Page 31 of Elizabeth’s Refuge (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #16)
Late at night early in June two women prepared to go to sleep in a solidly built house of three stories — the uppermost floor was only used by the staff of domestics.
This building was called a “cottage” by the owners of the magnificent estate on which it rested.
One of the women was middle aged, and one young.
“Lord! I’m so fagged,” Catherine Bennet smilingly said to her mother. Kitty still luxuriated in the feel of cashmere shawls and tightly woven fabrics she now enjoyed because of Elizabeth’s excellent marriage, “we were up so late at the assembly last night.”
The letters of introduction for his new family that Darcy had sent to all of his acquaintance, and the letters of praise for Elizabeth from Mrs. North and Becky to Mrs. Reynolds, had done a great deal to make the entrance of Kitty and Mrs. Bennet into the society round about Pemberley easy and smooth.
Mrs. Bennet’s middle daughter was not present with them, as Mary had taken her share of the money Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth gave them to stay in London with the Gardiners.
She attended improving lectures, read the improving books she bought ample amounts of, and improvingly practiced the piano.
And she described all this in improving letters to her mother, written in perfectly straight lines.
Mrs. Bennet was generally liked, as she was friendly and talkative, and if she was vulgar, the plain reality is that many of her new neighbors also were.
Kitty was pretty, not so pretty as Elizabeth or Jane, but a fine looking girl, with bold flashing eyes, and an easy confidence about herself that had not been ruined by the years of poverty after her father’s death.
She liked to be able to dance and wear pretty clothes once again, and to be seen as a Miss of modest consequence.
Mr. Darcy had allowed it to become known through the medium of his lawyer that he intended to do something — though nothing exceptional — for his sister-in-law when she should marry.
So Kitty’s circumstances were sufficient for those families not on the hunt for a splendid match for their sons, while her beauty and vivaciousness drew the attention of many of those sons.
These were not the dark days of the war, when the absence of gentlemen off serving as officers with Wellington, or upon the wooden walls that barred the English channel from the little ogre meant that even a pretty girl would often sit out half her dances at a ball, or be reduced to making the circuit with one of her sisters or female friends.
Kitty could dance often as she wanted at the assemblies, and she had made new eternal boon companions from amongst the other young women of the neighborhood.
Miss Kitty was quite as happy as she could wish to be.
At present she was not eager to marry , instead she was eager for a planned visit to Paris with Mama and Mary in the fall, when she would see Elizabeth once more and be able to thank Mr. Darcy for his kindness to them.
However as the great Scots poet of a generation prior said, “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley.”
A group of six men hunched in the bushes outside of the cottage, waiting for the candles to be extinguished.
Five of these men were ruffians of the worst sort, four of them had worked the noble trade of the highwayman upon the High Toby in the past. Three would in the future, and two would be hung for it. Two more were London back alley knifers, both of whom had killed a man.
The sixth had once nearly been a gentleman, but he had fallen in the world since then.
One of the Londoners had killed more than one man in his time on this earth.
That man was the scarred Mr. Blight. He had never healed quite right from Elizabeth’s blow, his jaw ached right in front of the ear, and he fancied that he now bit his tongue far more often than before.
He hated Elizabeth for that, and for that reason, even though Lord Lachglass’s plan was ridiculous, and doomed to see him destroyed, likely with Blight himself, Blight was happy to hunch in the shrubbery outside the house where her mother and sister lived.
When the lights were extinguished, and the sounds of movement ceased, one of the ruffians worked the locked latch open on the door.
The wooden door popped open fast and easily, just a simple latch, nothing like what a man in London would use to blockade his castle from the evil ones outside.
One man hung back in the darkness of the woods, keeping an eye about for any sign that they’d attracted attention from the big house. This man was the one who had once been a gentleman, and he had no taste for violence.
If he had not considered himself to be in particularly difficult circumstances he would not have agreed to aid the others, and he felt something like pangs of conscience as he watched the line of rough bestial brutes (as he thought of them) file into the breached house.
