Chapter 12
Darcy had departed for London moments after receiving correspondence from Colonel Fitzwilliam earlier that day.
Meet us in the Red Oyster Taproom this evening at nine, he had written. There are two gentlemen you must meet. I believe they will be useful in answering your questions.
To his astonishment, Darcy found his cousin seated in a dim corner of the taproom with none other than George Wickham.
He paused in mid-step, trying his best to steady his anger before approaching the table.
He could not fathom why his cousin would set up a meeting with Wickham of all people, but he trusted the Colonel enough to know it must be important.
As he approached the group, he noticed a second, rougher-looking man seated with them.
“Darcy.” Wickham's smile held its usual insolence.
Darcy’s cold eyes briefly flickered across Wickham before landing on his cousin. “I trust you have a good explanation for this, Richard.”
The Colonel’s expression was grim as he gestured to the empty seat. “Sit. You need to hear what they have to say.”
The Highland man studied Darcy with eyes that had witnessed suffering beyond measure. “Rob Kinsman. I survived the Clearances on Skye.”
The name from the confrontation at Longbourn. Darcy kept his expression carefully neutral whilst his mind worked rapidly. “ You have information regarding Malcolm MacKinnon?”
The man started to reply, but Wickham immediately placed a warning hand on his arm.
“It depends,” he drawled, looking at Darcy. “How much is this information worth to you?”
Darcy scowled. “Are you asking for coin in return?”
Wickham shrugged and took a sip of ale. “If you must know, we visited MacKinnon at Longbourn five days past. I had previously written to him asking for coin to keep my mouth shut. He declined my offer, so here I am, about to reveal his darkest secrets. You know how trade works, Darcy,” he added insolently.
Biting back an angry retort, Darcy retrieved a handful of coins from his miser purse and slid them across the table. Wickham raised an eyebrow.
“Why, Darcy, I would have assumed this information was quite valuable to you.”
Setting his jaw, Darcy slammed the purse on the table, where it was greedily snatched up by Wickham.
“Speak,” Darcy ordered the other man.
“Aye, I know the man residing at Longbourn, though that is not his true name.” Kinsman leant forward, and his voice took on a bitter edge that spoke of old wounds never properly healed.
“I knew the MacKinnons before the troubles came to Skye. The old laird was a good man, stood by his people when the factors came with their eviction notices and English soldiers.”
Darcy said nothing, merely waited whilst Kinsman gathered his thoughts. The man's hands clenched on the table, knuckles white against the scarred wood.
“They came in winter. January, it was, snow thick on the ground and more falling. Pulled folk from their cottages before dawn, babes screaming, mothers begging for mercy.” Kinsman’s voice roughened with barely suppressed rage.
“Set fire to the roofs so they could not return. The soldiers beat them back with rifle butts.”
The taproom had gone quiet around them. Even Wickham's usual smirk had faded.
“And Malcolm MacKinnon?” Darcy prompted quietly.
“The real Malcolm MacKinnon tried to stop it. Young laird, newly come into his inheritance after his father died. Could not have been more than twenty years old.” Kinsman's jaw clenched so hard Darcy could see the muscle jump.
“He stood between the soldiers and his people, demanded they show mercy, offered to pay compensation from his own purse if they would only let folk gather their belongings before they were turned out. Said he would go to Edinburgh himself, speak to the landlord, find some other arrangement.”
“What happened to him?”
“They beat him senseless and left him bleeding in the mud whilst they burnt everything he had tried to save. Kicked him in the ribs when he tried to get up. I heard his screams from where I was hiding in the rocks above the glen.” Kinsman's voice had gone flat, as though the only way to tell this was to drain all emotion from it.
“He died three days later from his injuries. Internal bleeding, the doctor said. He never stopped trying to help his people, even when he was dying. Kept asking if they had shelter, if the children were fed.”
The words settled over the table like a death shroud. “Then how can you be certain the man now at Longbourn is not Malcolm MacKinnon?” Darcy asked carefully.
“The scar.” Kinsman touched his own jaw, tracing a line from ear to chin.
