Page 45 of An Offer of Marriage (Engaged to Mr Darcy #7)

NIGHTSHADE AND NONSENSE

T he story Darcy was told sounded too incredible to be real, and yet both Saye and Fitzwilliam assured him that it was.“You mean to tell me,” he said, “that Anne has been poisoning Elizabeth? How?”

“Belladonna berries,” Wickham informed him. “She has been meeting your wife in the park in the morning and bringing her back to Matlock House for breakfast.”

“Belladonna! That might have killed her!” Darcy realised the stupidity of his exclamation as soon as it was uttered, but it was all too fanciful. Anne, a murderess ? “How has it not killed her?”

“She eats so sparingly, it was, evidently, never enough to do more than make her ill. That is why your cousin summoned me, to act in a more decisive manner.”

The way he said it, his demeanour cool, was aggravating to Darcy. “I suppose we must be thankful that your greed prohibited it.”

Wickham, who leant insouciantly against the mews, only quirked a brow and nodded, evidently missing Darcy’s sarcasm completely.

“Where is Anne now? Where is my wife?” Darcy demanded.

“My father and Lady Catherine have secured Anne at Matlock House,” Saye informed him. “I should hope it is a temporary measure until they find a madhouse with a bed for her.”

“Naturally we had hoped you might know where your wife was,” Fitzwilliam said.

“No, I do not. In the house, no doubt.”

“My concern,” said Wickham, “is that your cousin did not hire only me but…a friend.”

“What friend?” Fitzwilliam spat scornfully. “Do you mean, fellow thief?”

Wickham shrugged, not in the least bothered by the accusation. “Call it what you will, but it was to me and Nellie to do the bit. I was sent to get more for us, but I know not how Nellie might have occupied herself in the meanwhile.”

“Nellie? Who is Nellie?” Darcy asked.

“I have no idea what her actual name might be. Among those of my circle, she is called Nightshade Nellie.”

Darcy ran a hand over his face, thinking of how well it answered, now that he knew. The stomach-aches, the headaches, the lethargy. He had no idea if Elizabeth had much understanding of the plant; it grew in Kent, but he had no idea if it grew in Hertfordshire.

“So Anne obtained the poison berries from this…this nightshade person?—”

“Hoping Mrs Darcy would consume enough to kill her. It was also in the headache remedy she gave her,” Wickham informed them. “Then Mrs Darcy sent it back, thanking your cousin but informing her that it did not seem to agree with her stomach, and Miss de Bourgh realised a new plan was needed.”

“So she hired you.”

Wickham nodded. “It was all meant to look like suicide.”

“Suicide!”

Wickham explained, “Miss de Bourgh said Mrs Darcy has been deeply distressed since her marriage. She thought it would appear to be perfectly reasonable if Mrs Darcy poisoned herself, but when that did not happen after several weeks of trying, she attempted something else. She wished that Nellie and I might make it seem that Mrs Darcy threw herself off the bridge into the Thames. She hoped I would consent to do the throwing.”

“I suppose we are thankful that your greed, if not your morality or fear of holy judgment, stopped you,” Saye said.

“And the fact that I have always liked Mrs Darcy,” Wickham said. “She and I were great friends at one time.”

“And yet you were still willing to throw her into the Thames,” Darcy replied drily. “Ever a friend, that is you.”

“Well, it does tend to be the devil you know,” Wickham said. “Random acts of violence are rare.”

Wickham was given his hundred pounds and summarily dispensed with after dire threats from Darcy.

“You may be assured,” he said with a finger in Wickham’s face, “that I shall have both you and your friend Nellie trailed by hired men, and if harm comes to one hair on Elizabeth’s head, you will answer for it. ”

Wickham rolled his eyes and very reasonably said, “I am not going to murder anyone for free, obviously, and it seems my sponsor is to be sent to the sanatorium. Mrs Darcy is safe from me. ”

The three cousins returned to the house where Darcy summoned Mrs Hobbs and asked her to have his wife attend him. “Mrs Darcy went out,” said Mrs Hobbs. “I do not know where she went.”

“Out? How long ago?”

