Page 3 of Dishonorable Gentlemen (Bennet Gang #1)

Fate Intervenes

Darcy woke with the sun, for there had been little to occupy him in Meryton the previous evening and they’d made an early night of it. Bingley had attempted to orchestrate a jaunt to the local assembly hall, but Darcy had flatly refused. He’d reminded his companion that he did not prefer to dance with ladies outside his acquaintance, effectively putting an end to the evening. Even the arrival of his cases with his valet, Partick, had little disturbed Darcy’s rest. He woke refreshed and ready to depart Meryton at Bingley’s earliest convenience. Not that they would travel together, as his and Bingley’s men and luggage had arrived with Darcy’s carriage.

Once he was dressed, Darcy was pleased to discover that Patrick had toast and coffee on hand. A man could starve to death waiting for Charles Bingley to wake, for he seldom breakfasted before eleven. Patrick knew Darcy preferred a light meal to tide him over until then.

But Darcy was in no mood to lounge about. Though clean and well cared for, the inn in Meryton had nothing in the way of suites, where there might be an adjacent parlor for his use. Each chamber held only a bed, a small table with one chair, a wardrobe, and a single window. While he might have read in a parlor, Darcy was not one to hang about a bedchamber all morning.

Out the lone window, he could see that while the rising sun had reached him, its warming rays readily evoked fog from the cool earth. Soon, the village would be shrouded and the inn room would feel more like a cave than a sanctuary. All the more reason not to linger.

What he needed after yesterday’s aggravating events was a ride. As they were departing shortly, he hadn’t asked for his riding mount to be brought, but surely the inn boasted something more adequate than a saddleless carriage horse? Perhaps Darcy would take in the vista of this Netherfield Park, to better assure Bingley that he’d made the correct decision in no longer wishing to see the place.

A short time later, Darcy had secured an acceptable enough mount and directions not to Netherfield Park, but rather to a hillock overlooking the estate. The idea of surveying the place from a distance appealed to him even though the rising autumnal morning mist, which had bloomed into a dense miasma, made him question how much of a view the hillside would offer.

He set out regardless, waving off Patrick’s offer to accompany him. The inn had only the one spare mount, and Patrick had arrived from London in the small hours. He likely needed rest as much as Darcy did a ride, and Darcy doubted the two intrepid highwaymen would be about so early. Like as not, they’d imbibed themselves into a stupor celebrating the not-insignificant funds they’d robbed from him and Bingley.

Darcy set out through the swirling mist, the September air chill and clinging. The innkeeper’s directions proved sound, and soon enough he found the narrow trail leading from the main roadway and upward into the fog. Seeking higher ground, Darcy urged his borrowed mount up the path, thick tendrils of mist clinging to them.

As he’d feared, though the morning fog grew more ethereal at the top of the hill, the dense miasma he’d ridden through in the village filled the lower ground before him. He could see naught of Netherfield Park save a veritable graveyard of squat stones… chimneys poking up from the mist.

He imagined the sun would burn away the obscuring shroud soon enough, but the view and the chill recalled to him that the private dining room they’d employed the evening before held a fireplace. Perhaps a bit more coffee and as close as he could find to this morning’s paper would be a better use of his time. Deciding his attempt to survey Netherfield Park to be fruitless, Darcy turned his mount.

A lovely silhouette drifted through the mist before him, her profile elegance itself. Darcy blinked, certain she was a figment conjured from his imagination, but the woman did not vanish. Moving away from him, she walked across the hillside at an angle that took her ever deeper into the morning fog. He did not believe she took note of him, though he couldn’t be certain for the swirling mist obscured the details of her face.

Dismounting, because the fog atop the hill was thick enough that he did not lightly leave the trail, Darcy led his horse after her. He could not say why, as he wouldn’t presume to approach an unknown lady in the mists atop a hill. He only knew that he did not want to lose sight of her.

