Chapter Twelve
The single, perfect click of a pistol brought to the cock set every nerve in Darcy’s body on edge.
He paused where he was, one foot upon the coach step, his hand upon the door. The sound had come from his left, near at hand. The man with the pistol had waited until the door swung open and his prey was half out, committed to the descent.
Very prudent.
He released the latch and raised his hands, palms outward, away from his body. The movement was unhurried. There was no need to tell an armed man that he had a pistol under his coat, secreted in an inner breast pocket.
“Very sensible, your honour,” called the same rough voice that had ordered Anders to hold the reins. “Now step down. Slow. Keep those hands up. I should not like to spoil that fine coat.”
Darcy stepped down carefully, his hands raised level with his shoulders.
The road beneath his boots was iron-hard and rutted, the snow packed and spotted with the frozen droppings of horses. The road where they stood was narrower than he liked; the fallen limb barred the way ahead from hedge to hedge.
His eyes took in the scene. There were four men that he could see; two stood between him and the limb that blocked their passage, one with a pistol, one with a club.
A third perched upon the bank, acting as a lookout.
The fourth was near the horses’ heads, his pistol trained, Darcy had no doubt, upon Johnson and Anders.
There might be more behind the gorse on the rise or lying low in the ditch.
He could not assume these four were all.
Both pistols were common travelling pieces, single-barrelled. His own, snug beneath his coat, carried two charges.
Darcy did not look back at the coach. He could feel it, the dark bulk of it at his back, the faint creak as the springs stilled. He could sense rather than hear the women within.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “I am afraid you have chosen a poor place for conversation.”
The man immediately before him with the pistol laughed.
He was thick through his chest and shoulders, his coat pulled tight across his back, his hat jammed low.
A ragged scarf half hid his neck. His face, what could be seen of it, had a ruddy colour, that of a man who spent more time outdoors than in and who drank more than he ought.
“We like it well enough,” he said. “No one here to meddle. No one to call the magistrate.”
“Ah, but there is no need for anyone to call,” Darcy returned. “For I am a magistrate. I am bound for London on business connected with that office. If you are wise, you will clear the road at once and permit us to pass, before you invite the sort of trouble that will follow you home.”
There was a brief silence. The man examined him with a look in which calculation sat alongside amusement.
“Hear that, lads?” he called over his shoulder. “We have a justice of the peace among us. A proper fine gentleman. Did you hear how he said it? Bound for London on business. None of your cheap tradesmen, this one.”
A chuckle came from the hedge. The man near the horses shifted his stance. The pistol did not waver.
Darcy’s hands remained where they were. He felt no inclination to join in their laughter.
“You overrate your own importance, sir,” the leader went on. “It is of small moment to us what business you have in town. We are concerned with other matters.” His grin widened, showing two brown teeth. “We know there is a lady in your carriage.”
Darcy kept his voice cool. “I am travelling with two ladies. Both are under my protection.”
“Under your protection,” the man repeated with a leer, as though rolling the phrase upon his tongue. “For what good that’ll do ’em, eh?” He turned his head and spat into the snow.
“We’re here for the princess,” said the man closest to him. “Turn her over and we’ll be gone.”
“Princess?” Darcy asked, feigning confusion. “In my coach?”
“We know all about it, Mr. Magistrate.”
The other men snickered.
Darcy struggled to keep his composure. Of course there was talk of a princess upon the road, with Mrs. Hobart proclaiming Miss Bennet as such at every inn.
Her delight in the word, her endless rehearsing of “Her Highness” to any who would listen, had furnished these men with all the encouragement they required.
He had observed Mrs. Hobart to be vain, foolish, importunate; her loose tongue had now put them all at risk.
“You were misled,” Darcy said. “Whatever folly may have been spoken, there is no princess here.”
The pistol-man’s eyes narrowed. “You sound certain.”
“I am.”
“That is a lie.” The man’s tone turned mocking. “For we have it on good authority that there is a foreign princess in this coach, bound for her royal grandpapa. That her people are anxious for her safe arrival. That they would pay handsomely to secure it.”
“Handsomely,” echoed the man near the horses.
