Chapter Twenty-four
Darcy
The Hackney coach had drawn up at the far end of the street, as arranged. Darcy stood outside the narrow townhouse alongside everyone else who had come along and attempted to understand a sensation that was not a significant feature of his interior life.
His pulse was elevated.
He wondered what could be the cause.
The situation was urgent, that much was certain. Yet it did not produce in him any physical response beyond the focus he typically brought to urgent situations.
The reason behind his elevated pulse stood a few steps to his right with her hands clasped before her and her eyes fixed on the upper windows of the townhouse.
Elizabeth Bennet.
He was not a man who led with feeling. He moved through most situations with the deliberate, ordered habit of thinking first and then acting. He was accustomed to this. He had always considered it a reliable arrangement.
It appeared to have broken down somewhere between the start of January and this morning standing here on Jermyn Street, because what he was experiencing now was not a secondary sensation. It was present, and completely involuntary, and it had everything to do with the woman standing nearby.
He had been watching her. Not obviously — he had too much of his wits remaining for that — but with a peripheral constancy borne from accepting that he could not stop.
She had been composed in the carriage, earnest when she spoke to him, comforting to her mother, and sufficiently calm with Bingley; her sense of self was authentic, even as it revealed that keeping a brave face weighed on her deeply.
He was aware of all of these with a clarity that had nothing to do with rational attention.
He was in love with her.
The realisation arrived as sudden recognition. A strain of understanding that he must have known for some time and had not named.
It had the sensation of a room he had been walking past for months, aware of without acknowledging.
Now he had opened the door, and the contents were exactly what he would have found if he had opened it several weeks ago, or at the interval at Almack's when she had told him the square was considerably better than people said and he had stood in the middle of that subscription ball thinking about her for the remainder of the evening.
Perhaps he had not been unconsciously setting her aside. A better description for it was that he was making room. Space for a new type of bond between them. Room for all the future memories they'd make.
He was going to have to do something about this. Not today, because it had requirements that superseded everything else. But the decision to act on his growing feelings for Elizabeth would be addressed soon enough.
He knocked on the door once again. The first few knocks had gone unanswered and everyone seemed to be holding their breath.
Elizabeth’s eyes met his eyes and he gave her a slight knock that communicated steadiness—we are here, we are close, she will be found—and the weight on her shoulders appeared to ease a little bit.
She matched his nod with one of hers and an expression that was not quite a smile but was just as real.
The door opened. It was held slightly ajar by a woman who appeared to be Alice Haverford, judging by the distinct similarity her face bore to Mary’s. That provided a useful hint regarding the household’s arrangement.
Alice had the composed bearing of someone who was accustomed to managing her own responses before the world and a wariness in her expression that had not been there when she opened the door and had crept up now.
Her gaze moved across the assembled group on her step: Darcy, Elizabeth, Bingley, Mr Thwaite, the rest of Mary’s sisters and Mrs Bennet. When it reached Mrs Bennet, her eyes grew steely with recognition.
Mrs Bennet had been weeping since most of the carriage journey and had not stopped.
If Alice wondered why Mrs Bennet was in tears, she did not show. She appeared impassive as she asked what it was they wanted.
"We are looking for Mary Bennet," Elizabeth said. "She was last seen in your company yesterday morning, according to a few observers at St. James Park."
"I only know her through correspondence. I presume you must be her family."
The response was too quick, as if the words had been practised over and over, due to be uttered in the present circumstances.
"The footman who delivered a note on her behalf yesterday morning informed us he came to this address," Darcy said.
"He has confirmed the note was directed to a woman known as Elena.
We also have correspondence, several months of it, with a person of the same name, now located at this address.
We know you are the person we are looking for. That is established."
There was a brief pause, followed by an expression of uncertainty that was not her best effort. "Elena. Yes. I sometimes use another name in correspondence. It is an old habit. I do not deny speaking to Mary, but 1 maintain it was solely done via letters."
"Return my daughter to me." Mrs Bennet snapped. Her voice was direct, stripped of everything except the feeling it contained. "I want my daughter. I know who you are, Alice, and so do the Bow Street Runners who will ensure you're duly punished for what you've done."
"Your daughter," Alice repeated. "I understand your feelings, genuinely. But you must understand mine. I cannot admit to what I have no knowledge of."
"You have not seen her at all," Elizabeth murmured.
"That is what I said."
"Then you will have no objection to our searching the house."
Alice’s composure held for one more second. Then: "This is my house. You have no right to—"
"You are lying."
The words were uttered bluntly and without apology, devoid of any of the social cushioning that most people applied to direct accusations in public spaces.
