28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“You are certain she is not here?” Darcy’s voice was cracking, his patience stretched thin.
The warehouse foreman shrank under his glare, wringing his cap between his hands. “No sign of any lady, sir. We checked every room.”
Darcy exhaled sharply, barely resisting the urge to shove past the man and search again himself. The air in the dimly lit warehouse was thick with dust and salt, the scent of old timber and damp canvas filling his lungs. Stacks of crates lined the walls, each one marked with Gardiner’s merchant seal—but none of them held Elizabeth.
Richard stood at his side, his posture rigid. “Someone knows something. We find the missing invoices, the prisoners, we find Miss Bennet. There must be a record of movement here. Who has been in and out of this building today?”
The foreman hesitated, then gestured to a worn ledger on the nearby worktable. “Only the usual dock shipments. No names that would mean anything to you.”
Gardiner stepped forward, flipping through the pages with increasing speed. “This is my business,” he snapped. “I will decide what means something.”
Darcy turned away, his gaze sweeping over the empty floorboards, the crates, the shadows beyond. “Where could they have taken her, blast it?” His pulse hammered in his ears. They were not far behind—he could feel it. And yet, they were already too late.
Richard exhaled sharply. “Somewhere secure. They will not take her to a boarding house or an inn. Too many eyes, too many questions. If she is still in London, they need a place to hold her—somewhere discreet, somewhere temporary.”
Gardiner was still poring over the ledgers, but he looked up. The man’s face was ashen—had been since Darcy first arrived at his house with news of Elizabeth’s disappearance. “I keep an office near the docks, on Thames Street,” he admitted. “A smaller storage house where we receive high-value shipments before transferring them to the larger warehouse. If anything illegal passed through my company, it is possible it went through there.”
Darcy nodded jerkily. “Then we start there.”
By the time they reached the storage house, the streets had grown quieter. The sound of lapping waves against the docks and the distant creak of rigging in the harbor filled the night air.
The storage house was a squat, unimpressive structure, barely distinguishable from the warehouses flanking it. Richard pushed open the door, leading the way inside. The scent of damp wood and stale air filled their noses as they stepped into the dim interior. Darcy’s eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, scanning the room. Empty crates were stacked against the walls, the remnants of past shipments strewn across the floor. At first glance, it appeared abandoned.
And then he saw it.
Against the far wall, an iron-barred holding cell stood empty. The heavy lock on its door hung open, the key still lodged in place.
His stomach twisted.
Richard crossed the room in three strides, gripping one of the iron bars. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. “They were keeping people here.”
Gardiner stepped forward, his voice hoarse. “Prisoners?”
“Smuggled,” Richard confirmed. “Most likely. Holding them until someone in France coughs up a ransom?”
Darcy’s gaze swept the floor. Dust had been disturbed. Someone—or several someones—had been here recently. Then, near the cell’s window, something caught his eye. A shred of fabric, caught on a rough wooden slat.
He reached for it, heart hammering as he rubbed the material between his fingers.
Lavender muslin.
Elizabeth’s gown.
His breath came faster now, his grip tightening on the fabric. “She was here.”
Richard moved to his side, his face hardening as he examined the window. “The frame is splintered. Looks like someone tried to climb through. ”
Gardiner paled. “She tried to escape.”
“Perhaps she succeeded,” Richard suggested.
Darcy peered through the window, down… far down… at the drop she would have faced if she had jumped. “She would have broken her legs,” he huffed softly. “No doubt, she would have done it anyway… but look at the floor.”
Gardiner raised his lantern. Indeed, there was a streak wiped clean through the dirt and grime covering the rest of the floor. Someone or something had been dragged from the window.
A sharp pain speared his heart. What had the brutes done? He closed his eyes and forced himself to focus. The room was empty. She was not here anymore.
But if she had been—if they had kept her in this place—they were not merely holding her. They had taken her because they believed she was valuable somehow… or a liability.
And if they had moved her once, they might move her again.
His grip on the fabric tightened. “We need to find where they took her next.”
Richard turned to the crates stacked near the entrance, prying open one of the smaller ones. “If this place was used to smuggle prisoners, there might be records.”
Darcy helped him pry open the top of a second crate, revealing ledgers packed tightly beneath layers of straw. They flipped through the pages by the dim light of the lantern.
Gardiner leafed through them, nodding. “These shipments are in my company’s name.”
Richard frowned. “Which means whoever orchestrated this is using your business as cover.”
Gardiner scanned the ledger, his expression growing darker. “Here—these marks.” He pointed to a column of names, some crossed out, others circled. “These are supposed to be ordinary shipments, but these notations… they do not match anything I have seen before.”