His anger flared—that he should be accused of falsehood.
Darcy merely inclined his head. “Your authority is as false as your enterprise is criminal. The lady’s companion has allowed an innkeeper to credit her charge with a title that does not belong to her.
She has done so for no reason other than to secure better lodgings.
If you persist in your present course, you will find you have risked the gallows for nothing more regal than a country gentleman’s daughter. ”
He intended the contempt to cut and knew that it did.
These men were not complete fools. They understood at once that if there were to be a ransom, it would be smaller and slower in its coming if the prize proved to be merely a genteel young lady instead of a foreign princess.
A lady’s family might require some time to gather funds or might not have access to anything significant at all.
It was too great a risk for so little reward.
For a moment, the thought seemed to weigh with them. The man with the club shifted, his brow furrowing.
Darcy had allowed his irritation with Mrs. Hobart, his dislike of imposture, his own impatience and fatigue, to blind him to the full extent of the danger.
He ought to have corrected the innkeeper so firmly that first night that the word “princess” would never again have been uttered within those walls.
He had not. He was paying for that neglect now. They all were.
“We are losing daylight,” he said. “Let us pass, and we shall forget this unfortunate meeting.”
The leader smiled, slow and wolfish. “Oh, you shall forget, shall you.” He lifted the pistol a little. “Have her step out, your honour. We will judge with our own eyes whether she is worth the trouble. Or I could always just fire into the carriage and see what we carry out.”
Darcy did not move.
“If you fire into that coach,” he said, “you may kill a woman who has never harmed you. That would be murder, not robbery. There is a difference even for men such as you. I do not advise that you cross that line.”
The man’s lip curled, but he did not answer at once. His gaze flicked past Darcy’s shoulder to the carriage and back again, measuring the distance, weighing the risk. There was a hardness in his eyes. Yet there was also an unease that betrayed respect for consequences beyond his present desire.
The man nearest the horses spoke. “We do not want her dead, John, there is no ransom to be had from a corpse. Let us have a look at her and then decide what is to be done.”
“You will not—” He had scarcely spoken when he heard the faint click of the coach latch. For a heartbeat he thought it some trick of the wind; then the door moved and a familiar voice, steady and clear, called out.
“Pray do not fire!”
Darcy half-turned, hoping to order her back into the carriage. “Miss Bennet—”
She had already stepped down. There was a kind of noble decorum in the way she held her ground, but it did not extend to her appearance.
Her gown was a plain brown travelling dress, her pelisse serviceable rather than fine, her bonnet worse for the snow and a long morning upon the road.
There was not so much as a ring upon her hand that a pawnbroker would look at twice.
Her eyes betrayed the strain; they were wide, and a little too bright.
She made him a slight curtsy as she reached his side, as if they had met in a drawing-room rather than in a frozen hollow with pistols levelled at them.
“You will oblige me by returning to the coach,” Darcy said between his teeth, low enough that the men could not catch the words.
“I think not,” she murmured back, without looking at him. “No one will be shot on my account, Mr. Darcy, not even you.”
Then she faced the highwaymen.
“You have been ill-informed,” she said, speaking clearly enough for them all to hear.
“If you came to seek a princess, I fear I must disappoint you. I am only a country gentleman’s daughter on my first visit to town.
I do not travel with ready money and have no jewels at all.
If you mean to ransom me, my father will be very much surprised to hear of it, and still more surprised to learn that he is thought rich enough to make it worth your risk. ”
The man holding the club stared at her through narrowed eyes. “You?” he said coarsely. “You be the princess?”
Colour touched her cheek, but she did not waver. “If I were, do you suppose I would travel in such a gown? Or with only a single companion, without so much as a maid or a footman of my own? I assure you, sir, I am no more a princess than you are a lord.”
“That is just the sort of thing a princess would say,” the leader muttered, but there was doubt in his eye.
He had, it seemed, expected feathers and diamonds, even a crown, not a young lady in plain clothing and well-worn half boots, even if she stood very straight and met his gaze without flinching.
Darcy shifted half a step so that his body stood a little before hers. The movement was slight, but it placed his shoulder between her and the nearest gun.