The others snuck on tip-toeing feet through the house and up the stairs to where the bedrooms of the family would be.
The underling who’d killed a man was placed to stand inside the darkened servant’s stairway, to stab in the neck without warning any servant who was awakened by the noise and ran down to see what was the matter.
A clumsy country oaf accidentally kicked over an incidental table sitting where no rational table would sit in the middle of the hallway leading to the staircase.
The man on guard against the servants stiffened in the deathly silence that followed that clatter.
But no one wakened.
Led by Blight and carrying thieves’ lanterns that only showed their light in one direction, the others went up to the rooms. They softly tested the doors to each bedroom, and none of them were locked.
They easily found the quiet peaceful sleepers.
A quick movement by men used to violence, a knock over the head of each sleeping woman, and then before they could return to themselves, efficient gags were forced over the mouths of both women, making it impossible for them to scream, and difficult for them to breathe.
Hands tied together. Feet tied together.
And then the two burliest of the men in this gang slung one woman each over their back and carted them down the stairs and out into the estate’s large park.
This group of men had not been bothered at all while sneaking their way onto Darcy’s estate, following the line of ground, and avoiding all of the houses of cottagers, and the occasional roving of the groundskeepers.
They had moved so well through the estate that one might wonder if they were guided by a person who had grown up on the estate.
Which they had been.
The man who had led them to dowager cottage was the man who had waited outside.
He stood masked to ensure he was not recognized in the dark when the criminals led by Mr. Blight emerged from the now emptier house.
This man’s eyes flicked over the two captives, blindfolded and gagged, being carried on the back of Mr. Blight’s friends, and something like regret for his actions and the past flashed in his eyes.
He led the party quickly over hills and through hedges and out to the blind where highwaymen had hidden in the old days before the Darcy family had suppressed them, and before the king’s justice was more than a laughable word.
A carriage awaited them, standing empty with a team of four ugly horses purchased more than twenty miles away. The coat of arms on the carriage had been carefully removed, but the gap in the paint where it had been, and the bolts that it had been attached to, were almost visible in the dark.
Mr. Blight sourly looked at the carriage. Still recognizable.
Would have made a damned sight more sense to rent a separate carriage for the night’s work, or better to purchase one, like he had the horses, and then push it off an isolated cliff into the sea in Cornwall when the business was done.
But Lachglass had insisted that it be his carriage which would carry the captives to his estate, because somehow that would make it more his own revenge.
Blight had prepared a hideaway, where he could flee to after the inevitable end had come, and Lord Lachglass was thrown in prison for a time, and all his associates arrested and hung.
They’d not hang Lachglass of course. Not a peer. Nor chop his head off, not for any crime lower than rebellion against the mad king and his fat son.
Would give the crowd ideas, it would, if aristocrats could go around being hung.
Blight spat on the ground after he saw the two women stuffed into the carriage. The crowd would hang him faster than Lachglass if they knew everything, and he could not blame them. He’d shout for himself to be hung, if he ever was asked.
He turned to the man who had guided them, and who stayed carefully out of the light in the shadows — to avoid being recognized, because even with the large syphilis sore sitting on his forehead, he was yet a handsome man.
Ha.
Blight wondered how long it would take the disease to ravage the man and kill him off.
The pox tended to carry off a man slow and painful like.
Drove them mad before it killed them too.
Would drive them mad like Miss Bennet — she had been a pretty thing — had driven Lord Lachglass’s brains out the back of his head.
“Here’s the dirty ready.” Blight placed into Mr. Wickham’s hands the bag of guineas that was the agreed upon fee.
Mr. Wickham had bargained hard for his help, but then the poor man was destitute these days, no longer as capable of charming those around him.
Anyone who knew the signs would know exactly what was behind the makeup hiding the pox.
Didn’t matter none to Blight in any case. Weren’t his money, and Lachglass wasn’t holding to his money, or his wits too close no more. Not after he’d been hit over the head. Blight was particularly glad Lachglass hadn’t asked again after the boxing master he’d been ordered to kill.