Darcy followed his gaze. Some names had been marked with an “X.” Others had been transferred to another page entirely.
“What does it mean?” he asked.
Gardiner hesitated. “The shipments marked with an ‘X’… they were removed before reaching their final destination.”
Darcy’s stomach sank. “You mean prisoners.”
Gardiner nodded grimly .
Richard was already flipping through another ledger. “They must have a second location—a holding point before transferring the prisoners onto ships.”
Gardiner sucked in a breath. “The dry docks. I would bet my life on it.”
Darcy looked up sharply. “Where?”
Gardiner turned to him. “There is an old section of the docks where repairs are made to ships—dry storage for vessels not yet seaworthy. Some of the buildings there are still used for storage, but it would be the perfect place to keep someone hidden, and yet near enough to the ships to be useful.”
Darcy snapped the ledger shut. “Then that is where we go.”
The dry docks loomed ahead, skeletal ship frames casting long shadows in the moonlight. The scent of salt and tar was thick in the air, mingling with the distant sound of waves crashing against the harbor wall.
Darcy’s grip on the pistol in his coat pocket tightened as they moved cautiously between the abandoned structures. “That one,” Gardiner said, pointing to one door in particular. “It could be others, perhaps, but this is the one I own.”
“We need to be careful,” Richard murmured. “If they have her here, they will not give her up without a fight.”
Gardiner’s jaw was set. “Then we will not ask nicely.”
Darcy’s pulse thundered in his ears. Elizabeth was somewhere in this labyrinth of wooden beams and salt-stained walls. Every moment wasted was a moment she was in danger.
They reached a narrow alley between two storage buildings. A door stood ajar, flickering candlelight visible from within. Darcy exchanged a look with Richard.
This was it.
Richard drew his pistol, nodding. “On your signal.”
Darcy pushed the door open.
The room inside was mostly empty, save for crates, ropes, and scattered tools. And in the center of the room, bound to a chair, was a man. He was unconscious, his head lolling forward, a trickle of blood running from his temple.
Gardiner cursed. “That is Watson, one of my clerks. ”
Richard knelt beside him, checking his pulse. “Alive, but barely.”
A chill swept through Darcy’s veins. Elizabeth was not here.
The room was abandoned—emptied in haste, but not without intention. They had left someone behind. A message. A warning.
His gaze swept over the bare floor, the overturned chair, the floor…
Darcy stilled. A dark stain marred the worn wooden planks near the far wall. Small, but unmistakable. Blood.
His throat tightened as he stepped closer. The smear was uneven, dragged—as though someone had been moved after falling. His breath came sharper, his mind racing.
“Is that—?” The words barely left his throat before Richard was beside him.
“Could be anything,” Richard said quickly. “Could be the clerk’s blood.”
Darcy’s head snapped up, his pulse hammering. “He had a split lip. A bare trickle of blood, nothing like this.”
Richard exhaled sharply. “Come, Darcy do not let your mind run wild. We do not know whose it is.”
Darcy’s fingers flexed at his sides. That was not the reassurance his cousin thought it was. Because if it was not the clerk’s, then it meant—
His stomach turned.
Elizabeth had been here. And she had been hurt.
The young dockworker hesitated, shifting from foot to foot as he avoided Darcy’s piercing gaze. The night was thick with the scent of brine and damp wood, the fog rolling in from the river, obscuring the distant glow of the city.
“I shall not ask again. Tell me what you saw!” Darcy snapped.
The man swallowed. “It was late, sir. I was finishing a job down by the West Dock. Saw a woman—struggling, she was. Not screaming, exactly, but fighting against the men who had her.”
Darcy’s stomach twisted, his fingers curling into fists at his sides. “And you did nothing.”
The dockworker’s jaw tightened. “I thought—” He exhaled sharply, eyes darting toward Richard, then back to Darcy. “Thought it was a debtor’s matter. Happens often enough. A woman gets herself in trouble, money owed to the wrong men… but now, with the Runners out looking, I thought maybe I should speak up.”
Richard folded his arms, sending a glance to Darcy. “You thought correctly, for my father hired those men. Where did they take her?”
“To one of the old warehouses near the south end. Not Mr. Gardiner’s property,” he added quickly when Gardiner bristled beside him. “Belonged to a man named Asher, but it has been empty a few months now. It ain’t on the main road, so there ain’t many eyes on it.”
“How many men did you see?” Darcy asked.
The dockworker furrowed his brow. “Four. Maybe five? Could be more inside. They were in a hurry.”
Darcy exchanged a look with Richard, who gave a curt nod. “That is something, at least.”
