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Karen Younge, her brother Clay, and Johanna álvarez were seated in the Happy Leprechaun Inn near the small harbour in Bundoran, County Donegal in Ireland.

It had been three long months since they had been forced to flee Fowey in Cornwall for this Godforsaken little town.

They finally had what they believed was a fail-proof plan to get their revenge on the Bennets and Darcys, one which would gain them at least two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

Karen did not care about the money; all she wanted was to make the uppity Lady Elizabeth Bennet suffer.

Mrs. Younge was delusional, and like her dead lover, George Wickham, she had no intention of returning the woman unharmed to her husband, a duke!

She almost had an apoplexy when the three-week-old London paper had reached Bundoran.

The whore was a Duchess! As Karen sank deeper into her delusion and reality faded into the background, she was ever more determined to punish the object of her obsession.

Mrs. álvarez was most vexed. Her son Tony had disappeared over two months ago!

She had urged Younge to mount an exhaustive search, which he begrudgingly did after she had agreed to part with a further ten percent of her stake of the ransom.

His crew had searched everywhere in the little town and questioned many of the denizens.

None remembered seeing the young man since the day she declared he was missing, and there was no information other than what they had already known, which was only that he was missing.

Irrationally, Johanna blamed the same people who had her husband hung, and swore to exact further revenge.

She knew the truth, but had to keep up the pretence that her son was dead.

Around the same time that Johanna’s son was lost, three of the Stealthy Runner’s crew had disappeared.

As this had happened before, it raised no alarms, and Clay Younge was more than satisfied with the three men he had found to replace them.

A Dennington Line ship, the largest type of ship that could safely fit in the small harbour, had arrived a few days after his men had absconded.

Three sailors caught pilfering from the ship’s supplies to sell on the side had been summarily discharged and thrown off the vessel, which made the Dublin to Bundoran run once a month, with brief stops in ports at other small coastal towns along the way.

Clay considered them to be his type of men and had approached them with an offer to join his crew.

There were two things that he should have noted, but had not.

One, the man who had taken care of the spy following his sister in Fowey the day they had departed, was one of the three that taken off.

Two, if he had watched the men, he would have seen that they carried themselves as men who had been in the military.

They were, in fact, demobbed marines that were part of the many the Dennington Line employed for security.

~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~

Do not worry, dear reader, I will tell you all that transpired in the previous four months…

Four months earlier…

Lady Anne Darcy refused to leave her son’s side as his fever raged.

To no one’s surprise, Lady Elizabeth Bennet was right next to her.

She had been assigned a guest chamber in Darcy House after no one had tried to gainsay her when she informed her parents, and anyone else who would listen, that she would help nurse Mr. Darcy back to health.

She felt that it was the least she could do for the man who saved her life.

Both her companion and lady’s maid were in residence with her.

Earlier that day Lady Elizabeth had confessed her love to William’s mother.

If she was expecting the lady to be surprised at her admission, she was sorely disappointed.

Her Aunt Anne informed her that anyone who saw them together, could see that there was love between them, even if they had not yet acknowledged it to each other.

As Lizzy thought back, she remembered a number of comments, which now made sense as she considered them in this new light.

Lady Anne had hugged the daughter of her heart tightly.

They had a battle to fight first. There had to be a way to bring her son’s fever down if he was to survive.

Fitzwilliam Darcy was in a place that he did not recognise.

On one side was a short, straight path, easy to walk toward…

yes, his honoured Papa! On the other side was a steep path, one that would be hard to climb, and there was a lady there, but he could not make her out though her voice was familiar.

No, there were two voices. One sounded like…

Mama! The other he thought he recognised; however, in the fog and distortion in his mind, he could not place it other than that he was sure her voice meant a great deal to him.

He was exhausted and he knew that if he went toward his father he would get to rest, to be at peace, and he would never have to leave his Papa again.

But what of his Mama? What of the woman with the other voice?

If he went to his Papa, would he ever hear them or see them again?

Would he ever see his beloved sister again?

Lady Anne was beside herself; the fever was climbing, her son’s breath was getting shallower, and he was fighting for each breath.

The physician had said that it was in God’s hands and that they should all pray, but given the severity of his fever, he did not hold out much hope.

While they again cooled his skin with a wet cloth, Lady Elizabeth remembered something that she had read in a text in Longbourn’s library.

“Aunt Anne, have Carstens fill a bath with cold water, and if there is any ice in the house, have him put it in the bath,” Lizzy announced.

“Cold water and ice?” Lady Anne could not imagine what the younger woman was about.

“Yes, I read about it being done in extremes cases when the fever was high like William’s is.

” She took his mother’s hand and looked her in the eye.

“If I am correct, it will help him, if I am not, then we have already lost, and it will have made no difference. We have nothing to lose and much to gain.” The orders were given, and over the protests of the doctor, the bath was filled with ice and cold water.

It was just too hard, so Darcy decided that he needed to go to his father.

He could not fight up the hill; he had no more strength.

He started walking toward his beloved Papa who looked just as he had when his son had last seen him, hale and healthy.

A few more steps and he would be in the safety and warmth of his father’s outstretched arms as he had been as a young boy.

Just as he was about to grasp his father’s hands, he felt as though he had fallen through the ice while skating on the small pond at Pemberley.

He felt cold like he had never before experienced.

It was as if he was pulled by some unseen force that he had no power to resist. The shock of it had spurred him forward, toward the voice he knew he had to reach; he started to force himself up the steep path.

Fighting, he was fighting! The cold had shocked him into action, so as hard as the steep path was to negotiate, he would follow it; he would not take the easy way out!

He could see his mother and Georgie waiting for him with open arms in place of his father, and then he saw the face that belonged to the voice he recognised.

He loved that voice and the face that went with it, it was his Elizabeth!

She was talking, but he could not make out what she was saying, then he heard her clearly say… “I love you.”

~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~

Juan Antonio álvarez, AKA the Spaniard, had not believe that Wickham would succeed.

He felt nothing about double-crossing him, having one of his men give him and his whore a permanent smile, then dumping the bodies in the Thames.

Why should he settle for twenty thousand when he could have the whole one hundred thousand, minus a little for Withers?

He looked over the note again. They had the lady at a house of ill repute which he owned.

He took two of his men, who acted as his primary bodyguards, with him, and they rode the short distance to the house of Madam Cheri.

álvarez was already counting his money in his head, so when his conveyance was swarmed by redcoats and runners as soon as it halted, he could not comprehend what was happening.

The doors were wrenched open and his foolish men, who had tried to point their pistols threateningly at their captors, paid for it with their miserable lives, the cabin filling with the acrid smoke of discharged pistols.

álvarez, already stunned, was now temporally deaf, his ears ringing from being near the weapons when they had discharged in the cramped space.

The Spaniard was roughly pulled onto the ground by two soldiers and clapped in irons.

It dawned on him too late that his greed and Withers had led him into a trap.

He would never see any money, in fact, he likely would not see more than a fortnight’s worth of sunrises before he had a date with the hangman.

Being the coward that he was, he gave up all of the information about his ‘empire’, which would be well on its way to being dismantled, and many of his ‘associates’ would be in custody by the time he had his date with the hangman.

~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~