Page 36 of Tempted (Heart to Heart Collection #2)

Chapter 36

Wyoming May 1900

E lizabeth rose early on the following morning, resolved to begin the new day with some shreds of enthusiasm. Jane stirred not long after, and Kitty was kind enough to bring them a tray to break their fast in their room. Jane declared herself well and fit to go below stairs, despite a lingering dizziness and headache, and they helped each other to dress. Elizabeth tied her sash, then stood at the window, pulling aside the lace. There was a deal to see on this day.

“Oh, the horses have come to town!” Jane breathed over her shoulder.

“Bound for New York,” Elizabeth agreed.

“Did Papa come with them?”

“I was hoping he had. He does not usually, but perhaps…”

“He will be sure to come to the house, of course,” Jane comforted.

“I expect he will, but I would rather go look for him. Are you well enough to come?”

Jane started to nod, winced, then smiled. “I shall manage.”

It seemed half the town had turned out to watch the excitement. Elizabeth was forced to push her way through a crowd of young boys as she neared the edge of the throng, clasping Jane’s hand behind her to keep from being separated. “There he is!” She pointed through the body of horses when she identified her father’s wiry figure holding the halter of a fractious sorrel.

Jane tipped up her bonnet and was searching the faces surrounding the horses when something pushed them violently from behind. Elizabeth barely faltered, but Jane, with her residual dizziness, stumbled to her knees in the dirt. She sought Elizabeth’s hand, but not before her own was stepped on by a rowdy boy.

“How dare you!” Elizabeth rebuked the crowd. She tugged Jane upright to a chorus of jeers. One boy looked directly at her and spat on the ground, just before her feet. Elizabeth’s face grew hot. “Rolly Harris! I shall speak to your father!”

“Are ya gonna shoot him too, Miss?”

Elizabeth’s mouth ran dry. “Wh-what did you say?”

Jane was shaking her head, clenching her eyes. “Don’t answer him, Lizzy. Come, let us go to Papa!” Fear and pain made Jane assertive for once in her life, and she dragged at Elizabeth’s hand to pull her away.

“No!” Elizabeth stamped her foot for emphasis and stretched to her full height. “As you say, Jane, I did only what I was forced to do. I will not run. Who else cares to insult me?”

The boys were not cowed, but a woman dragged one of them back to shoulder her way to the fore. It was Rolly Harris’ mother, all two hundred pounds of her, and she shook a calloused finger in Elizabeth’s face. “Have you no decency, Elizabeth Bennet? Bad enough that you were a shameless hussy, flippin’ your skirts all around and playing the coquette, but then you had to kill a man when you changed your mind! You’re no innocent maid, I’ll lay to that. You get out, I’ll not have you leading on my boy!”

“Mrs Harris! I will have you know that—”

“Go on, Elizabeth,” sneered another woman. “Who’s next? D’ya mean to go for my man now? Or was it Old Man Bryson and your father’s ranch you’re after?”

A crowd seemed to materialise at once around Mrs Harris’ ample skirts, and all of them were glaring at her. Elizabeth drew back, staring blankly at the faces of friends, neighbours—women she had known almost since her infancy.

“How can you… I meant no harm to anyone!”

“Tell that to Jake Bryson!”

Elizabeth’s vision had begun to blur. She was panting, shaking her head in denial. “I—”

“Elizabeth! There you are, my darling.”

Before she could draw breath, someone caught her hand and spun her into a close embrace. “I was beginning to think you would not come to see me off.”

“What… Colonel?”

“Do you know, I was thinking…” He made a pointed glance around at the hostile faces, the fisted hands, and the threatening postures. “Why have we not yet announced our engagement? Your father is here, and I cannot bear thinking of going away until the matter is settled. Come, my dear! Let us see to it at once.”

He clutched her fingers and tugged her away, with Jane dragging closely behind by Elizabeth’s other hand. The colonel pushed fearlessly through the mass of men and horses, just beyond the reach of Elizabeth’s tormentors.

“What… are… you… Colonel, please wait!” She lodged her feet into the ground and stopped, snatching her hand away. “What do you think you are doing?”

He turned back with a gentle smile for anyone who might be watching, but his words were low and intense. “You are over your head, Elizabeth. It was about to get ugly back there, and you are too damnably stubborn to close your mouth.”

“And you are too presumptuous! What do you mean by pretending we are engaged? Everyone knows it is not true!”

“Do they?” His eyes scanned above her head, then, with calculated precision, he leaned down for an easy, familiar kiss—the kind a man might bestow on his acknowledged fiancée. Before she could sputter in astonishment, before she could wipe his scent from her lips in outrage, he clutched her hand again and marched her toward her father.