“Hamish McLeod caught a blade during the Clearances — a tenant went for him with a reaping hook whilst he stood by and let it happen, and he never so much as raised an arm. Left him marked from here to here. A man can change his name, his clothes, his manner of speech. He cannot change a scar like that, not in ten years.”
“The man at Longbourn,” Kinsman continued, “is Hamish McLeod.
The factor's son. The bastard who stood beside his father throughout it all, watching, doing nothing whilst folk he had known his whole life were destroyed.
I confronted his party at a coaching inn when they were making their way to Longbourn.
‘Fraid I mighta frightened the bairn and her nursemaid. He paid me half of what was agreed upon to keep his secret, promising the other half in the morning.” Kinsman scoffed.
“Except he vanished in the middle of the night.”
Darcy had seen that scar. He had sat across a drawing room from it and thought nothing of it whatsoever, as one thinks nothing of a man’s hands or the cut of his coat. The cold that went through him now had very little to do with the taproom fire having burnt low.
Darcy drew a hushed breath. “You claim he assumed Malcolm's identity to escape persecution for his father's role in the evictions?”
“After the troubles, when folk wanted blood for what had been done, the factor and his son disappeared.
Thought they had fled to England or the Continent where no one would know them.
Aye, it would be easy enough for someone desperate to slip into a dead man's place and start fresh where no one knew the difference.”
Wickham interjected smoothly. “I recognised something was amiss the moment I encountered him at Longbourn. Too smooth by half, too eager to play the noble Scottish laird for the English gentry. Our dear Malcolm has been most generous in encouraging my silence. Five hundred pounds thus far, with promises of more should I continue to exercise discretion. But he rejected us when we went to claim more a few days prior.”
“Blackmail,” Darcy said flatly, making no effort to hide his contempt.
“Such an ugly word, Darcy. I prefer to think of it as compensation for services rendered.”
Darcy turned his attention back to Kinsman, studying the man with the same careful assessment he would give to any witness whose testimony might prove crucial. “If what you say holds truth, why come forward now? Why allow Hamish McLeod to live as Malcolm MacKinnon these ten years?”
Kinsman’s expression darkened. “I did not know he had survived. Thought the bastard had died or fled so far no one would ever find him. I made my way to Glasgow after the Clearances, worked on the docks, tried to forget. Then, but a few weeks past, I heard whispers: a Scottish laird in Hertfordshire, newly come into English property through some distant relation. Got curious. Made my way south and went to Meryton, asked questions.” He leant forward.
“Saw him coming out of the church one Sunday, playing the fine gentleman with his daughter and his servants.
That is Hamish McLeod. I would know that face anywhere, even after ten years.
He has his father's eyes and his grandfather's nose.”
“Can you prove it? Can you provide testimony that would stand up to scrutiny in a court of law?”
“None other than what I know,” he replied. “Especially since he has all the documentation claiming to be who he is.”
“And yet,” the Colonel spoke for the first time, “according to my investigations, you yourself have an interesting history, Mr Kinsman. Whispers of stolen cattle during the eviction riots. Possibly assault on excise officers who were assisting the factors. Am I to place my trust in the word of a man with such a past?”
Kinsman's face darkened with anger, and his hands clenched into fists on the scarred table.
“Aye, I took back cattle that belonged to my clan before the factors seized them to pay the landlord's debts. I may have struck men who were helping to turn out families into the snow to die. You think that makes me a liar about this? You think it makes what I saw any less true?”
“I think it makes your testimony questionable in any court of law,” said Darcy. “Your grievance against the factor's family is evident, and revenge is a powerful motive for false accusation.”
“Then get your own proof,” Kinsman snapped, pushing back from the table as though he might rise and leave.
“Go to Skye yourself. Find the folk who knew the real Malcolm MacKinnon. Find the minister who kept the parish records before the fire. Talk to the doctor who tended Malcolm when he was dying. But do not sit there in your fine London clothes calling me liar when I tell you what I saw with my own eyes and carry with me every damned day.” He pulled a stack of documents from his bag and shoved it at Darcy.
“Look, man, other than my word, all I have are the kirk records that were reconstructed after the fire destroyed the original ones. I daresay they have been forged, but I shall leave it up to you to determine that.”
