Page 4 of Elizabeth’s Refuge (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #16)

The moment Darcy entered the door to his finely appointed townhouse, his housekeeper Mrs. North greeted him in an unusual agitation. She flapped her hands and tugged at her bracelet. “Sir, sir, I’ve been waiting for you to return for the past hour. A strange gentlewoman is asking after you.”

Darcy blinked. “A strange gentlewoman? Did she leave her card?”

“In the drawing room. Told her to wait for you. Couldn’t send her off.

Not in the cold. Not at all. I gave her a toddy, and told her to just sit there and keep warm.

It’s all so irregular. I think she is in some trouble, but a very sweet and good natured young gentlewoman.

I can tell, you know. I can tell. Someone did wrong by her. ”

With a small smile Darcy shook his head.

“Mrs. North, this is most unlike you. I can hardly make out the direction of your communication. Who is the woman seated in my drawing room who saw fit to call at,” Darcy frowned in thought, “ten o’clock in the evening, since you said she has been waiting for me for an hour now. This is most irregular.”

The thought crossed his mind that the entire situation might be some bizarre attempt to entrap him in marriage by entangling his reputation with that of the strange girl who had called.

But that made no more sense to him than anything else that Mrs. North had said.

Besides now that Georgiana was happily married to Mr. Tillman, Darcy had rather less reason to concern himself with the possibility of scandal.

“Um. Yes. Um. Let me explain.” Mrs. North’s head bobbed up and down as she stammered.

“Nothing like this ever happened before. But I am sure she is a good sort, even though I don’t know her.

I’m worried she’ll be quite sick from all that cold, walking around all day she said, in just a thin dress — no coat.

It’s been raining all day, off and on, and with that wind.

She’ll be fortunate if she doesn’t catch her death of the cold. ”

“I begin to think that I will need to see this woman myself to gain any sense of the matter.”

“Yes sir, that is likely best. I am sure the matter is not her fault, but I expect someone imposed on her. Miss Bennet’s face is bruised. And her forehead and arms too, I dare say that—”

“Miss Bennet!” Darcy exclaimed, all hint of sleepiness and amusement at the situation suddenly gone. “Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”

“She did not say her Christian name, but—”

“Around this height, dimpled cheeks, and eyes which are roughly the color of the Thames at twilight—”

“No smiles to see any dimples on the girl tonight.” Mrs. North tilted her head and smiled a little. “But her eyes are like that.”

“Good God.” Deep breath. And then Darcy took another deep breath. “I shall speak to her.”

Perhaps it was one of her sisters.

Perhaps it was a completely unrelated Miss Bennet.

In the brief moment before he entered his drawing room Darcy wondered why Elizabeth would reenter his life at such a time.

When he had finally entirely put that old affection behind him, and he at last was seriously looking for a prospect for wife, since he had reached the age when a man ought to marry if he had not already.

Besides he thought he would be decidedly lonely in a few weeks with Georgiana gone to her husband’s estate in the north, and General Fitzwilliam soon to return to the division he commanded in the occupying army in France.

Darcy stepped briskly into the room.

She was Elizabeth.

His heart leapt in his chest and pattered fast.

Elizabeth clutched a blanket around her next to the fire and she seemed to not realize he was there. A small house kitten from the kitchen had climbed into her lap and was pushing its paws into her leg again and again, while she absently petted him and stared into the fire.

Her hair hung loosely around her ears and eyes, and she looked small and young, as if she had not aged a day in the four years since she refused his request for marriage. His heart went out to her, wanting to protect and comfort her. She looked like a wrung out rat, and she looked beautiful.

And then she looked at him, and as Mrs. North had said, her forehead had a big bruise, black and blue. And there was another softer bruise, shaped like a handprint, on her face.

Elizabeth .

What happened to you?

She stood up, the cat in her lap squealing as she absently put it on the arm of her chair.

“Mr. Darcy!”

He bowed. Darcy tried to speak but his voice would not come.

She was beautiful.

She shivered despite the warmth of the well heated room. And she was so bruised.

“What happened?” He forced himself to speak slowly and quietly, as though he was trying to comfort an injured and skittish horse.

But Darcy felt a roar of rage that screamed behind his ears. He added when she swallowed before answering, “Elizabeth, I am glad you came to me in whatever trouble you have found yourself.”

“I was…” Something flashed in her eyes, and she did not speak for a moment.

“You need not speak,” Darcy said, with the terror that she had been assaulted and defiled by some vicious man, “not if it is painful for you to recall. I trust you. Inform me how I might aid you.”

“No, I must tell you. You may not wish to help me when you understand.”

“I shall always wish to help you.”

Elizabeth smiled humorlessly. “I must also ask you to withhold any promise until you have heard what I have done.” She tottered forward, limping terribly on one foot that looked swelled in her stockings to twice its size.

He caught her arm to steady her as she tripped on the flat surface and nearly fell.

Her closeness brought with it a strong scent of sweat that was somehow pleasant.

She flinched, but then smiled up at him. “Thank you.”

