Chapter 14 #5
It turned out not to be hers, either, for the only two occupants of the room were Hurst and his wife.
They both expressed their surprise at receiving such guests at such an hour but nonetheless assured them they were welcome.
Darcy refused their offers of refreshments, wasting no time in explaining his object of speaking with Jane.
“I am sorry to disappoint you, Darcy, but she is not here,” Hurst replied.
“There you are. You see, Darcy,” Fitzwilliam said, feeling inordinately relieved. “It is she who has gone off with Bingley after all.”
“Ah, no…forgive me, sir, but Jane has not gone anywhere with my brother,” Mrs Hurst said, dashing his reprieve. “She has gone back to Netherfield. Might I enquire where it is my brother is supposed to have gone?”
“Aye,” Hurst added. “We understood he was at Pemberley.”
“Where is Miss Bingley?” Darcy enquired abruptly.
“Why, she escorted Jane to Hertfordshire,” Mrs Hurst replied warily.
“Is there nobody here who can tell me what is going on?” he growled.
Fitzwilliam rather thought the Hursts must be thinking the same, but his cousin gave neither of them any time to enquire before fixing Mrs Hurst with a steely glower and saying, “When I was here two weeks ago, your sister made a remark about Pemberley not being the best place for Bingley to be. I would know what she meant.”
The lady’s cheeks were instantly overspread with a most dreadful shade of guilt, and she looked to her husband in alarm.
“Best speak up,” he told her. “It seems serious. Tell them everything.”
That did not bode well. Not well at all.
“Well, I…I do not…the fact of the matter is…” She wrung her hands. Darcy looked as though he wished to wring her neck.
“Hurst?” Fitzwilliam prompted.
He took the hint and lay all before them with laudable brevity. “Bingley is in love with Mrs Darcy. Has been from the off.”
Fitzwilliam shifted to the balls of his feet, taut and alert as he watched Darcy close his eyes and become stock still but for the grinding muscle in his jaw.
“Has he done something stupid?” Hurst enquired.
“Is he likely to?” Darcy demanded, suddenly and fearsomely reanimated.
Hurst did not quail, though there did not look to be much blood left above his collar.
“Caroline seems to think he might cause some trouble. She wrote to tell him to come home, but he never replied. I apologise,” he added when Darcy bared his teeth.
“Once Bingley got himself tangled up with Jane, there did not seem any way of mentioning it without causing more harm than good.”
It was a blatant lie. An addle-pate could have guessed their true motivation for silence was the preservation of Darcy’s favour.
“To whom?” Darcy roared, clearly of a mind.
“Darcy,” Fitzwilliam said, gesturing at Mrs Hurst who was visibly trembling. “There is nothing more to be done here. Let us go.”
After a stony-faced appraisal of each person in the room and a single nod of concurrence, Darcy turned and left.
“Bad form, Hurst. Bad form!” Fitzwilliam said before following his cousin from the house.
“This does not make it any more likely that he has absconded with her,” he remarked to his mute and discernibly seething cousin as they steered their horses back across town.
“It is an abhorrent abuse of trust, but he has not acted upon his feelings in a year.
There is no reason to suspect he will do so now.
“I had not thought Hurst the sort for such deception,” he continued when Darcy did not respond. “It is reprehensible that he should have concealed this from you. That said, I cannot comprehend why Jane never said anything—to Elizabeth, if not to you.”
“Never mind either of them. I would know what the hell Ashby is about, keeping this from me.”
Fitzwilliam had been hoping he would not raise that issue. “It cannot have been his intention to keep it from you, or he would not have mentioned it to me.”
“Intelligence such as this ought to have been brought to my attention as a matter of urgency, not tossed away in a careless aside half a week after the event.”
“He, too, may have thought the letter referred to Jane. Do not rush to accuse Ashby before we know the facts.”
