Page 35 of Elizabeth’s Refuge (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #16)

A week later

“Jove I wish I could go with you,” General Fitzwilliam loudly proclaimed, as they all stood in the midst of the town in Cambrai where his regiment was accommodated.

“Would be a nice chance to see the old boy again. Have a friendly-like talk with my cousin. Alas, the Duke would not give me leave for such a family matter, not after I only so recently returned.”

“I understand,” Darcy replied with a quiet voice. “I wish you would be with us as well.”

He embraced his cousin, and then he entered his carriage into which he had already handed Elizabeth.

They would immediately travel to Calais, where a boat waited to take them to Brighton. The regiment of a friend of General Fitzwilliam’s from the Peninsula was quartered there, and they planned to gather a substantial escort of soldiers which they could take to the Kentish estate of Lord Lachglass.

Lord Lachglass had demanded Elizabeth come to meet him, and meet him she would. But she would not meet him alone.

*****

A week later yawing and creaking their ship sailed into the harbor at Brighton, pulling against the pier on a calm early summer day. “Are you well, my dear?” Darcy whispered to Elizabeth.

She shook her head no. Elizabeth still felt queasy as the gangplank was extended out to the pier.

Her stomach had become no stiffer since the she had left England on General Fitzwilliam’s ship to Calais. She had eaten nothing since leaving Calais the previous evening, and the billowing sea breeze felt cold against her sweaty face.

Darcy stood next to Elizabeth with his arms around her as they waited to disembark.

“I shall not make this journey often,” she groaned. “Hardly worth the illness to see what is on the other side of the ocean.”

He squeezed her closer against his side and kissed the top of her bonnet. Elizabeth sagged against Darcy and closed her eyes until he tugged her to walk towards the gangplank when everything was ready.

When they reached the end of the pier, twelve soldiers waited for them in fine redcoats, with their muskets loaded and pointed upwards.

They had delayed for two days in Calais before sailing to Brighton, so that arrangements for the arrival could be made via letters sent express before they arrived.

The letter General Fitzwilliam had sent to his friend in Brighton had arrived by then, and the soldiers were here to meet them to ensure that no ruffians hired by Lord Lachglass could attack them the instant they stepped onto British soil.

There was still the threat of the Bow Street Runners, but after discussion with a lawyer Darcy had called from London to Calais, they had determined that at this time that while it would be a very frightening event if Elizabeth was put up for trial, there was no longer any practical chance she would be found against.

Elizabeth had nightmares each night since they had received the letter.

Nightmares of Kitty shot, blood gushing from her skull. Of Mama, crying in her natural complaining way, “If only you had been quiet and let him have his way with you, it would have quickly been over, and I would still be alive.”

Now Elizabeth felt for the first time something like guilt.

She had been a little annoyed at first with General Fitzwilliam, wanting to blame him for the essay she had written to destroy Lachglass’s reputation.

The timing of the abduction of her family suggested that his dismissal from the cabinet — Elizabeth and Darcy had cheered and toasted with fizzing champagne when they heard of it — had triggered his choice to seek revenge in this new way by abducting her mother and her sister.

Elizabeth swallowed.

Much as she hoped everything would turn out well, and that Darcy’s scheme would succeed perfectly and in the end they would all be alive, she was not in any sense entirely persuaded it would.

An odd beggar in a giant shaggy coat stood near the soldiers who waited for them on the dock. He had a huge bulbous nose, and a giant scar across his neck that he pointed to whenever anyone stepped near. He then extended his hand out pathetically asking for money without being able to speak.

Elizabeth smiled at the beggar.

Another person caught her eye. She stood beside the captain who commanded the platoon of soldiers sent out to meet them. A young woman Elizabeth had not seen for four years.

Her sister Lydia.

Elizabeth tottered down, her stomach forgotten, to stare at Lydia, who in turn stared at her with a half smile, and a half worried expression.

They stood across from each other, and Elizabeth hardly knew what to say.

She had been angry at Lydia for long after she had disappeared with Mr. Wickham.

Though Elizabeth knew that there was no actual connection in cause, a little part of her had always thought it was somehow Lydia’s fault when Papa became sick and died less than a year after she disappeared.

At the same time… at the same time.

Suddenly tears started in Elizabeth’s eyes. She and Lydia embraced each other fiercely. “My dear sister,” Elizabeth cried.

Lydia at the same moment exclaimed, “Lord! You look quite the same as ever.”