The dockworker hesitated before speaking again. “I… I am sorry, sir. If I had known—”
Darcy did not answer. He turned on his heel and strode back toward the waiting horses.
The darkness in this room was absolute.
Elizabeth leaned back against the damp wooden wall, the coolness against her skull doing little to dull the persistent ache at the base of her head. She had tried the door. She had tested the window. She had scraped her fingers raw against the hinges of a rusted crate, searching for something—anything—she could use to pry her way free.
Nothing.
She drew her knees up to her chest, forcing herself to take slow, even breaths. She could not afford to panic. Panic made people careless. Panic made people stupid.
But what else was there to do?
Fear? No. She refused to succumb to that.
Think.
She pressed her fingers to her temple, massaging lightly. If she could not escape, she would plan. If she could not act, she would reason.
Except her thoughts would not stay in line. They wisped to smoke at the edges, curling into nonsense. The dull pain at the back of her skull had begun to worsen, not sharp enough to be truly alarming, but enough to make her vision swim if she moved too quickly.
Her throat was dry. She had not had water since—when? Sometime before she left the house? That seemed like another lifetime. Now, with each passing moment, the dull throb in her head pulsed harder, exhaustion weighing heavy on her limbs.
It was only fatigue, she told herself. Nothing more. She just needed to rest. Just for a moment.
Just long enough to think.
She closed her eyes, pressing her forehead against her knees.
Darcy.
The thought came unbidden, slipping into her mind with the quiet familiarity of something she had long tried to suppress.
If she had just stayed at his house.
She had been too eager to leave, too determined not to impose and cause a scandal, and where had it landed her? In a dark, damp room that smelled of rotting wood and stale air. How foolish she had been. How utterly ridiculous to care about decorum when the alternative had been… this.
If only she had asked to stay. Not that she could have anticipated any of this, of course! But that impulse had been there, all the same. The urge to turn to him, seek shelter under his protection. If only she had waited inside his study, let the servants bring her tea, allowed herself just a little bit longer in the safety of his home.
It would have been scandalous, of course. A lady alone in the house of a bachelor—unthinkable.
But she would have been safe.
She always felt safe with him.
Her fingers curled slightly against the fabric of her skirts, her chest tightening in a way that had nothing to do with fear. Darcy…
Had he even noticed she was missing yet? Had he been told? Was he searching for her? He had been protective before, but that was for appearance’s sake—was it not?
No. She knew better.
He had gone out of his way for her too many times. The key, the letter, the election, even something as simple as watching over her at a ball. It had not all been politics. Some of it had been something else.
And she —
She had been blind to it. Or perhaps she had not wanted to see.
Because, somewhere in the past few weeks, she had forgot to pretend. She had let her guard slip. Somewhere in the midst of all the careful lies, she had fallen hopelessly, foolishly in love with him.
And how absurd was that?
Even if she survived this, even if she saw him again, nothing could come of it. He was Fitzwilliam Darcy, heir to Pemberley, nephew of an earl, future MP. She was a gentleman’s daughter, but just barely—with no fortune, no position, no family connections to speak of, and now, a black mark on her name that had nothing to do with decency. Their attachment—if he even felt one—had always been an illusion, a necessary performance for the benefit of the public.
But how she wished she could have told him.
Even once. Even in jest. Even as a foolish, whispered confession in the safety of his arms while they danced.
Her fingers loosened. Her head dipped slightly to the side, her body sagging against the cold wood.
She would just rest.
Just for a moment.
Her breathing slowed. The pounding in her skull dulled, slipping into the background like the fading echoes of the sea.
And then—nothing.
The wind howled off the river as they approached the warehouse district. The buildings loomed like great hulking beasts, their skeletal frames draped in mist. The lantern Richard carried swung slightly, casting shifting shadows against the damp stone.
“We cannot go in blind,” Richard murmured.
Darcy clenched his jaw. “We do not have time to be cautious.”
“We do not have time to be reckless either.”
Gardiner, who had been silent for much of the journey, suddenly spoke. “There is an entrance on the south side. Smugglers always have a back way—everyone knows but no one dares go there. That is where we should start. ”
They made their way carefully through the darkened alleyways, their footfalls muffled by the damp ground. As they neared the warehouse, Richard motioned for them to stop. A rusted chain and padlock secured the front, but Richard raised his pistol and motioned to Darcy.
“I suppose this is where that key of yours comes in handy.”
Darcy reached into his coat pocket, pulling out the key Elizabeth had first shown him. He had turned it over in his hands a dozen times, tracing the worn edges, wondering what it might unlock. And now, standing before this door, a sense of grim certainty settled over him. He slid the key into the lock. A faint click echoed in the stillness.
