Page 18 of The Rogue’s Widow (Sweet Escapes Collection #3)

T he note came precisely at midnight. The young lad who had received a shilling to carry it could not tell the present whereabouts of the sender, but no one needed to ask him the man’s identity. Darcy took it from the footman with a grim scowl and read it at once. His expression never flickering, he passed it not to Colonel Fitzwilliam, who stood by like a seething ogre, but to Elizabeth.

“It is certain, then. Wickham has the aid of either Mrs Younge or his mother, likely both, and has secured Miss Lydia against potential escape. Richard, did not the riders who returned from East Orchards report that the former Mrs Wickham’s abode was vacant?”

“Yes, as well as that of the erstwhile ‘Mrs Brown,’ or Mrs Younge as was. They would know we would search there first for that vermin.”

Elizabeth had finished reading Wickham’s note and was swaying slightly, her features pale like glass. “He offers to marry her if I deed Corbett to him? How can I not agree? And yet, if I do, to what sort of fate have I consigned my sister? She is but fifteen!”

Darcy put a hand on her shoulder, his thumb nearly grazing her soft cheek. “You will do no such thing. I’ll not have Wickham established nearly on my front lawn, and I will not see him ruin yet another young woman or turn you out of your home.”

“But it is too late! He as much as said in the note—” She wrung the offending paper and crushed it to her forehead as loud gasps shook her. “She is lost! I know very well that nothing good can come of this.”

Darcy’s hand lifted hesitantly from her shoulder, and he glanced at Richard. It was only they three in the room, for everyone had been persuaded to bed, save for Elizabeth who had adamantly refused. Richard caught Darcy’s look of frustration and deliberately turned away. Darcy followed the sound of his heavy steps as he left the room and barked out orders for his horse.

“Elizabeth.” He touched her back, coaxing her to draw near until her bowed head leaned against his shoulder. “We will find her. Even should it be as we suspect, we may yet be able to restore her. Come, my dear—”

She stiffened, raising her head and staring at him as if he were a stranger. “Mr Darcy, do not speak thus. Pray, be rational about this, as I have come to depend on you as a man of reason. I cannot bear false hope at such a time.”

All the warmth of feeling welling up in his breast crashed into icy pain as he lowered his hand once more. “You are perfectly right,” he confessed, though his voice cracked slightly.

“Do we even know how to search for her? Can there be any way of knowing?”

“We have men searching the entire countryside. Fitzwilliam and I mean to ride out at once, now that we have a hint of his intentions. We both have our grievances to settle, but Wickham had better pray that I find him before my cousin does.”

She swallowed tightly and dashed a few tears from her eyes before offering him the rumpled note. “Will this help?”

He took it, but his attention was all for her. “Elizabeth, we will find her. Your mother will have her daughter again.”

She hugged herself, her shoulders hunched as she attempted a brave smile. “I hope so. Thank you, for all you have done. You owe us nothing, sir, but it will be a great comfort in the years to come when I look back on our time here in Derbyshire. Few are those who would do so much for someone so unconnected with themselves.”

Darcy stiffened. “You are not ‘unconnected,’ you are… good heavens, you are my brother’s wife, and mine to care for. Unpack that bag I know you have ready and get some sleep, or I will send Mrs Reynolds in to watch you every second.”

She lowered her head, but a twitching, reluctant curve appeared at the edge of her lips. “I dare not disobey my employer. God speed, Mr Darcy.”

“N o girl here,” seemed to be the common refrain for ten miles around. Darcy and Richard had started off on different routes, but their paths crossed later in the afternoon and they completed the circuit together.

“Foolish strumpet,” Fitzwilliam hissed after their last stop proved fruitless. “Stupid, thoughtless girl!”

“If she is,” Darcy answered mildly, “others have been more so. She is but fifteen, Richard.”

“Precisely! She ought to have been learning her embroidery or practising an instrument. What the devil could her mother have been about, not watching her every second?”

“The same thing as many others—desiring to allow her child a bit of liberty. Not all take to it well.”

Fitzwilliam scoffed, then beat his arms to warm himself. “After I put the noose around Wickham’s pretty little neck, I mean to see that girl locked away until she is forty and too old to run after stray men.”

“If that satisfies your offended sense of justice. I must speak with my steward.” Darcy urged his mount to a gallop, leaving his irascible cousin to express his outrages to none but his own horse.

The first faces to greet him upon his return to the house were the last he had desired to see. Anne Fitzwilliam and Lady Sophia appeared to be just returning from a stroll in the garden, and they waited for him in the entry hall.

“Darcy!” cried Lady Sophia as he came up the steps. “Why, you must be fearfully exhausted. You must have been out all day, have you not? And in this cold!”

“I have.” He turned to offer his coat to the footman and proceeded into the house, but Lady Sophia would not be so easily brushed off. She followed close at his elbow, with Anne trailing not far behind.

“My dear cousin, let me call for some refreshment for you. Truly, you look exceedingly weary.”

“I thank you, but I must speak to my steward.” He bowed quickly, and turned away, but her hand at his shoulder stayed him.

