Chapter Fourteen
Darcy regarded what he had written with a dissatisfaction he could not quite justify.
First he had written a quick note to his cousin Fitzwilliam, in which he mentioned Miss Bennet, Mrs. Hobart, and the ambush.
He was circumspect in his explanations, for he had no desire to draw attention to Miss Bennet again, and the post was not always secure.
Still, he suggested that Fitzwilliam pay Adrian a visit—if the men had failed with Miss Bennet, whom they believed a Thurnian princess, they might not be above seeking out an actual Thurnian royal, who was known to travel about England a great deal.
He did not think it likely, but then, nothing about the past several days had been likely either. He would rather be thorough. He wrote the direction and set it aside.
Then he had written to Georgiana. It was a clear account she could share with his aunt that included his route, the condition of the roads, the cold, and a small interruption upon the road that had been resolved.
He had informed her that he was well and that he travelled in company with a young lady of sense and her companion, who had been inconvenienced by the weather.
He supplied every fact that duty required.
He had also asked after his sister’s situation at Matlock House, and whether she found it more congenial than school.
When Georgiana’s letter was complete, the ink had dried on Fitzwilliam’s. Darcy folded the paper, sealed it, then tucked it into his pocket.
The ink on Georgiana’s letter was still wet. He would wait a few minutes before folding it.
The little parlour was quiet, with the only sound a pen scratching across paper as Miss Bennet wrote to her family. The landlord’s footsteps and the distant stir of the yard reached them only in dulled echoes. The fire guttered; the single small window admitted a grey, grudging light.
He watched her for a moment, her head bent, dark curls catching the fire’s glow, one hand resting upon the edge of the page, the other moving with purpose. The nib did not hesitate. She knew very well what she meant to say, and to whom.
Darcy doubted that any part of it concerned Thurnia.
He remembered her in the hollow, facing down men with pistols as if they were overgrown schoolboys in need of correction, and afterwards in the carriage, cutting up her own shawl without a second thought.
It did not seem the conduct of a woman who had invented a royal bloodline for the sake of consequence and comfort. In fact, all her behaviour in the four days he had known her did not support that conclusion.
His first judgement at the Lion did not, perhaps, dissolve entirely under this observation; the imposture had been too elaborate, the folly too great, for any man of sense to allow it.
But he had less faith in the notion that she herself had contrived the falsehood.
No, if there was any deceit, she appeared much more likely to be its subject than its author.
The conclusion altered nothing that had occurred.
Yet the thought would not be dismissed—Mrs. Hobart was more likely to be behind the deception than Miss Bennet was.
In fact, Miss Bennet might just as easily be a victim in all of this.
The thought engaged that protective part of him that had required he shield her from the highwaymen.
It sat in his mind like an unwelcome guest, refusing to remove when requested.
The ink was dry. He folded and sealed his sister’s letter and wrote the direction. Then he pushed back his chair.
“I will see about the horses,” he said.
Miss Bennet looked up. There was no colour in her cheeks beyond what cold and fatigue could account for, but her eyes met his steadily.
“You are very kind,” she said.
The words were simple. They ought not to have touched him. And yet, they did.
He inclined his head and left the room, his letters still on the table.
He passed through the hall, which smelled strongly of turnips, and stepped outside.
He had misplaced Georgiana’s Blue John stone and wanted to check the coach to see whether it had fallen out.
He hoped he had not lost it in the hollow.
His carriage stood a little apart, its dark flank streaked with mud. One of the inn-boys was brushing at the wheels with more zeal than method. He mounted the step and opened the door.
The interior smelt of damp wool, leather, and the ghost of Mrs. Hobart’s brandy.
Miss Bennet’s ruined shawl lay folded upon the seat.
Where was his . . . there it was, the little circle of Blue John, on the floor between where he and Miss Bennet had been sitting. He stepped inside and reached for it.
His fingers brushed against something small and hard. He looked down to see a few dried peas on the floor.
He stared at them for a moment as he recalled Miss Bennet’s hand dipping into her pelisse’s pocket. The peas jumping free with the handkerchief, disregarded in her haste to tend to him.
