Page 50 of The Countess and Her Sister

Rebecca gave a hollow, humorless laugh. Pity tugged at her heart as Mr. Bingley sank down onto the sofa again, his head in his hands.

Rebecca stepped out into the corridor and called for a servant to fetch them some coffee – a great deal of it.

She returned to the parlor and sat beside Mr. Bingley.

“You are a most valiant idiot, Bingley, and I have grown fond of the man you have become for Jane. We will get her back.”

He looked up at her with tears in his eyes and nodded feebly.

“I must talk to the magistrate, but I wish to be off at once to save her. She must be terrified. And she thinks Thomas is missing – and what will he say about her being away? They have never been apart. How could her own mother do this to her?”

Rebecca patted him awkwardly on the back.

She could have easily hopped back up on the table and taken charge, but she wished it to be him, for Jane’s sake.

Her sister would know how well Mr. Bingley loved her.

“We will speak of these things when we are on the road, ever closer to retrieving her. Now we must act. The magistrate is coming, and you men will need to rest. But there are ten angry and confused people in this room, and we all want to rescue Jane. Tell us all what must happen next.”

Mr. Bingley nodded. “You have mercilessly tormented me for as long as I have known Darcy, but I think we are rather friends.”

“And yet you have not yet knit me that purse – I specifically requested it.”

He gave a weak smile. “But at least you have not yet stolen my billfold.” He stood and whistled again. The panicked chatter in the room ebbed, and Mr. Bingley roused Richard, who had begun to doze on the sofa, slumped against a delirious Henry Tilney, who gazed vacantly about the room.

“Miss Darcy, please see the Bennet sisters upstairs. You will have nothing to say to the magistrate that he might not hear from anyone else. Miss Mary, you are about her size, if you could lend Miss Darcy… whatever it is you ladies sleep in. Miss Darcy, perhaps send word to your maid first thing in the morning to have a travel bag for you and Darcy sent here by the time you have broken your fast in the morning.”

“And servants,” Rebecca added. “Darcy’s home in Scotland has been closed for ages.”

“Right. Well, perhaps Pemberley and Matlock can spare a few, since the houses will be empty awhile. Cameron Court cannot – Lord, Caroline will have to receive the Hursts tomorrow without me, for I will not say a word to her of any of this, and Heaven help me when she does hear of it.”

“You will have to send word to her – it may raise interest in the neighborhood that we all depart so suddenly,” Lady Augusta said. “I will stay, surely I shall speak to the magistrate as well, and I will give our journey some semblance of respectability.”

Mr. Bingley gave a drowsy chortle. “Tell the neighbors it is romantic, that Darcy and Lizzy could not wait to have the banns called.”

“We never spoke of their engagement because we thought it common knowledge already,” Rebecca added, giving Mr. Bingley an encouraging nod. “Who can we spare to send off in the next carriage, before the magistrate comes?”

“Speaking of which, I ought to go and speak with Mrs. Bennet. Will you come, Sir Edward? If we offer her a measure of clemency, she may tell us more of Lady Catherine’s scheme.”

Sir Edward nodded at Lady Augusta, blinking his eyes rapidly. “Yes, quite right – but send in some of that coffee, would you please?”

“Certainly,” Rebecca said, watching them go into the next room.

Mrs. Bennet’s intermittent shrieks had filled the air for so long that she had begun to drown them out, but she smiled as Lady Susan emerged with a wicked look from the room where she had clearly amused herself at the old shrew’s expense.

“Well, I have nearly cleared the room,” Mr. Bingley said, glancing down at Richard.

The coffee was served, and the two men drank deeply.

Rebecca roused Henry, who gave her a crooked grin and a kiss on the forehead as he joined the other two men, and Rebecca smiled in spite of herself as she fixed his coffee the way he liked it, with plenty of cream and a dollop of honey.

Lady Gardiner paced the room, wringing her hands. “I want to go to the children, but I know they ought to rest. Surely Edward and I must wait until morning to travel.”

Lady Susan came to join them. “Is anybody else going to go after them? We cannot leave it to Darcy and his bride, surely anybody who can shoot must go. Richard, I will load you into a carriage myself and we can be off in a trice. Find me a pistol, I know how to use one.”

“Marvelous,” he replied with a dreamy smile. “But I am shooting Fred, if Darcy does not beat me to it. Pack me up in your suitcase, madam.”

