Chapter 54
Redbourn Heath, that evening
Kerr rode onto the bare ground behind the cottage without having seen a servant quit Longbourn.
No mounted man had taken the London road. No carriage had been brought round. All day, the house had held its stillness with an obstinacy he did not like.
Fear made noise. Even grief sent doors opening and shutting.
Longbourn had given him nothing.
He dismounted by the pump and stood a moment with the reins in his hand. Bennet had been given time enough to meet the demand. A father did not mistake a summons written in his daughter’s peril.
Unless he had not believed the threat.
Kerr looked towards the shuttered window. The girl remained within. She had value, but not the value he had intended. Bennet remained behind Longbourn’s walls.
Hooves struck the lane at a reckless pace.
Kerr turned.
Wickham rode in on a lathered horse, his coat darkened with sweat and road dust, his mouth set in a line Kerr had seen before and never trusted. He dragged the reins so sharply that the horse threw up its head and sidled against the wall.
Kerr did not move to help him.
“You have been to St Albans,” he said.
Wickham swung down, landed badly, and caught himself against the saddle. “Darcy has made fools of us.”
Kerr’s hand tightened on his own reins.
“How?”
Wickham’s breath came hard, and not all of it from riding. “That damned letter will not release a shilling.”
Kerr looked past him to the lane.
No one followed.
Yet.
“How do you know?” Kerr asked.
Wickham wiped his mouth with the back of his glove. “Because I found the fellow who carried Darcy’s letter into the counting-room.”
“You followed a bank’s clerk.”
Wickham gave a short laugh. “Rich men are not left waiting, Kerr. Darcy is rich as Croesus. A clerk sees his name and runs as though delay were a sin.”
“And?” Kerr asked, fearing the explanation.
“The man said the letter wanted proper authority.” Wickham’s lip curled. “Proper authority. What the devil does that mean?”
Kerr knew exactly what it meant. Darcy had not refused. He had obeyed in terms no banker would honour. Worse, he had made obedience look like warning.
Wickham’s face darkened. “Then he shall write another.”
Kerr watched him. “And why should he?”
“Because I shall give him cause.”
The horse stamped behind him. Wickham did not turn. His eyes had gone to the cottage door.
Kerr let the silence hold a moment longer.
“Do not break his hand,” he said.
Wickham looked back at him.
Kerr looped his reins over the pump handle. “He must still be able to write.”
* * *
Longbourn, in the last hour before dawn
Fitzwilliam marked two lights ahead.
The riders on his flanks moved at once. The lane narrowed where the garden walls began, the air held pitch smoke and the damp of the hour. As he drew nearer, the flames steadied into form. Flambeaux.
We are expected.
Harris wheeled past the wall, posting his horse outward to the right; to the left, Simms did the same. Fitzwilliam rode between them, Villiers behind him. Perseus’s hooves struck gravel.
Villiers swung down, crossed the space in three strides, and struck the panels with his fist. A latch lifted; the door drew inward. He stepped back, hand on his sword. Fitzwilliam halted Perseus a yard short of the threshold.
A man peered out. His gaze rose to Fitzwilliam in the saddle, moved to Villiers, then passed to the men at the gate. When it returned to Fitzwilliam, he opened the door wide.
Fitzwilliam dismounted. Villiers took the reins. Fitzwilliam’s gaze stayed upon the man at the door.
“Hill, sir,” the man said. “Mr Bennet waits in the study.”
Hill stepped aside. Fitzwilliam entered.
A candle burned upon the lower stair. Another stood guttering upon a side table, its wax fallen in a white fold. Somewhere above, a board gave beneath a cautious step, then held.
Fitzwilliam crossed the hall without looking up. Fear in a house had a sound. This one had discipline beneath it.
Bennet waited in the study doorway. He had not dressed for bed. Candlelight showed the cane in his hand, the grey set of his mouth, and nothing of panic.
“Colonel Fitzwilliam.”
“Captain Bennet.” Fitzwilliam stripped off his gloves. “I have read Kerr’s papers. Barbados. Cambridge and Stamford.”
“Then you know more than most.”
“Darcy sent word. Kerr supplied old grievances.” Fitzwilliam made one brief motion. “Spare me what does not bear upon Miss Bennet.”
Bennet did not offer him a chair. Fitzwilliam did not require one.
For one moment they stood in the candlelight, two men who had survived different wars and had no leisure to name the kinship.
Bennet’s hand rested upon the cane as if it were no support at all, but a thing held ready.
The study behind him bore marks of a night used without waste: map open, ink uncapped, a tray untouched, papers weighted where a draught might have disturbed them.
Longbourn had armed itself with order.
Bennet answered at once. “Mr Darcy came because I wrote to Edmund Darcy. The debt was his uncle’s. The daughter taken is mine.”
“What other information have you?”
“One of the parties involved is a Mr George Wickham.”
Wickham.
“I am well acquainted with that man.”
“Your cousin spoke of Mr Wickham’s history with your family,” Bennet said.
“He spoke freely, then.”
“I understand discretion. My daughter’s good name hangs upon it.”
“What else did my cousin say—or do?”
“Something odd.”
“Nothing is odd, sir.”
Bennet hesitated. “He requested a sack of gravel from the sweep.”
Fitzwilliam drew on his gloves, flexing his hands once to settle them.
A fool would have asked for a pistol. A frightened man would have asked for company.
Darcy had gone prepared to be taken.
“Who saw him leave?”
“Hill. John Perkins. Mr Darcy’s man.”
“Send for Barty.”
Bennet turned his head, but Hill had already moved.
Barty entered before the silence grew old. He looked as if he had not sat since Darcy rode out. He bowed.
“Colonel, sir.”
“What instructions did Darcy leave?”
“To remain here, await you, sir. The first stone lies at the lower turn beyond the field.”
Fitzwilliam nodded once.
“Is that information of use?” Mr Bennet asked.
“It is.”
“Then—what is your plan?”
Find the place. Break the door. Take Darcy and Miss Bennet out breathing.
“To return Miss Bennet.”
Fitzwilliam turned and left the study.
On the sweep, he gathered a handful of gravel.
The stones lay pale in his palm, damp with mist and ordinary as bread. Common sweepings from a country house drive.
Darcy had made them into dispatches.
Villiers came to his shoulder. Harris and Simms had already taken the lane with their eyes, and their horses. They had followed worse signs under worse skies.
Fitzwilliam held out a handful.
“Check the road. Mark every stone.”
Villiers closed his fist around them.
“Miss Bennet first. Darcy second,” Fitzwilliam said.
He pulled Perseus round.
“No one else is of consequence.”