He followed her along the hilltop, catching glimpses of dark curls and a pale blue gown. She strode quickly, though he did not think with purpose or haste. Perhaps simply for the joy of walking.

And then she vanished .

Darcy rushed forward. His foot slipped and he lurched back, happy for his grip on the horse’s reins. A sharp drop lurked before him. The woman was nowhere to be seen.

Looking about in the mist, he couldn’t spot where she’d gone. Fear caught his breath, though logic told him that if she’d fallen, she would have cried out.

He stood scanning the mist, but she did not reappear and the fog-shrouded hilltop seemed devoid of sound. Imperceptibly, the sun rose higher and the haze about him thinned. Darcy narrowed his gaze, peering over the edge, unwilling to depart without knowing her fate. Little by little, the mist cleared, ephemeral tendrils slipping away over the edge of the cliff to form final, fleeting pools in the dells below.

Finally, his seeking gaze found a narrow cleft cutting through the bluff on which he stood. She must have descended via that path.

But the horse could not follow, and she would be far from them by now with her sure, rapid strides. Besides which, he was behaving like a madman, following a dimly seen woman through the mist. That was how tragic fairy tales began, and Darcy was not one for fairy tales.

Retracing his steps, he returned to the head of the path and a view of a solid, pleasant enough manor house set in lovely, well-manicured grounds. The lingering tendrils of fog cast Netherfield Park in an enigmatic, bewitching light, and Darcy wondered if the woman had come from there. No one was in residence, but Bingley had mentioned that staff came by almost daily to tend to the place and could be easily retained if he leased it. The apparition Darcy had seen, the unearthly, lovely vision in the mist, could have been a maid.

Somehow, he could not believe she was.

Shaking his head, he retook his saddle and rode back to the inn to find that paper and coffee.

Bingley didn’t keep him waiting as long as he expected, arriving in the private room at the early-for-him hour of half ten. As he entered, Darcy looked up from a paper he hadn’t truly been reading, his mind on the woman he’d glimpsed in the mist, and offered a greeting.

Bingley dropped into a chair, gesturing for coffee. “I have it from the innkeeper that the magistrate, a Mr. Collins of Longbourn, is generally in his office around noon, so we’ve only to make a leisurely breakfast of it and we’re certain to find him. Then we can pop over and let Mr. Morris know that I’m no longer interested in the estate.”

Darcy would prefer to speak with Mr. Morris first, for he didn’t know how much more leisurely his breakfast could be, but as he had no pressing business back in Town, he nodded. “I rode out earlier to take in Netherfield Park. It is auspicious enough in appearance.” Though nothing compared to Darcy’s estate of Pemberley, in Derbyshire. But then, little compared to the Darcy lands.

“Is it?” Bingley brightened for a moment, then shook his head. “No. I will not take the place. Being set upon was a sign.”

“Undoubtedly,” Darcy agreed and returned to not actually reading his paper, the activity not hampered by Bingley’s chatter as he ate.

Not two hours later, the noon hour found them before the inn, eyeing an imposing stone structure across the street.

“That building houses the magistrate’s office, according to the innkeeper,” Bingley said.

As they stepped into the roadway, the same ridiculously grandiose carriage Darcy had noted the evening before rolled to a halt across from them, obscuring their view of the entrance to the magistrate’s office. After a moment, it pulled away, leaving behind the sight of the door swinging closed. Darcy’s eyebrows shot up. Did the carriage belong to this Mr. Collins? That did not bode well for the man’s sensibility. Regardless, they crossed the street and went in.

The outer office, which held a young man at a desk that was set so as to bar their way forward, proved as offensively ostentatious as the carriage. With mounting distaste, Darcy took in the blood red carpet, elaborate, gilded molding, and a fresco of rotund cherubs and half-clad women dominating the ceiling. About the walls, their large, ornately carved and golden frames nearly keeping the eye from the artwork within, large oil paintings of a similar theme cluttered the walls.