Lady Susan gave him a dazzling smile that left Rebecca wondering when she would call the woman sister. “Lady Gardiner, do you shoot? I should be happy to instruct you a little, if you and your husband would prefer to come with us and rescue your niece.”

Lady Gardiner looked intrigued. “It is tempting, but the children….”

“Becky and I will ride with them in the morning,” Henry said with another crooked smile. He had not used that endearing appellation since they were children, and Rebecca turned away to hide how well it pleased her.

“I am partial to them, as far as children go,” she said archly. “Go, if you wish it. The children will be told it is a great adventure, and their cousins will be with them, too.”

Lady Gardiner nodded her assent. “Have a servant retrieve the pistols, and I shall go up and reassure the children.”

“Tell them we shall have a great cake commissioned for them in Scotland if they are pleasant travelers,” Henry said, giving Rebecca a wink.

The local magistrate, Lord Colfax, was a man who had dined with them twice since they had come into the area, and a man whose sons Mrs. Bennet had repeatedly sought for her daughters. He arrived with one of his sons, who sat with their party as the magistrate questioned them one by one.

“I heard some shots as I approached the house,” he asked when he was shown in.

“A fox got into the hen house,” Mr. Bingley said; Rebecca grinned at him. She sent a maid to fetch Lady Gardiner and Lady Susan, who had set about their practice with the guns.

Richard, Lady Susan, and the Gardiners were the first to be questioned, before Lord Colfax sent them in haste after Jane and her abductor, wishing them every success and reminding them to deal with Captain Tilney as the law dictated, whatever else might be tempting.

The four of them set off in haste, their bags packed and ready for them; the ladies would keep vigil as the two men slumbered, with a hope they would rouse before catching up to Jane and the captain.

Mr. Bingley fretted that he was not to be amongst them. “You are doing your very best, and Jane will love you the better for it,” Rebecca said, shaking her head at her own sentimentality. “You will travel with her family – we shall need a man or two on the road with us, we helpless women.”

He snorted. “I daresay you have other knives.”

“Alas, no, but Lizzy may use that dagger with my blessing!”

The magistrate’s son cleared his throat and grimaced at her.

“Metaphorically. She will cut him to pieces with her sharp rebukes when they catch him, and then of course they will turn him over to the law.” She stuck her tongue out at Jeremiah Colfax, who once trod on her gown and tore it, and now would not let her speculate on a well-deserved murder.

Mr. Bingley nodded, still drowsy despite a second cup of coffee. “At least I can look after little Thomas on the journey. I know that will please her, and he’s a good lad.”

Lady Augusta finished speaking with the magistrate, and offered to help Mr. Bingley up to bed.

The magistrate questioned Mrs. Bennet, and found her such a gibbering mess of nerves and nonsense that he agreed she was probably insane, and best left to be dealt with by her relations after they returned from their wedding celebrations in Scotland.

He offered to place her under guard at the dower house on his property until the Fitzwilliams returned from Scotland.

When Lord Colfax and his son departed, Rebecca was left with Henry Tilney, who gazed at her with adoration she did not deserve. “I suppose we have a bed for you, sir. You need not slumber on the sofa.”

She helped him up, and he slung an arm over her shoulder as they made their way up the stairs. “It is not just the harridan’s tea – I have always been weak at the knees for you, Becky. Tuck me in, would you?”

“I will find you some of Robert’s old pyjamas,” she said. She had a footman help him dress for bed and saw to her own needs in changing into a chemise and dressing gown. And then, against her better judgement, she crept out into the darkness, to the guest wing.

Henry was pacing in front of the fire, drinking another cup of coffee when Rebecca entered his room. He looked up at her with a warm smile, until he beheld her tear-streaked face. He halted his pacing and silently outstretched his hand.

Rebecca trembled, doubting herself now that she was here.

There was no turning back now, but this was where she wished to be, where she needed to be.

She was in his arms in an instant, and she clung to his shoulders as she wept.

He rested his head atop hers as she spent her tears, gently rocking her in his embrace. “Oh, Becky.”

“If you tell anyone I have cried, I will cut you.”

“But you gave your dagger away,” he breathed, rubbing his hands up and down her back. “You were very strong and brave when everybody needed you to be.” She nodded her head against his chest, his warmth a balm to her.

“All of my jokes about being wicked,” she groaned through her sobs. “This is truly evil.”

“They will find her, you know they shall.”

“What if they come to some harm?”