Elizabeth could not help but feel happy. Lydia was her sister, and she could see that she was well and happy.

While the soldiers grinned at them, Lydia turned to the officer leading the men. “Lizzy, this is Captain Dilman, my handsome husband.”

He bowed to her. “My pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Darcy.”

“And you as well.” He was a handsome man, but not at all well dressed in the way Mr. Wickham had been.

There were spots of patching on the elbows of his uniform, cleverly sown to be almost invisible, and in spots the fabric was worn rather thin.

He also was missing half his ear and had a light scar on the cheek on the same side.

When he noticed Elizabeth looking at the injury, he laughed and tugged at the remainder of his ear.

“At Waterloo. Wrecked my handsome looks, but at least my Lydia still loves me.” He embraced his wife from the side and smiled at her.

Lydia looked at Mr. Darcy and exclaimed with a laugh, “La, what a joke that you two married! I remember how you disliked each other so.”

“I never disliked Elizabeth,” Darcy replied.

Lydia laughed. “No, you did! Everyone in the whole neighborhood knew you’d said, on first sight, she wasn’t handsome enough to tempt you.”

Elizabeth flushed. “Enough Lydia.”

Lydia laughed. “Such a joke! That you then married. But I was so happy to hear from Mama how you gave her and Kitty a house and some income to live upon.”

“And then I sent Lord Lachglass after them,” Elizabeth said.

Lydia rolled your eyes. “To blame yourself ‘tis very much like blaming King Louie in France for the ogre coming back and shooting at my dear Dilman at Waterloo! You did not want it to happen.”

Darcy frowned as well. “My people failed to protect them — we should have known Lachglass might do something of this sort, and—”

“Do not blame yourselves!” Lydia exclaimed. “Johnny,” she turned to her husband. “Do tell them they are quite silly.”

“The colonel has said I’m to lead the force that goes with you to retrieve Mrs. Bennet and Miss Kitty. Your mother is a… well intentioned woman.”

Lydia elbowed him.

“She does not deserve to be used as a hostage,” Captain Dilman said. “Insane man. An insane man to do such a thing. As my Lydia said, you have no fault for failing to predict the actions of a mad creature.”

Darcy frowned. “If I’d only had a few men to stay in the house with them and installed better locks, and—”

“It was Mr. Wickham anyway,” Lydia said with a frown. “I am most put out with him.”

“Wickham!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “What does he have to do with the matter?”

“He sent me a letter. The sad man was drunk as a wheelbarrow in some brothel — poor man. Wrote he felt quite guilty, and that he’d already gambled half the money away. Mr. Blight gave him some twenty guineas to lead him to the cottage.”

Darcy growled. “I ought to have killed Mr. Wickham when I could.”

“Poor man, I heard from Denny that he has the pox now,” Lydia said. “The old regiment was here in Brighton, a year ago, those who hadn’t been discharged after the war. Glad he did not give it to me.”

The group walked, escorted by the soldiers, to the house that Colonel Pike, General Fitzwilliam’s friend and Captain Dilman’s commanding officer, had rented on the outskirts of the seaport town.

“What is it like,” Elizabeth asked Lydia as they walked, “to be back in Brighton?”

“Oh quite the same — pretty as ever. And exciting enough, though it is emptier than during the war. I was so gay, so young, and quite na?ve then.” She laughed.

“I was sure as rain, no sure as cloudy days, that Mr. Wickham planned to marry me. Took at least a month and a half before I realized that was not his notion at all. Quite annoyed with him then, but I had nothing better in sight. I came back here immediately after he left me in the lodging house. He’d had enough of me, and left me in our rooms without warning, and with a note to Mrs. Younge that I would settle the accounts. ”

Lydia laughed, though Elizabeth saw nothing at all funny with the story.

“Mrs. Younge?” Darcy asked looking sharply at her. “About your height, brown hair and with a pretense of gentility and education. A friend of Wickham’s?”

“Ah, you knew her too? She wasn’t a kind one.

Would sell her own daughter for a profit, but the constables laughed when she tried to have me thrown in the debtors’ prison for the money Wickham owed her.

They said it would be absurd and wrong to charge an abandoned woman in such a case, and that if she could not show any papers I had signed saying I would pay, they would not bother me at all.

And they did not. So she just tossed me out, into the winter. ”

Elizabeth gasped, remembering her own cold time. “Why did you not come back? Papa was still alive that winter.”