Chapter 1
Lord Reginald Fitzwilliam, the powerful Earl of Matlock, fell to his knees and wept for what he believed was his dead daughter.
A full-grown man would not survive a horse falling on top of him, never mind a petite eight-year-old girl.
He wept for his beautiful daughter as well as for the absolute devastation that his wife would feel when he had to inform her that they had lost another daughter to an accident.
Except this was no accident, it was murder and from what his brother had shared during the mad ride to find their children, it was not the first murder that George Wickham had committed recently.
To his own father; it was obvious that the young man was a depraved and unfeeling person who cared for none but his own selfish, criminal desires.
Reggie looked up and he saw Richard and Andrew supporting one another, and like their father both had tears streaming down their cheeks.
William had Anne and walked her away from the macabre scene so she would not see her cousin in death, crushed by the horse that she loved in life.
Reggie was trying to force himself to stand but was having a hard time when his brother George approached him, and he looked almost hopeful. Reggie started to become angry; he could not believe that George would dare to give him false hope when his little girl was with God now.
“She lives, Reggie,” George said. Reggie shook his head as if he had just dreamt hearing the words that his brother-in-law spoke.
George saw the incredulous look on Reggie’s face and was about to explain when they saw Richard and Andrew run toward the spot where Lizzy lay prostrate.
With George’s help, Reggie stood and followed his sons to where his heart was lying in the tall grass that had been flattened by poor Astraea’s body as it fell and then been rolled off Lizzy.
Reggie pushed his way through the men near where his daughter lay and then he saw her; one leg and an arm were obviously broken and she had a gash somewhere on her head judging from the blood, but her chest was rising and falling with short sharp breaths.
He could not understand how she could have not been crushed and then he saw why.
He could only ascribe it to the hand of God; when she fell, Lizzy had landed in an indentation in the earth.
Had she been any bigger, part of her body would have been protruding, or worse yet, her head.
Biggs, who had been the first to reach his charge, explained that when Astraea had been lying across her, there was barely an inch between the horse’s flanks and Lady Elizabeth.
Reggie did not argue that it was a miracle.
The tears that his sons had been crying to mourn their sister turned into tears of hope.
“She is alive, but she will have a long way to go to recover,” George Darcy said as he laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder.
What he did not verbalise is that there was still a chance that Lizzy would succumb to her head wound or a fever, but he could not bring himself to utter those words.
He motioned to the groom, “Ride like the wind to Mr Harrison; I believe he is seeing patients at his home today. Then ride into Lambton and tell the surgeon that he is needed at Pemberley for an emergency.” The groom nodded and then jumped onto a horse and took off towards the doctor’s house.
“We need to construct a litter to transport Lizzy back to the house,” Reggie said.
“It will do her no good lying here.” He was thanking God that he did not have to inform his wife that they had lost their daughter, cognisant that the conversation would not be an easy one, but still better than the alternative.
The footmen and grooms immediately started to fashion a litter from the materials on hand. While they were thus busy, Biggs and Johns went to search the area where the criminal had shot from.
They found Mr Wickham’s horse tied to a tree, George Wickham’s valise, and twenty pounds in a side pocket.
The pistol that the miscreant used to shoot at Lady Elizabeth was lying on the ground.
As Johns bent over to retrieve the offending weapon, sure that it was the same one that ended the steward’s life, he noticed some blood on the ground. He summoned Biggs over.
Based on what they saw, they searched a wider area and found tracks of two horses, leading west. One of them was making deeper indentations with its shoes than the other, so either one man was considerably bigger than the other, or one horse was carrying two.
They found some flattened brush in an area that gave a good view of the bridle path and found the abandoned horse and the rest of Wickham’s possessions.
They determined that two men had been lying and watching from that position.
Not sure who the abandoned horse is? Paragraph above says Wickham’s horse was found tied to a tree, and the spies watching didn’t leave a horse. Please check.
When they re-joined the party around the little miss, she had been loaded onto the makeshift litter.
Her father, brothers, and cousin would not allow any but themselves to carry her.
The litter weighed more than her. She moaned in pain as they started the walk back to the manor house, but it could not be helped no matter how careful the four were.
“Please come back to us Lizzy,” William beseeched her as he carried his corner of the litter, “I will give anything to hear your voice again, to see you running around the house, just please do not leave us; we will never be the same without you little cousin. All of us love you.”
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The two spies had ridden a mile or two before they stopped and tied the young man to the back of the horse securely and at the same time, they gagged him. They did not dally long and within five minutes they were on their way to Warwickshire to deliver him to Mrs Fitzpatrick.
Both knew that their employer would not be happy, but what she would do, or order them to do with the unconscious young man was anyone’s guess.
Both disliked the officious woman they were employed by, but they were well paid and with their chequered past no one else would offer them good employment.
It was more than fifty miles to Packwood, and they would have to stop and rest the horses along the way, but they had the problem of the tied-up cargo that they were transporting.
They decided that before they reached the inn, they would stop in the forest; one of them would look after the captive and the other would lead the horses to the inn.
Once he had acquired some refreshment, he would return to watch young Wickham while the other man went and refreshed himself.
Neither thought about offering the captive anything, so he remained bound and gagged and when he awoke, he had no idea where he was.
The one thing that George Wickham was sure of was that he was not in the hands of the law.
He would not be tied up and gagged in a field with some shady character watching him if that were true.
He tested the ropes that bound him and quickly realised that he was well and truly secure.
He was not sure what the man intended to do to him, but he was much pleased with himself; within four and twenty hours he had dispatched two of his enemies.
He did not know how yet, but he would find a way out of his predicament and visit his wrath on the rest of those who were owed vengeance by him.
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Caroline Bingley had convinced herself that her father did not mean what he said, again, all evidence to the contrary, so imagine her surprise when after a brief word to his brother she was marched up to the top floor, into a small and dingy room with no window that would not be fit even for a servant, and the door was locked.
There was a narrow bed with an extremely uncomfortable mattress, a rickety table, and a hard wooden chair.
She heard the key scrape as it turned in the lock and thought that the joke was over, but a maid pushed a chamber pot into the dank room and the door was rapidly locked again.
She started to scream and would have thrown anything that she could have, had there been anything to throw, but there was nothing.
She kept her tantrum up for an hour, her voice getting weaker and weaker the more she tried to screech.
The footman on duty was thankful that the sounds emanating from the room had stopped.
He could not have known that she had not chosen to stop; it was simply impossible to make a noise once she had lost her voice.
Once they had changed, the first thing Martha did was deliver a sincere and complete apology for her past behaviour to Paul and Henrietta Bingley and their two children, Paul Junior, eleven, and Joshua, nine.
Paul and Henrietta never thought that they would live to see the day that Martha owned her behaviour, but were more than pleased to forgive her, as they had no doubt of the sincerity of her words.
Louisa followed her mother’s example and offered her own contrition.
That night, there was a family dinner where the rest of the Bingley family, as well as Martha’s parents, brother and sister were present.
After Martha’s mea culpa, which shocked the rest of the family on both sides, all were happy to have the Martha that they loved before she turned to social climbing.
Louisa, too, had a grand time with her cousins and did not fail to note how much more pleasant things were without her overbearing younger sister’s airs and graces.
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