“I say, you do not see that every day,” Bingley muttered under his breath, dropping his gaze from the bright colors of the mural above.

“Fortunately,” Darcy replied, then strode forward to the desk.

The man there, who Darcy guessed to be about Bingley’s age of two and twenty, did not look up. Merely kept going over some sort of ledger, peering intently at rows of numbers through wire-rimmed spectacles.

Darcy pulled a card from his coat pocket and slapped the expensive rectangle of vellum down on the desktop.

With a start, the clerk glanced up. He shoved a clean page into the ledger and closed it as Bingley joined Darcy before the desk. Taking up Darcy’s card and squinting at it through his lenses, the clerk asked, “How may I be of assistance, Mr. Dacy? ”

His eyes going a bit wide, Bingley rushed to say, “It’s Darcy . Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley. And I am Charles Bingley.” He handed over his card as well.

The clerk nodded vigorously. “And how may I assist you, Mr. Darcy? Mr. Bingley?”

“We are here to speak with the magistrate.” Darcy permitted a certain condescending coldness into his voice.

“May I inquire about what?” the clerk asked.

Darcy pressed his mouth closed, unaccustomed to being questioned with such impunity. That he wished to speak with this Mr. Collins should be enough.

Bingley glanced from Darcy to the clerk and back, then replied, “To, ah, report a crime.”

“I will see if Mr. Collins has space in his schedule.” Taking their cards, the clerk stood. He nodded to them gravely, then disappeared through the door at the back of the room.

“I have ever-diminishing hope that speaking with the magistrate here will be worth our time,” Darcy stated quietly.

Bingley looked about the room. “I concur.” His countenance brightened. “Still. No harm in it, and then we can be on our way with a clear conscience of having done our civic duty.”

At the back of the room, the eyes of a particularly large, lush, and underdressed woman lounging against a backdrop of brightly painted lawn swung aside. Darcy blinked, startled, as the painted woman’s eyes were replaced by a pair of watery blue ones peering out from behind the wall. He drew his eyebrows together, uncertain if he was seeing what he thought he was. The blue eyes jerked back and the painted ones swung into place.

Was this Mr. Collins fellow spying on them?

A moment later the door opened and the clerk stepped out. “Mr. Collins will see you now.”

Bemused, Darcy started forward, Bingley beside him.

If the outer room was ostentatious to the point of distaste, Mr. Collins’ office took the theme into the ridiculous. All about the walls, white carved marble women stood at regular intervals, the tall vases on their heads giving the appearance of holding up the ceiling. That, fortunately, was merely blue and cloud-filled, though the color was somehow unsettling. The artist, Darcy felt, had employed too much of a green tinge, rendering the cloud-dotted sky somehow sickly.

Behind a desk that would require six stout men to move it, blood-red, gold-embroidered curtains masked a window that undoubtedly faced an alleyway. Around the room, more scantily clad statues hoisted candelabras, a dozen candles burning in each. The thick rug underfoot, some sort of royal purple gone puce, clashed with everything, and every open bit of wall was either hung with more red and gold curtains, or covered with gilt-framed oils.

“Greetings, gentlemen,” the tall, stout man behind the desk said, rising from an uncomfortable looking blue velvet and silver painted chair. “My assistant claims you would like a word with me, which, to be certain, I am happy to grant such exalted gentlemen as yourselves, no matter your standing. As my father, Mr. Collins Sr., the late Mayor of Meryton, always quoted, charity begins at home.”

Somehow speaking with them was an act of charity even though they were exalted, which they seemed to be even though Mr. Collins had no notion who they were? Darcy fought off the urge to shake his head in confusion.

“Ah, yes, well, Charles Bingley at your service,” Bingley said, moving forward to stand before the monstrous desk. There being nowhere for them to sit, he bowed and continued, “We merely wished to report that we were set upon by a pair of French bandits yesterday evening.”