“About an hour ago, I think. Maybe more.” A worried crease appeared on Mrs Hobbs’s forehead. “Forgive me, ought I to have stopped her?”

“No, no,” Darcy said with a shake of his head. “Would Beauregard know where she went?”

Alas no, Beauregard was duly consulted and had no notion of where Mrs Darcy had gone. “She wore a walking dress,” Mrs Hobbs reported after her conversation with Elizabeth’s maid. “But Miss Beauregard was not made privy to her plans. The park, maybe?”

An uneasy prickle went down Darcy’s spine. The park, where any number of unsavoury characters might have snatched her. Or harmed her. Or where Anne, his evidently insane cousin, might have lured her back to Matlock House for some poisoned fruit as she had been doing for some time.

“Excuse me,” he said, rising quickly. To Mrs Hobbs he said, “I will need my horse.”

“One thing more,” said Mrs Hobbs. “She wears a pelisse of robins-egg blue, and her bonnet has a matching ribbon.”

“Very good,” he replied as Fitzwilliam asked her to summon Saye’s carriage as well.

To Darcy, Fitzwilliam added, “We can fan out, all of us look for her.”

Darcy only nodded, and the men went to await their respective conveyances. He said nothing as Fitzwilliam and Saye jostled and joked in the vestibule; at length, Fitzwilliam noted his temper and, with a slap on the back, said, “Do not worry, old man, I am sure she is well.”

“Are you?” Darcy snapped. “Because I only just learnt my cousin has been hiring people to murder her, so forgive me if I am less certain.”

“In one thing we may take consolation,” Saye observed, “and that is that Anne is not one to spend to excess. Cheese-paring, some might say, as exampled by her hiring of two second-rate assassins who failed in their task.”

“Thankfully!” Darcy exclaimed.

“She would hardly undertake the expense of hiring a second group,” Saye opined. “I daresay by now Elizabeth is as safe as a kitten.”

“Let us just hope it is not one of Anne’s kittens,” joked Fitzwilliam, only to receive a dark look from Darcy.

All he could think of was finding Elizabeth, his mind fretting over the terrors she must have felt these past weeks when unexplained illness racked her body.

She, who was always so healthy, always so vigorous!

He had known she was not well—why had he not searched for a cause?

Been more curious about the nonsense diagnosis of ‘nerves’?

At last the horse was there and he was able to be off, searching Hyde Park from one direction while his cousins searched in the other. His fears continued to mount as he saw no sight of her.

His mind terrorised him while he searched, incessantly envisioning his wife being thrown into the Thames by George Wickham.

Could she even swim? Was anyone able to swim after falling from a bridge?

Perhaps they died on impact. She has not been thrown in the Thames , he reminded himself often, but his distressed mind continued to serve him image after image of her body, bloated and pale, being dragged from the river.

He soon began to feel the futility of their task.

She could be in Hyde Park or St James’s Park or Regent’s Park.

She might be shopping, lingering in a bookshop, or calling upon ladies unknown to him.

Even calling on ladies who were known to him—he could hardly go pounding on every door in London, could he?

He had a brief flash of anger towards her—had he not told her that London was not Meryton and that she could not simply hie off to any which place?

But then his anger came back to himself.

By necessity, Elizabeth had grown accustomed to making herself, and her existence within his sphere, invisible.

As with all else, he had only himself to thank for this latest calamity.

They searched over two hours with nothing to show for it. Again in Darcy’s vestibule, Darcy paced while they contrived to find better places to search.

“What about Mr and Mrs Gardiner?” Fitzwilliam asked. “Might she have gone to them this morning?”

“If she was poisoned, she would have hardly been well enough to go gallivanting about London,” Darcy snapped.

“She was not poisoned this morning, was she?” Fitzwilliam said. “Anne did not meet her today, or I believe we would have known she was there. And the headache remedy was sent back.”

“You are correct,” Darcy said, feeling a slight sliver of hope. “To Gracechurch Street, then!”

What felt like an age later, Darcy was presenting himself to the Gardiners’ manservant. Without feeling for the poor man, he barked out, “Is Mrs Darcy here?”