Darcy exhaled sharply. “We are in.”
Richard nodded and made a cupping motion to his ear, then shook his head. Darcy strained his ears. Silence.
Too much silence.
He exchanged a look with Richard, who reached for the pistol holstered at his side. “Something is wrong. There should be dockworkers around, even at this hour. Something spooked them.”
“Well, your father hired half the Bow Street Runners in London, and your militia friends are out in force, as well,” Darcy murmured.
“Gardiner raised a hand to point. "Movement. There.”
Darcy did not need to be told twice. He moved swiftly, pressing his back against the wooden slats of the warehouse wall. Richard nodded to Gardiner, who held up a lantern just enough to illuminate the edge of a second doorway. It was slightly ajar.
“Not locked?” Gardiner whispered.
“No,” Darcy murmured. “They left in a hurry.”
Richard stepped forward first, pistol in hand, pushing the door open with slow, deliberate force. The hinges groaned somewhat, but otherwise, the warehouse remained still.
Darcy followed, his breath tight in his chest.
The place was vast—rows of abandoned crates, rotting barrels, and tattered nets hanging from rusted hooks. It smelled of mildew and stagnant water.
Then his gaze swept lower.
A chair.
Not unusual, in itself, but this one was overturned, its legs scraped against the floor as if it had been knocked aside in a struggle. Beside it, a tin cup lay on its side, a small pool of water seeping into the grooves of the wooden planks .
Darcy stilled, his eyes fixed as his mind turned on the object. The water had not yet dried.
Someone had been here. Recently.
He turned sharply, eyes scanning the dim interior. The dust in the air caught the faintest hint of dampness, stale and briny, but beneath it—something else. The scent of candle smoke, just extinguished.
Darcy exchanged a glance with Richard, who had noticed the same thing. “Someone is being kept here,” Richard murmured. “They were given water.”
Darcy’s jaw locked. “Find them.”
Elizabeth sat motionless, listening.
The storage room was dark, save for the faint glow that seeped through the gaps in the wooden slats. It might have been hours since she had last heard voices outside the door, since her exhaustion had dragged her into sleep. She was not sure anymore.
Someone had come while she slept. She knew that much. A tin cup of water had been left for her, just inside the door. But when she had woken and demanded her release—her voice sharp, her patience worn—one of the men had cursed, snatched up the cup, and thrown it out into the corridor. She had heard it clatter and roll away, spilling every precious drop.
Now, she wished she had swallowed her pride long enough to drink it.
Her mouth was dry, her head pounding dully in protest. She was hungry too, but thirst gnawed at her first, sharp and insistent. She pressed her fingers against her temple, trying to will away the ache, but it did little good.
She had to think. She had to act. Because if she did nothing, she might never leave this room at all .
Then, suddenly, a noise. Footsteps.
Her stomach twisted, and she drew back.
Had they returned?
Elizabeth surged to her feet, pressing her back against the wall, every muscle tensed. The lock rattled—sharper, more forceful than before. Her heart slammed against her ribs as it sounded like someone was working the lock with a key.
She braced herself.
The door burst open, slamming against the wall with a violent crack. A tall figure filled the threshold, his coat disheveled, his breath coming in sharp, ragged gasps.
For one terrible moment, her mind refused to make sense of what she was seeing. Her vision swam. She gripped the wall behind her, every instinct screaming at her to fight, to run—
Then—
“Elizabeth!”
The voice, rough with exhaustion, familiar as her own thoughts.
Her knees buckled.
Darcy.
He was already moving. In an instant, he was at her side, his arms catching her before she could sink to the floor. The scent of wind and salt and something distinctly him filled her senses as he pulled her against him, his grip fierce, unyielding.
“Elizabeth,” he breathed again, as if saying her name was the only way to convince himself she was real.
She clutched at the fabric of his coat, her fingers shaking. “You—you found me.”
His hand swept over her hair, his touch reverent, searching. “Are you hurt?” His voice was low, urgent, the words rough with restraint.
She swallowed, forcing herself to focus. “My head,” she admitted. “And I am… very thirsty.”
A quiet, strangled sound escaped him—half relief, half fury. “I will kill them,” he muttered.
Elizabeth exhaled a weak, broken laugh, the tension of hours of captivity snapping all at once. “You cannot kill all of them, Mr. Darcy.”
He pulled back just enough to meet her gaze, his eyes dark and storming. “Watch me.”
She did not know whether to laugh or weep. Perhaps both. But she did know one thing.
She was safe now.