Darcy looked down at his hand on her soft yet strong arm. Beneath his fingers was a mottled blue and black handprint.

He let her go with a hard breath. Despite the rage that flooded him, Darcy kept his voice quiet and soft. “Who did this to you? I swear I shall call him out and kill him.”

“That shall be impossible.”

“I care not who the man is. The king himself, I would call out — do you wish to protect this man? I care not who he is.”

Elizabeth smiled in her humorless manner again. “The trouble is, that I believe I have already placed this gentleman on my credit, and so he cannot go onto yours.”

“What do you mean?” Darcy stepped closer to her. Her cheeks were flushed, her hand felt hot. “What happened? Tell me everything, and above all, tell me how I might help you.”

“May I sit?” Without waiting for his reply, Elizabeth hobbled back with his arm supporting her to the chair by the crackling fire piled high at Mrs. North’s command, and she collapsed into it.

“I believe — had no chance for me to confirm — I believe I killed the Earl of Lachglass when he tried to… to…“

“You need not say it.”

“He did not succeed.” Her wide eyes looked at him beseechingly.

Lord Lechery — that was how Lachglass was known amongst the men of the ton . And Elizabeth had killed him. Lachglass was almost a relation, as he was the cousin of his Fitzwilliam cousins, on their mother’s side.

“It would not have made a whit of difference to me, not in the slightest, if he had succeeded in his vile design against you.”

Elizabeth smiled at him, with something of the generous sparkle he remembered better and better from the time of their acquaintance those many years before.

“I am glad to hear that you are so minded. For my part, I am glad that since I did kill him, I did so before he achieved his aim. Better to be hung a maiden.”

“I shall not let them hang you. I swear to that.” Of course Elizabeth, brave and strong Elizabeth, had defended herself. “Is there any chance they do not know it was you?”

“None at all. I met his man of business, and smashed his cheek in as I fled the house.”

“You did!” Darcy looked at her admiringly. “Shall I need to fear for myself in your presence?”

Elizabeth smiled back at him almost mischievously, though it did not reach her eyes. He could see that she wished to maintain as light a mood in her distress as she could. “You perhaps ought.”

“Mr. Blight.” Darcy blinked at this detail. He’d met Lechery’s servant several times, and thought he was as thoroughly distasteful as his master. “Tell me all details — is there any chance they know you are come here?”

“I doubt there is. We seem to be entirely unconnected. In a way we are entirely unconnected—”

“Nay, say it not. Madam, we always have been connected, even when we did not feel the binding.”

Elizabeth replied with a weak watery smile. She forced that smile. “I am glad… glad you do not despise my face. I always, always hated to think that you thought ill of me, even though I deserved for you to think terribly of me.”

“Never — there was nothing you said to me then that I did not deserve, and the memory of the reproof you gave me has been most valuable to me over the years, in reminding me to show less of arrogance and more of kindness to those around me.”

“I am glad to see you once more,” Elizabeth replied with a pale smile, “and I am also glad you do not despise me for breaking all notions of propriety to renew the acquaintance in such a manner as I have, I am—” Elizabeth paused, and she seemed to pant.

She shivered, though it was almost too warm in the room, and sweat stood upon her forehead.

She added, her hand trembling slightly, “It would have been greatly to my preference to not have obliged a peer of the realm to take up permanent residence in a much smaller plot of land than he is used to. On account of the fear that they shall oblige me likewise to take up a similar residence.”

“I tell you, I shall not let you be hung.”

“If I must, I’ll walk the gallows walk, and I’ll walk that walk brave as any man. He was such a man, such a man as deserved such a fate.”

“How did you end up in a position of vulnerability to Lechery? I mean Lachglass.”

“Lechery?” Elizabeth laughed with real humor. “Had I known his true title, I may have exercised more caution in accepting the post of governess in his house. But I had never even met the gentleman till I was one week into dealing with his unenthusiastic daughter.”

“I understand,” Darcy replied, not greatly surprised. He had known that the resources of her family were slender, and a fall from gentility of this sort was hardly unexpected or unusual. “I am sorry for your loss.”

“How do you know my father has not thrown me off for some strange reason?”

“It would have been a difficult matter in such a case to find respectable employment.”

“As the matter turned out,” Elizabeth laughed, “I did not find respectable employment.”

When Darcy smiled back at her, she touched her forehead.

Her face and forehead was flushed, and it had become redder, he realized in the past minutes as they talked. “I feel queer, of a sudden,” she said in a tinny voice. “And quite dizzy.”

And then before Darcy’s terrified gaze, her eyes rolled up into her forehead, and she slumped into the chair in a dead faint.

Darcy anxiously jumped forward and felt her forehead.

She was burning up with fever, but at least he felt her thin reedy pulse pumping blood through her precious body.

With a leap, Darcy rang for his servants, pulling the bell rope connected to the servant’s quarters again and again until Mrs. North followed by a maid and a footman bustled into the room. “A doctor, for Miss Bennet. Immediately. Immediately. The physician immediately.”