Chapter 27 #2
For one terrible moment, Darcy thought Elizabeth did not recognise the man inside.
The prisoner sat on a narrow bench, one arm resting on his knee, his head bowed as if he had been interrupted in the middle of a very unsatisfactory conversation with himself.
His coat was worn and stained. His hair was too long.
His face, when he lifted it, was thinner than Darcy had expected from Elizabeth’s descriptions, with a grey weariness over it that made him look older than his years.
Then Elizabeth released Darcy’s arm and went to the bars.
“Papa,” she breathed.
Mr Bennet stared at her. For several seconds, he did not move. His eyes went from Elizabeth’s face to her gown, to Darcy behind her, and back again. Whatever composure he possessed deserted him entirely. “Lizzy?” he said incredulously.
She put both hands around the bars. “Papa.”
Mr Bennet rose too quickly and had to catch himself against the wall. “Good God. What are you doing here?”
“I might ask you the same question.”
“Yes,” he said faintly. “But I have always found that daughters are less satisfying when they steal their father’s better lines.”
Elizabeth laughed, or tried to. It broke into something dangerously close to tears. “Are you hurt?”
“No more than my dignity, which has suffered greatly but not, I hope, fatally.” His eyes moved again to Darcy. “And who, may I ask, is the gentleman standing behind you with the expression of a man deciding whether to purchase the building or have it torn down?”
Darcy stepped forward and bowed. “Fitzwilliam Darcy, sir.”
Mr Bennet blinked. “Darcy.”
“Yes.”
“I do not know the name. How do you come to be here with my daughter?”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened around the bars. “He is my husband.”
Mr Bennet looked from Darcy to Elizabeth with the slow astonishment of a man who had been prepared for prison, hunger, suspicion, and possibly death, but not for this. “Your husband,” he repeated.
“Yes.”
Mr Bennet sat down again. “Well. Imprisonment has left me less informed of family affairs than one would wish.”
Elizabeth’s mouth trembled. “Papa. Even now, you can joke?”
He looked at her then, truly looked, and the humour faded from his face. “My dear girl. I believe I must, if only to keep from weeping.”
Darcy turned to Corbin. “Why is Mr Bennet being held?”
The jailor folded his arms. “Caught breaking into a house.”
Elizabeth spun toward him. “My father would never break into a house.”
“That is what they all say, ma’am.”
“He is a gentleman.”
“That is also what they all say.”
Darcy stepped closer to Corbin, keeping his voice even with an effort. “What house?”
“A private house near the upper road that belongs to a man away on business. Your Mr Bennet was found inside after dark, going through papers and would not give a proper account of himself. He had no local acquaintance to vouch for him. So — an Englishman on an island too close to France, poking about where he had no right to be.” Corbin shrugged.
“Some say thief. Some say spy. I do not much care which, provided he remains where I put him.”
“He is neither,” Elizabeth said.
Corbin looked at her with little patience. “Then he was remarkably unlucky in choosing where to be innocent.”
Mr Bennet sighed from inside the cell. “A fair observation, though ungenerously phrased.”
Elizabeth turned back to him. “Papa, why were you in that house?”
“That,” Mr Bennet said, “is a question with more answer than this room deserves.”
Darcy kept his attention on the jailor. “What is required for his release?”
Corbin’s expression sharpened. “That is not my decision alone.”
“But you can make it possible.”
“I can make many things possible.”
Darcy understood him perfectly and disliked him more with every passing second. “Name the sum.”
Corbin looked him over again, recalculating. “Twenty pounds.”
Elizabeth inhaled sharply.
Mr Bennet lifted his brows. “Twenty pounds? My dear sir, I am honoured. It is a rare privilege for a man to learn the exact value set upon his life, and I confess I had feared the estimate would be lower.”
Darcy removed the money without comment.
“Fitzwilliam,” Elizabeth began.
He glanced at her. “No.” The word was quiet, but she understood it. This was not the moment to protest. Not with her father behind bars and a corrupt jailor in front of them.