“Yes, sir, she arrived?—”

Darcy heard no more than that. He very nearly ran down the hall to the drawing room, entering to find his wife seated on a chair across from her aunt. “Elizabeth!”

With no thought for anything around them, or anything which had passed between them, Darcy crossed the drawing room and nearly lifted her off the chair, pulling her into a tight embrace, then claiming her lips in the way that he had once before and that had lived in his memory ever since.

In some part of his mind, he heard the clatter of a dish or saucer falling and the gasp of someone, probably Mrs Gardiner, but it did not signify.

All that mattered was Elizabeth and holding her in his arms.

When he paused for breath, he said, fiercely, “I care nothing for anything that has gone before. I love you, more than I have loved anyone in my life long, and I shall spend the rest of my days if needed to earn your love in return. I will do everything and anything I can to make you happy, to be a man worthy of you, to-to…to make amends for everything .”

Elizabeth was beautiful, albeit dazed and astonished-looking, and managed only to utter, “Yes. Um, I would like that.”

Though they were in company, and it might have seemed indecent, he gave her one more tender kiss before easing his grasp slightly.

There was an uncertain air in the room while everyone recovered from the shock of his arrival and of his actions.

Saye, ever the expert at awkwardness, sallied forth into it.

“That was surely a sight to see,” he remarked. He pointed then at a plate of biscuits and said to Mrs Gardiner, “Mind if I help myself?”

Mrs Gardiner had not recovered from her surprise and still sat with one hand pressed to her chest and mouth slightly agape.

On Saye’s request, she coloured a little and said, “But of course! Where are my manners? Allow me to ring for coffee. Mr Darcy forgive us, it seems Jepsen forgot to take your coat and hat.”

“No, madam, he did not forget. I fear I went by him too quickly for him to perform his office. I would not have you hold him to account for it.”

“Allow me?” Mrs Gardiner came to him, extending a hand to receive his coat, hat, and gloves; he gratefully surrendered them, not taking his eyes from his wife.

She had not taken her eyes from him either, but gestured towards the chair which had another beside it. He nodded and sat as she did as well.

There was a short interlude while coffee was poured and biscuits were distributed and at length, Saye said, “You might have been surprised by the manner of our entry, but Darcy believed Elizabeth might have been murdered this morning, so you may excuse him on that basis.”

“Murdered!” Elizabeth laughed. “Who wanted to murder me?”

“Anne,” said Saye in a matter-of-fact way and then took an enormous bite of the biscuit in his hand.

“Anne…de Bourgh?” She asked, tilting her head. Looking at Darcy, she asked, “Does he tell a joke?”

Darcy sighed heavily. “I am afraid not. It seems that Anne?—”

“Let me tell it,” Saye interrupted. “Anne, as you might have already imagined, has had a tenuous grasp on reality for quite some time. I have, myself, wondered if she has syphilis?—”

“Saye! Pray remember we are in the society of ladies!” Fitzwilliam exclaimed. To the others he said, “I am certain she does not have syphilis.”

Saye only quirked his brow and said, “I am myself less certain than is my brother. In any case, it seems Anne thought it a just punishment for Darcy, to murder his wife.”

“How did she mean to do it?” Elizabeth asked.

“The berries,” Fitzwilliam told her. “The ones you always ate with breakfast.”

“They were also in the special headache tincture,” Saye added.

“When you sent back her poisoned headache tincture,” Fitzwilliam continued, “she realised something more certain would need to be done, so she hired George Wickham to make it seem as if you had committed suicide by jumping into the Thames. Fortunately, Wickham did not like the terms of payment and came to Darcy seeking more.”

“It seems I am oddly indebted to him,” Elizabeth said faintly.

There was a great deal more to be told and discussed—the particulars of the plot, what would be done with Anne—but Darcy fell quiet and noticed his wife did the same, and not too long thereafter, he stood and asked if she would like to return home.

He saw how tightly her aunt and uncle held her as she moved to leave, and he shook her uncle’s hand, telling him solemnly that no expense would be spared to ensure her safety.