Darcy scoffed contemptuously. “The facts are that he begrudged my severe words against his wife and thought to punish mine in return. Do not attempt to convince me otherwise. We both know I am right. He must be lost to every feeling of decency and family honour to be so indifferent to Elizabeth’s wellbeing. ”
With his brother’s remark, “good riddance,” and observation that Darcy ought never to have married Elizabeth fresh in his mind, Fitzwilliam was painfully aware of what little regard Ashby had for her.
Nonetheless, he was deeply grieved by the possibility that he should prove capable of such casual betrayal.
“Will you go to Netherfield to see Jane?” he enquired, changing tack.
“No, I shall go to Pemberley to see Elizabeth.”
“I shall come with you if you will have me along. When do you leave?”
“Had we left when I wished, we might have been into Hertfordshire by now.”
He sighed quietly. “I am sorry, Darcy, but Elizabeth would never forgive me if I allo—”
“First light. Do not be late. I shall not tarry.”
Monday 15 March 1813, Somewhere between London and Derbyshire
Darcy awoke with a jolt, his heart thundering in his chest as he tried to dispel the memory of a nightmarish figure that was half Bingley-half Wickham, kissing Elizabeth against her will.
All was black but for the feeble light of the torches at the front of the carriage bleeding through the edges of the blinds.
“What time is it?” Fitzwilliam enquired with a yawn.
Darcy took out his watch and peered at it, but it was too dark to make out. It had gone two in the morning when they left the last inn, but the brick in the foot well was still warm and there was not a hint of dawn on the horizon. “Not past three, I think.”
“Where are we?” Fitzwilliam said, hooking a finger behind a blind and peering out into the night.
“Not near enough.”
Indeed, despite having set out at the break of dawn yesterday and spending the entire day and night on the road, it was not likely they would reach Pemberley until late that afternoon.
“All will be well, Darcy,” his cousin said quietly.
“He tried to take her, Fitzwilliam. It is already long past well.”
“Yes, he did, but he failed.”
“And who is to say he will fail next time?”
Everything had changed since leaving Farley House on Saturday evening.
He had gone to bed that night plagued by fears that Bingley would attempt to steal Elizabeth away and awakened on Sunday morning to have all those fears transformed into fact when Fitzwilliam arrived bearing a letter that had been awaiting him at his barracks.
Pemberley
11th March
Thirson,
Mrs Darcy has just received a communication from her husband informing her that despite his aunt being dead at last, he does not mean to arrive home until sometime in the middle of next week.
I am at a loss as to why this should be.
After his lunatic friend’s escapades, he ought to be hastening home to ensure his wife’s wellbeing, not dallying by her ladyship’s graveside lamenting her long-overdue passing.
You will, of course, have heard from him what has happened, for I know Mrs Darcy has written to inform him. You will agree this Bingley creature is unhinged. What madness convinced him to impose upon her I know not—and in her present condition!
Somebody ought to see to it that he is actually gone, lest he make another attempt to get her onboard a boat. By which I mean I have seen men less set upon a purpose resort sooner to more forceful means to achieve it. I would put nothing past a man capable of such preposterous aspirations.
Pray tell your cousin to leave off weeping over Lady Catherine’s corpse and get himself back to Pemberley forthwith.
I shall have someone write this out again and send a copy to Knightsbridge lest this one arrives at Rosings after you have left.
Yours in perplexity,
T. Sinclair
They had been in a headlong sprint to Pemberley ever since, all objections to travelling overnight set aside. He and Fitzwilliam were exhausted, his own horses had long been replaced with post, and his desperation to reach Elizabeth increased with every second that ticked by.
What manner of imposition she had suffered at Bingley’s hands was not revealed in the letter, only that he had not succeeded, and Elizabeth was evidently well enough to be writing to him about it.
There was small mercy in knowing she had indeed sent at least one letter, though the mystery of why he had not received it, or any subsequent ones, gave him an entirely new reason to be alarmed.
