Page 38 of Elizabeth’s Refuge (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #16)
Lachglass was less than he had once been.
That was Darcy’s first thought as their party came, rifles out and ready, to the location they had been ordered to meet Lachglass.
It was a clearing deep in Lachglass’s own estate, where they were led by one of his gamekeepers, a nervous young man who kept insisting to them that he just did what he was told, and he had nothing to do with the master or Mr. Blight.
Lachglass could easily have picked men from amongst his gamekeepers hidden in the thick spring foliage, waiting to shoot. Of course, the men here were nervous soldiers who were very ready to shoot back. But they were exposed, and the trees and leaves behind and around him made Darcy’s neck ache.
This was the perfect sort of land for an ambush.
Darcy had hunted enough to recognize three good spots around where hunting blinds were probably placed.
Darcy’s heart pounded in fear with every step deeper into the estate.
None of that showed on his face. He held Elizabeth’s arm and almost gaily walked along, helping her over the occasional thick trunk fallen across the path.
It was for Elizabeth that he was principally frightened, but as Darcy smiled and pointed out to Elizabeth a bird’s nest nestled in the branches of a tree they walked past, he knew that he was frightened for himself as well.
So easy to turn from this quintessence of dust into dust.
At last they reached the clearing, heavy with the thick scent of grasses, damp earth and leaves. Lord Lachglass stood in the clearing with a half dozen pale and frightened looking men, badly outnumbered by the platoon of soldiers they had borrowed from Colonel Pike’s regiment.
Mr. Blight stood next to Lachglass, his face pale, and his lips thinned as he saw the group of soldiers arrive. But he did not look particularly scared.
Lord Lachglass held the wavering tip of his gun on Mrs. Bennet. He held it in his left hand, as his right hand had been wrapped up with a huge bandage, and he held the pistol protectively against his side.
His other men looked between each other, and backed away from Lachglass with their hands held up as they saw the soldiers enter the clearing.
The rake’s nose was twisted and flat. His hair seemed to have thinned.
But that was not where the chief change was.
There had always been a vicious brutal energy to Lachglass, but if you watched his movements it was as if everything animal and vital in his soul had been replaced by something hollow that could disappear at the first moment.
That scared Darcy almost as much as the way Lachglass showed no concern at seeing the group of soldiers who had come with Darcy and Elizabeth.
This was not the face of a man who cared overmuch if he survived. Darcy tightened his grip on Elizabeth’s arm.
“What… what do all these men do here? You, captain, you trespass upon my land.” Lachglass waved dismissively at Captain Dilman, as if he expected the man to actually turn around. “I give no permission for your presence, I am an earl, and you are to leave.”
He gestured his pistol at the soldiers, without ever actually pointing the weapon directly at any of them, before turning his weapon once more on Mrs. Bennet.
“You stand accused,” Captain Dilman said in a ringing voice, “of kidnapping and other crimes. I am here to bring you to arrest, and to see you stand trial.”
Lachglass sneered and shuffled around Mrs. Bennet, so that he now held his gun against the back of the trembling woman’s head. “You have a warrant, I take it.”
“A warrant signed by his honor, Mr. Crews, a magistrate in Brighton.”
“No jurisdiction.” Lachglass dismissively waved his wrapped up right hand. “Get away, and when I sign a warrant of arrest against myself you may come here.”
“Nevertheless, you shall release your guests, or you shall be thrown in prison today.”
Lachglass laughed, a high-pitched keening sound. The way his finger seemed to play in the trigger of the gun terrified Darcy. Was he about to see Mrs. Bennet’s head splattered across the lawn due to an accidental misfire?
“This is all too tiresome. You know I cannot be prosecuted. As a peer of England I have a right for the first accusation of any crime, save murder, to be dismissed. Even were it true that I had abducted this woman,” he kicked Mrs. Bennet hard in the back of her leg, and she moaned piteously, “I would not be punished for the crime due to my position and rank. Save us both the annoyance and get yourself away — But you .”
