Chapter Sixteen
Elizabeth’s shoulders relaxed. The sight of Sir Reginald brought with it a sense that the world had, for a moment, righted itself.
This was the man who had stood in Longbourn’s parlour and calmly extended the invitation to join her royal grandfather in Thurnia.
His presence meant order and explanation and some kind of plan.
At the same instant, she was sorry he had come, for his appearance meant that Mr. Darcy’s part in this odd expedition was very nearly over. Sir Reginald would take charge and Mr. Darcy would bow, offer a civil word or two, and return to his own life. That was what any reasonable gentleman would do.
The room grew suddenly close. She became intensely aware of Mr. Darcy on the other side of the hearth nearest the door, half in shadow, facing the room as though he was guarding it.
Sir Reginald came to greet her.
“Miss Bennet.” His eyes swept over her face with practised assessment, then softened. “You look remarkably well, considering the weather and the roads.”
Elizabeth dipped a curtsy. “I am quite well, I thank you,” she said when she straightened. “The roads have been troublesome, but Mr. Darcy’s arrangements have been excellent, and his people very capable. We have met with no difficulty that his presence did not remedy.”
Sir Reginald’s gaze flicked to Mr. Darcy, taking his measure in a glance. “Mr. Darcy. You have my gratitude.”
Mr. Darcy inclined his head. “I was travelling the same road, Sir Reginald. I did only what any gentleman would have done under the circumstances.”
His tone could not have been more correct. It was his eyes that were altered. Elizabeth, standing within the circle of the firelight, saw the way his gaze sharpened as it met Sir Reginald’s.
The envoy did not notice. How could he? He did not know Mr. Darcy and therefore accepted the politeness only as his due. “Nevertheless, I am obliged to you. His Majesty will be most sensible of the service you have rendered his granddaughter.”
“His Majesty will be overjoyed to know that his envoy is no longer inconvenienced by broken wheels and country inns,” Mrs. Hobart added. “I have been half dead with anxiety at the thought of your sleeping goodness knows where, Sir Reginald. You must have suffered dreadfully.”
Elizabeth thought of her own sleepless nights and Mr. Darcy stretched upon the floor with a small fire and one thin blanket. Sir Reginald had the look of a man who had slept beneath a respectable roof every night of his journey.
“I did well enough,” he said. “The king’s business is not to be arranged by seasons and sunshine, and so I am always well prepared.”
“Being so experienced a traveller, I confess surprise that you elected to make this journey in January rather than wait for the spring,” Mr. Darcy observed. His voice was mild, as though he was simply making polite conversation.
Elizabeth glanced at him. There was nothing in his expression but courtesy, yet she could hear a question in the arrangement of his words: why the haste?
Sir Reginald smiled. “When one has the honour of conveying such tidings from an . . . employer such as mine, sir, there is no patience for delay.”
“Indeed. How long have you been in service to him?”
“Oh, some twenty years, Mr. Darcy.”
“And Mrs. Hobart?”
“I have been in London these past two years with my daughters, Mr. Darcy,” Mrs. Hobart told him. “They have both married Englishmen. But I am Thurnian-born and spent many years in the palace as a nursemaid.”
“It was an easy thing,” Sir Reginald said, “to hire Mrs. Hobart from London for the journey. We did not know whether Miss Bennet would choose to accept the king’s invitation.
If she did not, it would not have been rational to require anyone else to travel all the way from Thurnia to serve as her chaperon. ”
“Because of the cold,” Mr. Darcy said.
“Because of the distance, sir.”
Mr. Darcy was silent for a moment, but then said, “You must have known one another a long time to be comfortable working together on such an important commission.”
His tone remained perfectly civil. Yet as Sir Reginald answered with some compliment to Mrs. Hobart’s devotion, Elizabeth saw a flicker in Mr. Darcy’s eyes, a slight tightening of his mouth.
What was he thinking?
Somehow, she had expected him to be impressed when faced with a royal envoy who could provide letters and seals and all manner of evidence that he was representing the Thurnian crown. Instead, Mr. Darcy stood as composed as if he greeted no more than a gentleman farmer from the next parish.