Miss Bennet travelled about the country equipped with dried vegetables.
Of course she did.
He picked up a pea. It sat in the centre of his palm. The other he pinched between his thumb and forefinger and added beside it. Together they looked very small, very plain, and entirely unlike any ornament that Mrs. Hobart would have thought fit for a princess.
The thought occurred, without his seeking it, that a pea was, after all, a seed.
He knew enough of such matters to doubt the wisdom of the notion.
Heaven knew how long Miss Bennet had carried these particular specimens about her person; they might already have been old when she took possession of them.
They might be parched beyond all hope of life.
They were more likely to decay quietly in the soil than to reward foolish sentiment with green shoots.
He slipped them into his waistcoat pocket, beside the unaffectedly practical items a man of business carried there. He could always throw them away later.
He slipped Georgiana’s Blue John into his watch pocket, closed the carriage door, and stepped down again. He wished to be off as soon as the horses were sufficiently rested.
Anders was speaking low to one of the grooms. The man straightened at Darcy’s approach, cap in his hands, his face respectably impassive save for the keen gleam in his eye that had served his master well more than once.
“Sir?”
Darcy cast a glance about them. The yard held only the usual life of such a place: a boy carrying a bucket that slopped over his shoes, a dog nosing in the straw, a man clapping his arms about his chest in a vain attempt to restore feeling to his fingers.
No one stood close enough to overhear, provided one did not shout.
“The landlord has heard,” Darcy said, “that there were highwaymen upon the road behind us. I have told him only what was necessary.”
“He is not the only one to have heard something of it, sir,” Anders replied. “The post-boy who came in before us told the ostler there were shots in the hollow. Men have quick tongues when the subject is not their own foolishness.”
“So I have observed,” Darcy said. “I am less concerned with their foolishness than with that of those who travel with me. I am not willing to present Miss Bennet as a target twice in one day. We shall alter nothing in our outward arrangements that might excite remark, but I would have the discipline of the party improved.”
Anders nodded. “You have only to say the word, sir.”
“I wish you to understand that our passenger is to be either Miss Bennet and nothing else. No princesses. No Highnesses. No Thurnian anything.”
A small spark appeared in Anders’s eyes that might have been approval. “Neither Johnson nor I will speak a word, sir.”
“Good.” Darcy cleared his throat. “In addition, I wish every man on the road to believe that what occurred in that hollow was a regrettable but ordinary piece of English rascality that has already met with a check. We shall not halt where there is no need. I do not require you to drive the team into the ground, but keep them moving. You and Johnson will keep a sharper lookout than ever. If you observe any man who seems too interested in our progress, have Johnson take up the coach gun. I will not have us surprised again.”
“Yes, sir.” He touched his cap. Darcy turned back towards the inn.
The passage from parlour to yard seemed shorter when he re-entered the house.
The landlord bobbed up from a corner where he had been in consultation with a maid about teapots.
He bowed, promised that the fire in the parlour would be built up, that hot water would appear, that whatever they had to secure their comfort would be made ready.
Darcy turned towards the parlour, intending to enquire whether Miss Bennet required any further assistance, and perhaps to attempt, while Mrs. Hobart remained absent, a more temperate explanation of his objections to the princess tale.
It would be easier to say what he must without Mrs. Hobart’s fluttering presence to turn every plain sentence into drama.
He had not taken two steps when the door flew open and Mrs. Hobart herself appeared, crowned with a fresh cap and indignation.
“Mr. Darcy,” she cried, nearly colliding with him.
“I declare this house is the very definition of discomfort. The necessary is in dreadful condition, the water is scarcely warmer than ice, and the maid has no more notion of proper attendance than a ploughboy. I shall never recover. My poor nerves—”
Her hand dropped to the reticule upon her arm, plump fingers tightening about it. Between them, peeping from the mouth of the bag, Darcy glimpsed the folded edge of a letter. Miss Bennet’s, he supposed.
“We shall not be here long,” he told her. “You should find a boy to take that letter.”
“I have yours as well,” she informed him.