Alice turned to Elizabeth with sharpened attention.
It was obvious that she had not expected such a level of confrontation and was deciding how to receive it.
"You have been lying," Elizabeth continued, "since you opened the door.
The denial was too quick. The concern arrived too late and in the wrong order.
And you looked at my mother before you looked at any of the rest of us, because she is the person you know, and she is the person you are most afraid of.
" She did not raise her voice. She did not step forward.
She simply looked straight at Alice without hesitation.
"I am very good at knowing when I am being lied to and I will not pretend otherwise.
My sister must be somewhere in this house. "
Alice snarled. "You insolent girl!"
Her polished surface of it was breaking apart, revealing a woman whose attempt at feigning calm had been punctured and who did not, within herself, have a great deal of patience remaining. She took one step towards Elizabeth, and a protective instinct in Darcy rose to the surface.
Elizabeth did not step back.
He had known she would not. The knowledge that she failed to do so was accompanied by a feeling he could only describe as pride. Not the pride of proximity, nothing so reductive as that, but the pride of recognising a trait and seeing it enacted precisely as expected.
She stood where she was, stared at Alice without flinching and did not give an inch of the ground she had taken.
Darcy turned and made a single gesture towards the other end of the street.
The two Bow Street officers came forward with professional, unhurried authority of men.
As men of professional repute, they had handled such situations before and did not require everyone to be in agreement before proceeding.
One had his hand on his pistol as he reached the doorstep. The other was close behind.
A hefty man appeared in the hallway behind Alice.
Darcy noted that he had moved with a speed that did not quite fit his size, the speed of a man accustomed to anticipating when intervention was going to be required.
He positioned himself in the doorway with the simple, massive intention of being an obstacle.
"James!" Alice cried out, appearing both thrilled and relieved.
"Stand aside," the first officer ordered.
James did not move.
Both pistols came out. James looked at the pistols, then at the officers, and must have performed the calculations available to a man with no weapon and two firearms levelled at his chest, and the calculation produced an inevitable result.
He stood aside.
Alice made one further attempt, one hand going to the door frame and her mouth beginning a word, but the second officer took her arm firmly and nudged her aside. The door was fully open, and they were in.
Mr Thwaite went ahead of all of them.
He had been standing at the edge of the group, contained, appearing to be holding himself in close check.
And he was now simply inside, moving through the house and not stopping to consider a specific, pre-planned direction.
There was nothing theatrical about it. It was, in summary, the motion of a man whose whole purpose had resolved itself into a single goal: finding the woman he loved.
Darcy followed with the officers. Elizabeth was beside him; he did not look at her, but he was attuned to her with the complete, unignorable awareness that had been his companion since their time together in the carriage.
He wanted to act. To say something heartwarming and encouraging, but he was also aware that the moment did not belong to either of them and he was not going to insert himself into it.
They went up.
The upper floor was narrow, with three doors along a short corridor. The first stood open, its interior empty. The second was locked.
Mr Thwaite stopped at the second door and put his hand on the frame,
"Mary! Mary, it is Thwaite. Can you hear me?"
The silence lasted a couple of seconds, which were the longest seconds Darcy had stood through in recent memory. He was aware of his own breathing, the heavy silence around him and Elizabeth at his shoulder.
Then a sound came from behind the locked door. Not words; a sound, involuntary and unmistakably human, the sound of someone who had been holding themselves in check for a considerable time and has just been permitted to stop.
Mr Thwaite turned to the officer, who retrieved the key from Alice's unwilling possession in the next minute.
He applied it to the lock, which answered with a positive click.
Darcy stood in the corridor and let Mr Thwaite go into the room first. He watched the moment of reunion between two people who cared deeply for each other with the quiet respect it deserved, without drawing any part of it towards himself.
He was aware, at the edge of his vision, of Elizabeth raising her hand to her mouth.
He was aware, a moment after, of the sound she made: subdued, involuntary, the sound that made it clear that she had been braced for the worst and was largely relieved that things had turned out better.
Then Elizabeth moved into the room and he remained in the corridor with the officer, while feeling like a huge boulder had been lifted from his shoulders.
He thought: Mary Bennet is safe.
He thought, almost immediately after: I am in love with Elizabeth Bennet and I cannot deny it any longer.
He turned to the officer, who was making notes in a small book with a professional air that made it clear that for him, the emotional content of a scene was secondary to its legal documentation.
"The woman downstairs," Darcy said. "And the man. What’s the update on them?"
"Both in custody, sir."
"Good."