Lachglass saw Miss Bennet, and he snarled.
His nostrils flared with hatred, his eyes went narrow, the cords in his neck throbbed. He spat at her, the spittle landing in Mrs. Bennet’s lap.
“At last,” he laughed with mad gayness. “At last here to face justice . You are come at my invitation to SUFFER.” He jerked his injured hand to the side, and his voice dropped, barely audible across the grassy clearing. “Oh, my little governess. How I will make you suffer.”
Captain Dilman shouted, “Release these two women and surrender yourself, or I’ll shoot you myself.”
“Now, now, all of you point your guns away from me,” Lachglass hissed, poking the barrel of his pistol into the back of the whimpering Mrs. Bennet’s head for emphasis.
“This weapon has a hair trigger. It has nearly gone off twice in the last minute already. Shoot me, and in my final jerk, I’m sure to pull it and splatter her brains with me. ”
Darcy exclaimed, “Be reasonable, Lachglass. You don’t want to die.”
“So tiresome. Life is become tiresome.” He sighed, looking Byronic with his puffy pale face filled with ennui. “I care not very much. I am ugly now you see.” He gestured with the bandaged hand at his nose, not moving the pistol in his other hand from Mrs. Bennet’s head. “Your wife made me ugly.”
Neither Darcy nor Elizabeth had anything to say to that.
“Haha!” the earl crowed victoriously. “Come to me, Elizabeth. Come closer. It will be one or the other. Your mother’s life or yours. Will you be such a coward as to stand and watch me blow a hole in your mother’s head? Will you? Will you!”
“Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!” For the first time since they arrived Mrs. Bennet said something. “Me! Shoot me! Not her! Not my daughter! Let him shoot me!”
Elizabeth started walking towards the laughing Lachglass. Darcy grabbed her arm, but Elizabeth with a surprising strength wrenched herself away from his grasp. She spoke in a frighteningly calm voice. “We must get him to point anywhere but Mama.”
“No… this is too dangerous.”
Elizabeth walked slowly forward. Her eyes focused on the pistol that was stuck towards her mother’s head. “Here I am,” she shouted when she was thirty feet away from him.
How did Elizabeth sound so calm?
“Haha! Come closer! Closer so I can see your eyes as you die.”
So saying, Lachglass pulled the gun from Mrs. Bennet’s head, lowering his arms again to aim at Elizabeth.
A crack of a single rifle shot rang across the field, firing as Lachglass began to move.
The earl’s head exploded into a blood blotch, with the entry wound right above his nose and dead center between his eyes.
His gun went off in his dying convulsion, as he’d promised, and it fired uselessly into the air above Elizabeth and Mrs. Bennet.
Kitty had been sitting behind him at such an angle that she was splattered with brains and blood. She began screaming.
Elizabeth ran up to her sister, ignoring Mr. Blight and the other men who worked for the deceased Lachglass.
She held Kitty tight, and whispered some sort of consolation to her, and then after an instant she went to Mrs. Bennet and grabbed her, beginning to pull at the ropes binding her to the chair.
All of the earl’s men, except Mr. Blight, threw their weapons to the side. But Mr. Blight began to aim his pistol at Elizabeth as he snarled angrily.
Three soldiers shot him dead as he moved, splattering his body with bloody holes.
Darcy ran up to Elizabeth, and he helped her with a hunting knife to saw the restraints off Mrs. Bennet and Kitty. The women embraced each other fiercely, and then Elizabeth turned and threw her arms around Darcy, squeezing him as tightly.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, kind Jesu. They all were safe. It all was over. Oh, God.
She was so warm, and she smelled fragrant, and they squeezed each other till he could feel her bones.
The soldiers came up; they tied ropes around the hands of Lachglass’s retainers, to take them before the courts for acting as accomplices to Lord Lachglass in his crimes. Captain Dilman stepped up to the corpse of the earl and poked him with his foot.
Dead. Very dead. The man was very, very dead.