One-and-twenty hours’ travel with nothing to do but agonise over things he did not know had left Darcy sick to his stomach with worry and angrier than it was sensible to be in such a confined space.
Sleep brought him no relief. It only tortured him with the same picture of Elizabeth in Bingley’s arms over and over again.
He feared he would go out of his mind if they did not begin to make better time.
“He cannot succeed,” Fitzwilliam said, “for they are forewarned this time. He will not be able to get within fifty miles of her. Besides, we cannot be sure he will make another attempt.”
Darcy did not respond. This was a topic they had abandoned more than once, for it offered nothing in the way of hope.
Mrs Sinclair’s letter was dated 11th March.
Having received no response from Ashby to the express sent on Saturday evening, they had no option but to treat his remarks in Kent as fact—and he, based on information received well after the first attempt to abduct Elizabeth, had averred in the future tense that Bingley meant to take her to Nova Scotia.
No matter which way they looked at it, this only seemed to confirm Mrs Sinclair’s concerns that he meant to attempt it again.
Darcy let his head drop back onto the cushions.
He stared into the pitch-black interior of the carriage, wishing for the thousandth time that he had never sent Bingley back to Hertfordshire.
Brooding over how soon the cur’s feelings must have changed after he got there proved an endeavour of pure torment.
“Hurst is right. He has always admired her,” he said into the darkness.
Fitzwilliam did not reply. Darcy was not entirely sure he was still awake, but he did not wish to sleep or dream himself, thus he continued. “I reread all the letters he sent me from Hertfordshire. They were all about Elizabeth. They hardly mentioned Jane at all but to say she was reserved.”
The carriage rolled on. “And I knew he thought her handsome. I have often heard him compliment her. It was he who first recommended her to me.”
The horses clattered through the lightless countryside, but he saw nothing of their inexorable progress.
He knew only smouldering resentment. “He even kept a crayon sketch of her on his desk that one of the Gardiner’s children drew.
I can still remember Jane’s expression when I discovered it.
I could not understand why it vexed her so.
” He closed his eyes. He thought he might as well, for the image of Elizabeth in Bingley’s arms now haunted him whether or not they were open. “How could I have been so blind?”
“We all were.”
Not asleep then.
“If he hurts her—”
“Stop torturing yourself, Darcy. All will be well.”
He pressed a fist to his mouth lest the dread constricting his throat escape. He knew not what he would do if it were not.
Pemberley’s driveway had never seemed so tortuous. They wove in and out of woods, around crags, over streams, and for the first time in his life, Darcy found himself envying Rosings’ contrived and formal avenue.
He could feel Fitzwilliam’s eyes on him. He let him watch and continued staring from the window. They crested a rise and the roof reared into sight. Pemberley still stood at least. He pulled the window down and leant out to call to the driver. “Not the stables! Go directly to the front!”
He returned to his seat but kept his hand on the edge of the lowered window, drumming his fingers on the frame.
As though in a dream, they scarcely seemed to advance despite the cracking of the whip and thundering of hooves.
There was nobody to be seen. The windows were empty and dark.
The gardens were devoid of workers, the lawn devoid of visitors.
There were not even any cursed ducks on the lake.
Nobody opened the front door as they rolled through the gates and began to slow.
That was as much as Darcy could bear. He stood, thrusting his hand out of the window to reach for the handle.
The door flew open and he leapt out, hitting the ground at a run, taking the steps two at a time.
As he neared the top, the front door finally opened, and he almost stumbled, for through it walked the last person in the world he expected to see.
Cold fury flooded his veins. With a roar, he leapt the remaining steps and charged at Bingley, slamming him into the wall and pinning him there with a forearm to his throat.
“Where is my wife? I know you mean to take her! Tell me where she is!”
Bingley did not fight him or look afraid or even ashamed. With a stirring of horror, Darcy realised he was crying.
“You are mistaken,” he croaked past Darcy’s stronghold. “She is not with me. She is dead.”