Page 109 of A Matter of Murder

“Out the front,” Darcy decided. “I’ll run to the gatehouse if I have to.”

He ran out the front door, Lizzie on his heels. But when they spilled out onto the gravel drive, Darcy was confronted by a sobering sight:

Lady Catherine.

She stood before the house, a valise slung over her shoulder and her hair a disheveled mess. Her head had been tilted back, but when she saw Darcy and Lizzie spill out the front door, she turned and her expression darkened.

“Stop!” Darcy shouted.

Lady Catherine, unsurprisingly, did not. Faster than Darcy could have thought possible, she raised one arm, and they all saw what her valise had concealed: The pistol.

“Get down!” Lizzie shouted, and he heard a shot ring out as he fell to the ground, Lizzie tumbling down beside him.

I’ve been shot, he thought. For it seemed to be the only explanation for why his shoulder was on fire, and why he was suddenly flat on his back.

“Darcy!” Someone pushed him onto his back, and he saw Lizzie before him. Felt her hands running up and down his body searching for wounds. “You’re not shot. You’re all right!”

“No, I heard it,” he mumbled. “A pistol shot—did you not hear it?”

“I heard it,” she confirmed. He hissed in pain as her hands felt his shoulder. “I’m sorry! You landed on your shoulder when I pulled you down.”

His shoulder screamed in protest as he struggled to sit up. Once upright, he saw that Lady Catherine herself was on the ground just as they were. Her valise had fallen, and spilling out of it were dozens of diamonds, glinting brilliantly in the sun.

Lizzie helped him to his feet, and together they limped toward her prone form, but cautiously. Lady Catherine was on her back. She panted heavily and groaned as she tried to sit up but couldn’t quite manage it, for her left arm was clasping her right shoulder—from which a great deal of blood flowed.

A tall figure stalked over to her and kicked her fallen pistol away, out of Lady Catherine’s reach. He made no motion to reach down and assist the injured lady but regarded her for a few moments. Then, he slipped his own pistol into its holster and turned his glower onto Lizzie and Darcy.

“Father,” Darcy said, gasping in pain. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Fitzwilliam. Do you care to tell me why your sister’s lady’s companion just tried to shoot you?”

“For the record, I never liked her,” Georgiana said from the end of the settee, sipping daintily at her tea. “I told you as much in all my letters, too, so there’s a record.”

Darcy smiled, then grimaced at the pain in his head. His entire body felt as though he’d been run over by a horse, but he was alive. And so was Lizzie, who sat in the closest chair to him, her hand cradling his, and Georgiana, who’d suffered little more than a scrape at the base of her throat from Agnes’s blade.

Charlotte was also all right, although bruised and shaken. She sat in a chair with a blanket bundled around her, despite the summer heat. Mrs. Reynolds had tucked her in, telling Charlotte it was the perfect antidote to the shock she’d suffered, and then shoved tea into all their hands. Sally and Miss Jeffries—“Please, call me Clara at this point,” she’d insisted—were completely unharmed. They were all gathered in the family parlor as Mrs. Reynolds fussed over them, even Guy, who was curled up on the settee next to Darcy.

“You never would have liked any lady’s companion Father hired,” Darcy told Georgiana.

“Well, at least any other lady’s companion wouldn’t have been a career criminal bent on exacting revenge against Lizzie.”

“I would be worried if there were more than one,” Lizzie said.

Darcy placed a hand over his face, then winced as the movement exacerbated the pain in his shoulder. “I can’t believe she was here the entire time.”

Mrs. Reynolds must have heard his hiss of pain, because she gently moved his hands aside and placed a cold cloth on his head, like she used to do when he was a boy. “You stay still now, sir.”

“Don’t worry,” Lizzie said, taking his other hand. “I’ll make sure he rests.”

“Lizzie, I’m so sorry.” He almost couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Her cheek was puffy from Lady Catherine’s blow, the cut still angry and the skin starting to bruise, although Mrs. Reynolds had helped her clean up the blood. “I thought bringing you here would keep you safe.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“This is the perfect hiding place,” Charlotte said. “When you think about, it’s very audacious.”

“The last place you’d look,” Georgiana added.

“Downright devious if you ask me,” Sally muttered.