Darcy joined Bingley before the desk as Mr. Collins dropped back into his chair with a grimace. Closer inspection revealed that the man before them, perhaps nearing thirty, had the embellished accoutrements of his office tailored in a manner that hearkened to the Prince Regent’s garb. Mr. Collins’ attempt at hiding his over-indulged physique was about as successful as Prinny’s.

“Those damn Boney Bandits,” Mr. Collins growled. “Every time I think I’ve scared them off, they pop up again to accost innocent travelers, if such fine gentlemen as yourselves can ever be called innocent in all things, as surely you are, though we all know none of us are.” Here, he supplied a wink. “Those merely passing through Meryton to…” He trailed off with a questioning look.

Darcy stared down at the man before him in mild disgust.

All affability, Bingley supplied, “We were on our way to view this Netherfield Park place. I was thinking of leasing it, you see.”

“Ah, yes, such an eyesore, empty as it is. A real tragedy that the owner remains in London, though certainly one can see the superiority of London, dismal though it may be. Lovely estate, Netherfield Park. My father always said that if we weren’t burdened with Longbourn, we would have taken Netherfield Park, if only to save it from becoming what it has become. Terrible shame.”

“Ah, yes, well, a man needs an estate to be taken seriously and to pass along to his offspring, as it were,” Bingley replied, though Darcy didn’t feel his friend had understood Mr. Collins’ rambling any more than he had. “So I, that is we, set out to take a look, but it simply won’t do, so we will be off once we supply the details of the robbery.”

“Pass on to your offspring?” Mr. Collins repeated sharply.

“Well, yes, once I have some.” Bingley smiled easily. “Need a Mrs. Bingley first, I’d say.”

“You planned to purchase Netherfield Park, not lease it?” Mr. Collins pressed, his eyes narrow. “It is my understanding that the property is for lease only, not for sale.”

Bingley looked to Darcy, who shrugged his ignorance both of the exact nature of the availability of Netherfield Park and of the source of Mr. Collins’ clear agitation.

Turning back to the magistrate, Bingley said, “Mr. Morris gave me to understand that if I was pleased with the place, I might make an offer.”

“Which is not the point of us seeking a word with you, sir,” Darcy said firmly. Bingley’s affairs were no business of this Mr. Collins, be he magistrate hereabouts or not. “We simply wish to report a robbery.”

“Right. Yes. Robbery.” Mr. Collins stood, making a shooing gesture. “Report the details to my clerk and I will raise the bounty again, though I doubt it will help. Hated as those Boney Bandits are, the citizens hereabouts love them too dearly to turn them in. My father, Mr. Collins Sr., always said, it takes fools to know fools, and trust me, I know the people hereabouts well enough to understand them. I am afraid I must be off to drop in on Mr. Morris. We have a meeting. Yes, a meeting. Scheduled for now. Cannot be late.” Throwing his arms out wide, Mr. Collins came around the desk, ushering them before him as one would corral chickens.

Thoroughly affronted, Darcy pivoted and strode from the room. He would have continued from the building, but Bingley turned aside at the clerk’s desk. Mr. Collins locked the door to his office, then passed them without a glance. A pinched, angry look on his face, he left.

“He seems rather distraught,” Bingley observed, his brow creased with confusion.

“Oh dear.” The clerk looked after his employer with worried eyes. “Whatever did you tell him?”

“We attempted to tell him about being robbed yesterday evening,” Darcy stated.

“Ah, yes, the Boney Bandits. The whole village is speaking of it.” The clerk shook his head. “That will not be what upset him. He will simply raise the reward again.”

“Can nothing be done about them?” Bingley asked with clear curiosity. “A trap laid or whatnot?”