She found herself almost amused by his stubbornness.
Mr. Darcy, she decided, reserved his awe for more important matters than the king of Thurnia. He might feel genuine enthusiasm for a well–written lease, or a properly draining field, or a cravat that lay to his satisfaction at the first attempt.
“Pray be seated, Sir Reginald,” Mrs. Hobart said, moving a little aside so that he might approach the fire.
Sir Reginald checked to be certain they were alone before he sat.
When he then spoke in little more than a whisper of the king and of Their Majesties’ eagerness to receive their granddaughter, the gentleman’s gaze did not grow warmer. It grew keener.
“His Majesty is in residence at the capital at present?” Mr. Darcy asked.
“He is.” Sir Reginald lifted his glass. “The court returned there in December, and he has been unwell.”
Elizabeth felt her heart beat a little harder. Was this the reason for her summons?
The envoy did not elaborate, but asked instead, “You know something of Thurnia, Mr. Darcy?”
“I have had the honour of knowing His Highness Prince Adrian for some years,” Darcy replied. “We were at Cambridge together.”
“Ah!” Sir Reginald seemed pleased. “Then you will understand that His Highness has no higher wish than to introduce his cousin to the kingdom that ought always to have known her.”
Elizabeth did not look at Mr. Darcy. She did not wish to see again the expression he wore whenever Thurnia was mentioned.
“And you have travelled from the capital alone?” Mr. Darcy asked, in the same even tone. “You have no Thurnian servants with you?”
“I have hired men along the way,” Sir Reginald answered lightly. “It is more convenient. Local fellows know the roads, and the inns. There is no need to drag half a palace staff across Europe merely to fetch one young lady, particularly when it was not clear she would accept.”
Elizabeth thought of the men in the hollow, their pistols, the way they had asked for a princess as if they expected her. A shiver ran the length of her spine.
Mr. Darcy’s hand curled into a fist at his side, but his voice remained level and coolly polite. “You have found such men trustworthy?”
“I have found them useful,” Sir Reginald said. “And should any prove otherwise, I am not without means to deal with them.”
Elizabeth could not tell whether that reassured or troubled her. She looked to Mr. Darcy. His face had not altered, yet she sensed a tension behind the composure, as if some inward knot was drawing itself tighter and tighter.
“I have been most excellently protected,” she declared, with a significant glance at Mr. Darcy.
“I did as much as I was able, but I could not protect you as well as Sir Reginald might have done,” Mrs. Hobart protested.
The woman had not yet accepted the fact that her own behaviour had almost certainly been the cause of their ambush. It was like speaking into the wind.
Mr. Darcy’s gaze moved to Mrs. Hobart for a moment, as though he was adding this remark to a list he had compiled, and then flicked back to Sir Reginald.
It was all most inconveniently intriguing.
The matter of who was to escort her to London did not arise at once.
Sir Reginald must wash, Mrs. Hobart must express her feelings upon his journey in every possible combination of words, and the inn must produce such a supper as could be coaxed from a kitchen that had not expected to serve food to a guest who appeared so late.
Elizabeth did not eat much. Her head ached with the conflict simmering between everyone in the room. It was therefore a relief when Sir Reginald, having finished his wine, drew out his watch and spoke of the morrow.
“We must be upon the road as early as possible,” he said. “I shall give orders for my carriage at dawn. Mrs. Hobart, you and Miss Bennet will of course accompany me.”
He spoke across Elizabeth as if she were one of the trunks that would also, naturally, be carried along.
Mrs. Hobart glowed. “Of course, Sir Reginald. I shall see that we are prepared.”
Mr. Darcy set down his own glass with care. “You will find,” he said, “that my carriage and servants are already engaged for that purpose. We are bound for London as well. The roads are poor, and we have the advantage of a party already formed and accustomed to travelling together.”
Sir Reginald remained coolly polite. “I would not for the world deprive you of the pleasure of Miss Bennet’s company, sir, but you must see that now I am here, the charge is mine. My orders come from her grandfather, and it would be irregular to entrust her journey to any other.”