“Lizzy!” Jane was begging, pulling at her other arm, but Elizabeth could not stop. “What does he mean by kissing you like that?”

Elizabeth merely glanced over her shoulder, bared her teeth in a mixture of confusion, anger, and humiliation, and continued to follow the colonel.

Her father was watching their approach with eyes darkened by sorrow and regret. His shoulders hung in defeat, and he sighed as Elizabeth and the colonel stopped before him. She opened her mouth to plead her case, and sensed the colonel at her side preparing to speak as well, but Mr Bennet merely lifted his hand. “I saw it all, Lizzy.”

“But Papa, I—”

“ I saw. ” He silenced her with a hard look he had not employed since she had been very small, then turned to the colonel. “I thank you, sir, for your efforts to protect my daughter. But you are boarding a train that is set to depart in forty-five minutes. I am afraid you have only complicated matters further.”

“I have thought of that, sir.” He offered a deprecatory smile in the face of Elizabeth’s scathing glare. “Forgive me, but I was trained to make quick decisions and to ask questions later. Will you marry me before I go?”

“But… but you are never coming back!” She gestured helplessly to her father. “This is madness!”

“ They don’t know my plans, and for that matter, neither do I. I could die on the field next month, or I could win an honourable retirement, or I might spend the next twenty years in Africa. Or, I might be sent back here. None of that matters now—what matters is that you need a miracle…” He stopped, blinked as his gaze caught something behind her, and smiled. “And I just found one.”

Elizabeth whirled just in time to see Billy, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets and glancing all round in confusion as he heard the varied shouts, insults, and epithets from those gathered in the street. “Dear heavens, no…” she whispered.

“He is right, Elizabeth,” her father said. “Would that I could afford to move us all somewhere else! Had I but put by a bit for the lean times, or had I been much of a father to Lydia—”

“Papa, be reasonable! None of this is your fault.”

He touched her cheek, and for the first time, she noted the weary, greyed look of a man who laboured each day under the sun, slowly marking her father. “None of it is your fault either, my Lizzy, but I could have prevented it. Do you care for him?”

“For the colonel? I… I think of him as a very dear friend, and I am sorry to see him go.”

“And you might have come to feel more for him, in time?”

She shrugged. “Perhaps… probably, but I knew from the start that I could not think of him, so I never did.”

“I suggest, Lizzy, that you think of him now, and rapidly.”

“Think what! Can he really want to m-m-m—”

“Lizzy,” Jane spoke quietly at her shoulder, “it would most assuredly solve your predicament.”

“But marriage! You heard what he said. What if I never see him again?”

“Let him worry about that,” her father said. “You have heard your mother. He is a duke’s son!”

“He is not! He—”

“My point, Lizzy, is that he is not without connections. Surely, the man has resources at his disposal to secure your welfare, and mercifully, he seems inclined to do it. Or did you plan to wait for a better offer?”

Elizabeth’s protests were cut off by the colonel’s return. He was red-faced and triumphant as a very bewildered Billy trailed in his wake. “We are in luck. Your cousin is at his leisure and is willing to marry us at once.”

She met his eyes with grave hesitation. Her throat felt tight, her stomach knotted, and even her very legs seemed locked. “Would it be too much to speak privately for a moment, Colonel?”

“The name is Richard. By all means.” He extended his hand and led her a few feet away, around the corner of a building, and touched his fingers to her lips before she could speak. “I know it is not what you expected. Can you not see? Your honour will be salvaged, and you will be free to do as you please.”

“But you are leaving! Even if we were… were….”

“Do you not know that every soldier marching off to war wishes he had a sweetheart to leave behind? Come, am I really so objectionable?”

“Oh, nonsense. We hardly know one another!”

“Elizabeth—” he leaned a little closer—“look around you. Do you see any better options? Any other man whose hand you would prefer? If so, I will step away at once, and wish you well.”

“Well, I… no.”

“You see, your uncle has the right of it. I am probably the only man in town who could be presumed your beau, and a marriage will silence these vicious rumours once and for all. None could stand to accuse you of… what they are accusing you of.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes and drew a breath in a desperate quest for a moment of sanity. “And what becomes of me, if I am committed in marriage to a man I may never see again?”

“I can see to it that some of my pay is sent to you. That would help you establish yourself somewhere else, would it not? And… well… soldiers are sometimes killed.”

She shook her head. “No! I don’t want—”

“I only meant to say that there need be no expectation for you to keep the hearth warm for me indefinitely. It’s not like news of the South African front is in ready supply out here.” He shrugged sheepishly. “What do you say, Elizabeth? Marry me?”

Elizabeth sucked air between her teeth. “I suppose so.”

Matlock January 1900

Elizabeth.