The clerk, who’d been looking after Mr. Collins, turned to Bingley with a shake of his head. “They do not strike often, and never in the same location twice. We would not know where and when to set one.” Opening his desk drawer, he pulled out a bundle of papers. Sifting through neat rows of numbers, dates, and figures, he pulled free a graph, then slid it across the desk. “The only predictor I have found is the size of their haul. Insofar as I can tell, the more they get off their, well, victims, the longer until they strike again.”

Darcy studied the neat chart, impressed by both the clerk’s draftsmanship and the bandits’ restraint. The so-called Boney Bandits were economical, were they? How odd for highwaymen. “Does not the fact that they are French make them easy to track down?”

The young man shook his head again. “I am afraid not. For one, they are favorites hereabouts. For another, I honestly do not believe anyone knows who they are. Either their English is very good and used at all other times, or their French is a ruse. I cannot say which.”

Darcy found both difficult to believe. He felt certain that if he saw the two young men again, unmasked, he would know them. Especially that aggravating Azile with his obvious amusement over robbing them.

“Yes, well.” Bingley shrugged. “It sounds as if it will do little good, but Mr. Collins asked us to supply you with the details of the event, Mr.…” Bingley trailed off, waiting.

“Mr. Collins,” the young man said. Seeing their frowns, he elaborated, “Mr. Robert Collins. The magistrate is Mr. William Collins. I am his brother. His father—” Robert Collins broke off, flushing. “That is, our father married my mother before I was born, it being a second marriage for both.”

Darcy took in the odd phrasing and the young man’s scarlet face and decided that his mother hadn’t married Mr. Collins very long before he was born, which explained the complete lack of resemblance. But even if, as Darcy suspected, no blood bonded the two men, the esteem the careful charts and graph had garnered in Darcy crumbled under the revelation of their connection.

“And you need not trouble yourselves,” Robert Collins continued. “I already noted the details of the event. As I said, the whole village is speaking of it.”

“Did they report that the devils shot Darcy’s hat?” Bingley’s voice radiated indignation.

“Ah, yes.” Robert Collins had the decency to give an apologetic grimace. “That detail has been oft repeated.” He cleared his throat, his gaze dropping to his chart. “It would be helpful to know how much they took off you, however, if you do not consider it an imposition? That will allow me to narrow down the timing of their next appearance.”

Darcy found everything about their trip to Hertfordshire to be an imposition, but he supplied the sum, as did Bingley, the combined amount causing Robert Collins to go a bit slack-jawed.

“Ah, on behalf of Meryton, let me tender our sincerest apologies, Mr. Darcy. Mr. Bingley.” Robert Collins flipped open the ledger he’d been studying when they arrived. “I can look through the budget. There must be something here that can be diverted to replacing your hat, Mr. Darcy. It seems the least our community can do for you.”

“That will not be necessary,” Darcy said firmly. He wanted neither this village’s funds, nor anything more to do with Meryton. Turning to Bingley he continued, “Is your sense of civic duty satisfied?”

“I suspect it must be,” Bingley replied.

“Then all we require are directions to a Mr. Morris.” Darcy hoped the man was near and would be in, and finished with his meeting with Mr. William Collins. It was high time they departed Meryton.

“Yes, certainly. Three doors down on the right. His office is beside Mr. Phillips.” Robert Collins reached for a sheet of paper. “I can write down the address for you.”

“That will likewise not be necessary.” Darcy imagined they were capable of counting to three.

Bingley offered Robert Collins a dip of his head. “Thank you for your time.”

The young man stood to bow. “Thank you for yours, sirs.”

Darcy nodded as well, then followed as Bingley led the way back across a room Darcy hoped never to set foot in again.

As Bingley reached the door, Robert Collins blurted, “But what did you say that has my brother so agitated?”

Bingley looked over his shoulder. “That I had thought to purchase Netherfield Park,” he said to Robert Collins. Adding a confused shrug for Darcy, Bingley stepped out into the street .

A feminine cry sounded. Bingley lurched to the side as the door swung closed behind him. In a shock of worry, Darcy hurried through the door after his friend.