Darcy held the man's angry gaze. Kinsman’s pain seemed genuine enough, his rage at old injustices palpable. Yet pain and truth were not always aligned, and rage could drive a man to say anything if it served his purpose.
“What do you want from this?” Darcy asked Kinsman directly, watching the man's face for any sign of deception. “What is your purpose in coming forward now?”
“Coin, but also justice,” Kinsman said, and there was something raw in his voice. “The real Malcolm MacKinnon died defending folk who had nothing. He deserves better than having his name and title stolen by the factor's whelp who helped destroy them.”
“And you?” Darcy turned to Wickham, making no effort to hide his distaste.
“Merely what is owed to me, dear Darcy.” He held up the purse. “Though I suppose I could be persuaded to share additional information I possess, for additional compensation, naturally.”
“I need proof,” Darcy said finally, rising from the table. “Not accusations, not convenient stories. Irrefutable evidence that would stand up to scrutiny. The Bennets might not believe me otherwise.”
“Then find it,” Kinsman said, his eyes hard. “Before that girl marries a fraud and it becomes too late for any of us to stop it.”
***
Darcy returned to his townhouse through dark London streets, his greatcoat pulled tight against the cold that seemed to seep through wool and linen to settle in his very bones.
In his study, he found himself poring over the kirk records Kinsman had provided.
He could not focus on the estate correspondence that awaited his attention.
The letters lay untouched on his desk, reports from his steward at Pemberley, requests for decisions about tenant leases and crop rotations and matters that had seemed important that morning but now appeared trivial.
Somewhere in Hertfordshire, Elizabeth was preparing for a wedding that might bind her to a man whose very identity was fabricated.
His hand gripped the edge of his desk until the wood bit into his palm.
Shaking his head, Darcy pulled the kirk records towards him once more, though he had already studied them so thoroughly he could have recited every entry from memory.
The baptismal entries were there in faded ink on an old, crumpled sheet of partially burnt parchment.
He could hardly make out the date for Malcolm MacKinnon's christening.
The other document offered another entry several years later for what appeared to be the same name.
The accompanying note offered explanations that seemed reasonable enough on the surface: records reconstructed after fire, clerical errors during the chaos of troubled times, and the confusion that had reigned when so many had died or fled.
Or the careful, deliberate insertion of false entries to support a fabricated identity, created by someone desperate enough to steal a dead man's entire existence.
Darcy traced the faded ink with one finger, and then he saw what he had missed before in his earlier, less careful examinations.
The handwriting in the second entry was not merely unlike the first. It was distinct from all the surrounding entries as well, as though written by someone attempting to match the style of the original record-keeper but not quite succeeding.
And the ink: when he held the page close to the lamp, he could see it was a slightly different shade, fresher somehow, as though it had been added years after the entries surrounding it.
His chest tightened. This was not mere clerical error or innocent confusion. This was deliberate falsification.
Yet it still proved nothing that would stand up in court.
A clever barrister could explain it away: a different minister filling in gaps, an assistant with different handwriting helping to reconstruct damaged records, especially since the original record was hardly discernible because of the fire damage.
He needed more. He needed additional witnesses who had known the real Malcolm MacKinnon, who could swear to his appearance and character and confirm beyond doubt that the man at Longbourn was not who he claimed to be.
“I do this for you, Elizabeth,” he said quietly to the empty room, not caring that he had now taken to speaking alone like a demented individual. “Not to win your regard, nor to claim you for myself. Simply to ensure you know the truth before you bind yourself irrevocably.”
The fire crackled in response, and outside the rain continued its steady drum against the windows. Darcy sat alone in his study, surrounded by documents that accused but did not prove.
Darcy gathered the papers with careful hands and locked them securely in his desk drawer.
Then he extinguished the lamps one by one and made his way upstairs through the dark house.
In his chamber, he dismissed his valet and stood alone at the window, looking out over London's sleeping streets whilst his mind refused to grant him any peace.
There would be no happy ending to this for him personally. But ensuring she knew the truth before binding herself irrevocably: that was within his power. That was what honour required of him, regardless of personal cost.
He would do what was right and bear the consequences that followed.