When he encountered her in the hall, he was certain of it—she was the one who knew. Whether her cousin had told her in a moment of awe-induced hysteria, or Anne herself had spoken it—it mattered not. She knew .

It shone in the way her cheek twitched, the way the flesh at the corners of her eye pinched when Anne passed by. And then, it was only the two of them in the hall. She stepped a little nearer, and her gaze roved over his face. Then, she smiled.

It was only a fleeting instant, that reaction, but it was enough.

He leaned cautiously closer to her, inclining his head to speak in a low voice. “Are you well?”

She tipped up her chin, her eyes resting briefly on his lips before they met his own. “As well as I ever shall be. Someday, I will find a proper way to thank you for… for everything.”

“Be happy, Elizabeth. I could ask for nothing better than that.”

Her lashes lowered softly, her mouth curved, and then her eyes lingered on his. She hesitated, then laughed as she lifted her fingers, almost touching his jaw. “I almost didn’t recognise you.”

“Oh? What eventually gave me away? My charm?”

“Your lack thereof, you mean?”

“Direct hit!” he cried. “And I thought you found me quite a pleasant fellow.”

Her smile widened. “How could I not? And do you not know that charm is deceitful? I was only teasing anyway—I would know you anywhere.”

He caught her hand and nearly pressed it to his naked lips—to see for himself what she thought of them—but her sister appeared just behind her. He set Elizabeth’s fingers free, far sooner than he had hoped.

Jane Bennet’s face was beaming, and her hand rested on Bingley’s arm. “Elizabeth! We have something to tell you!”

A nne and Collins’s announcement sent a wave of shock through the entire house. They declared it over dinner that evening, a celebratory meal in honour of the newly engaged couple—the openly engaged couple. Collins had been eerily silent, a novel thing for him, and he refused to look Darcy’s way. Even when prompted, he would flinch visibly and look somewhere to the left of Darcy’s ear, his lips nearly blue from lack of proper air and his shoulders bunched.

Darcy found the poor fellow amusing but pitied him at the same time. Anne, at last, had mercy on her betrothed and stood to her feet with her glass raised. “My dear friends,” she announced in a clear voice. “Occasionally in life, we come to a crossroads and must decide whether to follow the path on which we have trod so long or to embark upon a new one. My path—” here, she looked at Darcy and dipped her head— “was a pleasant one, but it led where I could not go. And so, I am pleased to inform you all that yesterday, I had the honour of accepting Mr Collins’s proposal of marriage.”

The table fell stone silent, except for a nervous hiccup from Collins. Anne never quailed, but she did stare firmly at her new fiancé until he also clambered out of his chair and made a tremulous bow to the company. Darcy glanced, only once, at Elizabeth, and found her concealing some amused outburst behind her napkin. All eyes turned dubiously to him.

Darcy caught up his glass and stood. “To the happy couple,” he declared and drank.

Murmurs of astonishment arose from the others. The earl urgently summoned his butler for a glass or three of something stiffer than champagne and promptly sloshed them all. Lady Matlock turned approximately four different shades of crimson and fanned herself, then started giggling. The dowager countess, with the faintest of tremors in her ageing fingers, carefully withdrew a silver snuff box and indulged in a bit of gratification, while Bingley and Miss Bennet sat in astounded silence, their hands obviously linked under the table.

Collins looked up at Darcy three or four times, as if testing the waters, then finally returned Darcy’s congratulations with a nervous bob of his head and a genuine, if somewhat strained, expression of pleasure.

At last, the countess found her voice. “Anne, my dear, what of all the plans we have made? The wedding clothes, the bridal party—what is to be done about the church and the rector?” she lamented. “Why, we have already had the invitations embossed!”

“I am certain the rector will find another couple to marry on that day. We mean to hold a quiet ceremony abroad.”

The earl snorted. “Abroad? Why, you will have to travel together. That is not even decent!”

Anne smiled. “I certainly hope not. Oh, my dear Mr Collins, I had meant to ask you—have you ever heard of the Seven Sacred Pools?”

Young Billy Collins’s eyes widened, and his mouth rounded as though he had just popped a cherry between his lips. The dowager countess began crossing herself, with a muttered: “Saints preserve me!”

Reginald coughed and looked at Darcy. “Well… Darcy, are you quite well?”

He could not help the Cheshire grin that probably overtook his face—the look of a man freed from a much-dreaded fate. “Perfectly so. I am pleased for them.”

The earl and countess exchanged scandalised glances, then Lady Matlock shrugged and said, “Well, who am I to argue? But Anne, I am very much put out with you for not telling me sooner!”

Darcy put his glass to his lips and risked a glance over the rim, across the table. Chocolate eyes flashed black with merriment… and perhaps something more.