Elizabeth, who had been looking from one to the other, became aware of a familiar sensation: that of being a passenger whose destination was important, but whose opinions were not.
The two gentlemen spoke with perfect civility and perfect determination, like two chess players who each insisted that the same piece already belonged to his side of the board.
Mr. Darcy remained imperturbable. “Irregular, perhaps, but hardly unsafe. Miss Bennet has already met with one attack upon the road. I should be unwilling to see her venture forth with a reduced escort. My men know the horses and the route. We are already engaged to see her into the care of her family. You may follow in your conveyance to be certain all is proper.”
Sir Reginald’s mouth thinned. “My dear Mr. Darcy, I assure you that I have every expectation that the king’s own people will meet us beyond the first stages.
I have secured another carriage here to take us on.
There is no need for you to further delay your own journey. You have done more than enough.”
There was nothing possessive in Mr. Darcy’s manner, and Elizabeth could not discern why he would be so reluctant to relinquish her care. Neither could she understand why his reluctance pleased her.
“Be that as it may,” the gentleman replied, “I have already undertaken to see Miss Bennet to London. I should be sorry if any mischance occurred because I had yielded that duty prematurely.”
Elizabeth’s lips twitched. It was the politest way of saying that Mr. Darcy found himself a more capable escort than a Thurnian envoy.
But then, if he did not believe her a Thurnian princess, he must believe Sir Reginald an outright fraudster. It was no wonder that Sir Reginald’s shoulders stiffened.
Mrs. Hobart’s eyes darted between them.
Elizabeth lifted her cup and sipped her tepid tea. The conversation flowed above her head, brisk and masculine and full of references to distances and carriages. She wondered, with a certain dryness, whether either gentleman recalled that she was present.
“If I may speak,” she said, setting down her cup, “I am sensible of what I owe to Mr. Darcy and his men. If it is possible to arrange that Sir Reginald’s carriage follow his, or that we travel together in some fashion, that might answer every purpose.”
Both men turned their attention to her at last. She felt it as one feels the sudden warmth of a fire that has flared.
“Mr. Darcy’s carriage is larger than Sir Reginald’s, I believe,” she added, striving for perfect composure. “There is room enough for us all and Sir Reginald, you will not require a carriage.”
It was, she thought, a sensible compromise.
Mr. Darcy did not look comforted. His brows pinched together, as though her suggestion had resolved one difficulty only to present him with another. Sir Reginald did not appear any better pleased.
This was a ridiculous business.
Elizabeth stood and bid them goodnight, leaving them there to continue their argument. Surely they would come to see that her recommendation was the most reasonable course of action, though they would undoubtedly decide that they had negotiated the compromise themselves.
She climbed the stairs to her room and for a little while it was busy there, maids hurrying by with coal scuttles, a child whimpering as it was coaxed along to bed, a man’s laugh breaking out and then softened at a sharp word from below.
By degrees, however, the footsteps grew fewer, the voices hushed, and the inn sank into that uneasy half-quiet that belongs to inns at night.
She trimmed the candle with unsteady hands and tried to behave as if she meant to sleep. She unpinned her hair, folded her gown over a chair, smoothed out her gloves and laid them side by side. The small, orderly tasks brought her no peace.
The day had been long. She felt it in the ache of her shoulders and in the faint tremor that had not yet left her at the thought of the ambush—the shout, the shots, Mr Darcy’s unnatural movement as he was struck.
She could not rest, so Elizabeth dressed, took up her candle, and stepped out alone.
She knew she ought not, yet she felt she could not remain shut up in her room a moment longer.
Perhaps a short walk up and down the stairs, or to see whether there were any books or newspapers to be had.
Something, anything to occupy her until her eyes would close.
The sound of a footstep on the stair below made her heart skip.
She paused on the little landing where the passage turned, the feeble light of her candle slipping over the banister and falling upon the top of a dark head as its owner stepped upward.
He looked up at once, and the light caught the planes of his face, casting the hollows under his cheekbones into shadow.
It was Mr. Darcy.