Corbin took the money, counted it twice, then brought out his key. The lock opened with a harsh scrape that made Elizabeth close her eyes.
When the door swung inward, Mr Bennet stepped out.
Elizabeth went to him at once. He embraced her awkwardly at first, as if he had forgotten how to receive affection without making a jest of it, then held her tightly enough that Darcy looked away. It was not a scene that required his observation.
“My Lizzy,” Mr Bennet said softly. “You should not have come.”
“You should have written.”
“Yes,” he said. “That would have been the more convenient arrangement.”
She drew back and looked at him, anger and relief fighting openly on her face. “You have been gone for months.”
“I am aware.”
“Are you? Because we were not. We did not know whether you were alive or dead. Jane has been terrified. Mary is in London with the Gardiners. Mama is…well, Mama is Mama, but worse. Mr Collins is trying to take Longbourn by claiming you are dead, and I have had to marry Mr Darcy in a hurry so he might help us stop it.”
Mr Bennet looked past her to Darcy. “I begin to feel I have missed a number of important developments.”
“You have missed nearly all of them,” Elizabeth said, so fiercely that Darcy almost pitied Mr Bennet.
Corbin cleared his throat. “If the gentleman is leaving, he had best leave now.”
Darcy looked at Mr Bennet. “Can you walk, sir?”
“I have been practicing in a confined space. I believe I shall manage a larger one with enthusiasm.”
“Then we should go.”
They left the prison with as little delay as possible.
Mr Bennet moved stiffly, and Darcy saw at once that he was weaker than he wished Elizabeth to know.
He offered his arm only once, and when Mr Bennet refused it with a look of dry offence, Darcy gave him the dignity of pretending not to notice how carefully he took the steps.
Outside, the air struck cool and bright after the closeness of the prison. Elizabeth stopped just beyond the door and turned to her father fully, as if she had to assure herself again that he was truly there.
Darcy stepped back far enough to give them privacy, but not far enough to leave Elizabeth unsupported.
He watched Mr Bennet try to stand as if confinement had not thinned him, as if his coat were not ruined, as if his daughter had not crossed the water to find him behind bars.
The effort had something of dignity in it and something of folly too, and Darcy began to understand, in a way Elizabeth’s stories had not fully conveyed, how affection for such a man might be inseparable from exasperation.
Elizabeth seemed unable to stop looking at her father.
Every few moments her eyes moved over him again, catching on the hollowness beneath his cheekbones, the dirt at his cuffs, the unsteady way he carried one shoulder.
Darcy had seen her afraid before. He had seen her angry.
This was both at once, and something more tender than either.
Mr Bennet looked down at his coat. “I would make my apologies for my appearance, but I have recently been valued at twenty pounds and must not risk giving myself airs.”
Elizabeth did not laugh. “You will forgive me for not seeing the humour in anything I witnessed in that place.”
His expression sobered.
“We must return to Longbourn as soon as it can be managed,” Darcy said. “Your presence is urgently required there.”
“So I gather.”
“Mr Collins has taken legal steps,” Darcy continued. “He is attempting to establish a claim based on your disappearance and presumed death. Until you are restored publicly and legally, the matter remains dangerous.”
Mr Bennet closed his eyes for a moment. “Collins. Of course. Of all the absurd punishments Providence might choose, it would be Mr Collins.”
Elizabeth’s voice shook. “How can you joke?”
He opened his eyes to look at her.
“How can you possibly joke?” she repeated. “Do you understand what has happened? Do you understand what we have been through? You have been gone for months. Months, Papa. How could this have been worth it?”
Mr Bennet looked at her for a long moment, and in that silence Darcy saw a man far more tired, frightened, and ashamed than his wit and pride had allowed him to appear.
“It was not worth this,” Mr Bennet said at last.
Elizabeth’s anger faltered.
He looked toward the street, where the ordinary business of Guernsey went on as if a man had not just been pulled out of prison and returned to his daughter by the payment of twenty pounds. When he spoke again, the old dry humour was gone.
“But at the time, Lizzy, I believed it might be worth everything.”