and Mrs. Rushworth screamed.
“Please, no!”
“I shot afoul; a warning shot,” Mr. Tilney told her.
“I did not,” Sir Edward said gruffly. He fired again and then smiled grimly. “Double barreled flintlock.”
“I think you struck the raft,” Mr. Darcy groaned. Elizabeth watched as the barrels lashed together began to teeter in the glimmering water. He lowered his weapon and gestured for Mr. Willoughby to do the same. “We ought to save our shots, if we can apprehend them.”
Mr. Crawford scanned the room for something else to throw, and Elizabeth handed him another large vase. He took aim and pitched it out the window, and let out a happy cry as it struck the man on the raft, and damaged one of the floating casks.
The makeshift raft began to list, one corner already submerged in the murky water. The man atop it doubled over in pain at the blows of the debris Mr. Crawford continued to pelt him with, sending anything he could get his hands on in a strange barrage.
And then another shot rang out; the man on the raft shot back at them.
Mr. Darcy cried out just as a mirror at the other side of the room shattered.
Elizabeth turned to him in horror and raised her fingers to the hole in the sleeve of his jacket.
There was a thin line of blood on his exposed arm, and she let out a heavy breath of shock and relief.
Cathy and the other ladies returned to the dining room in a noisy cluster of shouting and confusion.
Elizabeth took a napkin from the table and brought it to the sideboard, where she doused a section of it in brandy before returning to Mr. Darcy.
She dabbed the cloth over his wound, wiping the blood away to reveal a shallow gash.
He laid a hand atop hers. “The bullet only grazed me; ‘tis but a scratch.”
“I almost lost you,” she said.
“And you mean to save me.” He smiled as she tended to him. “It is a shame about this coat; it smells like you.”
The other ladies were worked into a frantic state, demanding to know what was to be done, and the gentlemen agreed to go down and retrieve the fugitives.
Mr. Darcy led the way, and the other gentlemen followed him through the servants’ passage.
Elizabeth and the other ladies gathered at the windows, all of them armed with objects to throw at the people incapacitated people below, should they make any further attempt to escape.
A few minutes later, they watched as the five heroic gentlemen exited the castle and made swift work of apprehending the lady and one of the men – it appeared to be the lanky form of Mr. Parker they hauled out of the muck and bound with rope.
Which meant that it was Mr. Bertram who was grappling to stay afloat on the sinking raft that had scarcely made it halfway across the moat. He shouted at them all, cursing wildly. Beside Elizabeth, Cathy giggled.
Elizabeth’s gaze was fixed on Mr. Darcy, whom she easily recognized amongst the others.
He knotted some rope and sent it arcing through the air, a wide loop at the end of it.
She clapped her hands together as the rope encircled Mr. Bertram, and Mr. Darcy began tugging the man back toward the castle.
The ladies went down through the servants’ passage and met the gentlemen in the corridor as they hauled in their fugitives, two battered and bloody, and the other bleeding from his shoulder and thoroughly drenched in frigid, stinking water. They were all bound with their arms behind their back.
“Your attempt to flee is as good as an admission of guilt,” Mr. Crawford taunted as he shoved Mr. Bertram forward.
“And, as it happens, we did read of your crimes,” Cathy said as Sir Edward and Mr. Tilney hauled Mr. Parker along.
Mr. Tilney grinned wickedly. “Of course we have. You have embezzled from your brother, and there is convincing evidence that you helped Miss Denham in the attempted murder of her aunt, who died a few months later after leaving her everything. I believe my royal guests would be fascinated to hear all about it.”
“Are they really coming?” Lady Susan crossed her arms and looked cheerfully skeptical.
At the same moment, Mrs. Rushworth asked, “What will you do with them?”
“We locked Sir Walter in a small, windowless room, still bound at the wrist and ankles. We will do the same with them, until help arrives or can be sought,” Mr. Darcy said. “The raft is destroyed, but if the royals do not arrive tomorrow, we shall make one of our own and go for help.”
“I do indeed expect them,” Mr. Tilney said. “We must await their aid and judgement.”
Everyone agreed this was the wisest course of action, and even Lady Susan refrained from inciting any further chaos as the three miscreants were locked away. Mr. Tilney retrieved the keys from Mr. Bertram, and declared they might return to the dining room and have their dinner at last.
“There is much to celebrate, now that we are quite safe,” Lady Allen said, looking from Sir Edward to her nephew with an affectionate smile.
“My father and brother are dead, and so is Mrs. Rushworth’s husband,” Mr. Tilney reminded her. “However, I am famished.”
They returned to the dining room, and Mr. Tilney unlocked the door, but came to an abrupt halt. “Oh, dear. There is the small matter of the giant chandelier on my table. It makes quite the centerpiece, does it not?”
Cathy stepped into the room beside him. “Well, it has made a disarray of four places at the table, and we have just reduced the size of our party by that same number. ‘Tis a little dark in here since we have thrown away half the candles, but I daresay we can manage.”
“I am terribly famished, too,” Emma said. She took a tentative step forward, brushed some debris away from her place setting, and took a seat, gesturing for the others to join her.
Elizabeth laughed and sat at Emma’s side. “It is not the strangest thing that has happened at Clwyd Castle.”