“Will you not tell me what this is about?” She tilted her head and bestowed a sweet smile upon him, tossing her curls ever so slightly. “You arouse my pity by your long exertions and then refuse to be comforted. Poor form, my dear cousin!”

“I am afraid,” said he, “that the matter is a private one.”

“Private, he says!” she lamented to Anne. “Darcy, you have been too many years alone. A man in your position must learn to share a bit of his burden. Why, that is why you asked me here, was it not? To bring comfort and pleasure to the party—you said it yourself, so I must assume you meant every word, for you are nothing if not sincere.”

He nodded impatiently. “Indeed. I presume you and Anne are a great comfort to one another.”

“Oh, Darcy!” The lady affected a mournful sob. “How callous you are! You will not tell me what has become of that young Bennet girl, but I can imagine well enough. Why, the scandal, if it is learned that the sister of Miss Darcy’s companion has fallen into disrepute! Truly, sir, you are too generous, expending your energies on a girl of no account as you have. No one could fail to credit you as a magnanimous master, but do you not think all this entanglement in that girl’s affairs might be misconstrued?”

Darcy was staring incredulously at his cousin. “Misconstrued?”

“Why, naturally.” She stepped close and trailed her eyes over his frame in a manner that could only be called possessive. “One can understand your desire to hush up any scandal before it can be widely known, but to oversee the affair personally? Secrete the mother and sisters in your own house?” She laughed gently. “It is not as if you are in any way beholden to that shameful family. Why not send them all away before any breath of suspicion may touch our dear Georgiana?”

Darcy took a careful step backwards. His gaze flitted to Anne, and to Richard, who was finally coming through the front door, before narrowing once more on Lady Sophia. “I am afraid it is you who have misconstrued matters, Cousin,” he informed her. “As it happens, I am deeply invested in the welfare of the entire Bennet family.”

She made a face of mock condescension. “Come, Darcy, you cannot be serious. I suppose you will claim it is all for the benefit of a certain lady’s companion? Such creatures are to be found anywhere—why, ‘twould be the work of a moment to secure a proper replacement for her.”

Darcy permitted his teeth to show. “I am afraid not. Elizabeth Wickham is, apart from my own sister, the only female in this house who is irreplaceable.”

A loud snort of appreciation from Richard accompanied his wife’s horrified gasps. Darcy stared back at Lady Sophia just long enough to ensure that she was sufficiently silenced. Her complexion changed hues more than once, but the most satisfying bit was the way her elegant mouth gapped like a doomed fish. Darcy turned on his heel and marched down the hall…

Directly into Elizabeth.

“P lease, sir, I am not accustomed to explanations from you, nor did I ask for one.” Elizabeth retreated to the far side of Mr Darcy’s study and stood with her arms crossed.

Mr Darcy approached slowly, more hesitantly than his usual manner. “And I am not accustomed to the necessity of explaining myself. You have always been clever enough that I need not feed you with a spoon, but under the circumstances, it would not be unreasonable if you had a question or two.”

“I have several dozen, but only a few of them are pertinent at the moment.” She cast her eyes to the ceiling and bit her lip.

He stood before her now, his hands first on his hips, then clasped behind his back, then gesturing in wordless frustration. “Allow me to assume the first, then. It… it came to my attention that my cousin, Lady Sophia, may have cultivated certain expectations. Expectations that I have no intention of satisfying.”

“I am sure your personal affairs are no business of mine, sir.”

His brow fell. “Have you no questions at all about the conversation you heard?”

Elizabeth drew in a breath and looked away. “You believe that I have.”

“I hope you have… no, I can see it for myself. You are blushing, Elizabeth.”

She turned back, her eyes wide. “Do you delight in humiliating me, sir?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then you find pleasure in provoking me?”

“Immensely, but not in the way you expect.” He waited for some retort, some display of indignation… but she could summon none.

He edged closer but stopped when she looked up. “I am a rascal, I suppose—always seeking a way to make your fine eyes flash and your courage flame. I admire your bravery and your spirit, and how all my arrogance never intimidated you.”

Elizabeth tried to laugh, but it came as something of a sob. “Never, you think?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Elizabeth? Have I given you pain?”

“Pain? You have made me wonder every moment I am in your presence what you are truly thinking. Sometimes I believe I can make sense of your ways. I think you are a—a pragmatic sort of man with a multitude of idiosyncrasies designed to conceal a naturally generous spirit, but that is all. Then, just when I believe myself to understand you, you turn about and declare thoughts and intentions that a man of your position has no business harbouring. And the very next moment, you harden once more and that glimpse I thought I saw of something—someone—else has vanished. How am I not to feel constantly bewildered?”

“If either of us is bewildered by the other, it is I.” He was studying her with a grave expression, his confident manner entirely gone. He made no answer for a full minute, but he drew a long breath and released it slowly. “Would you be so troubled by my manners if we were… say, if I were only Georgiana’s guardian to you? An employer, no more?”

Elizabeth tried to speak, but her throat was too tight. She cleared it nervously. “I suppose not. But we are more than that, are we not, sir?”

“Are we? Have you some feeling for me, Elizabeth? I had persuaded myself that you could not have, and I even tried to convince myself that I had none for you, but the latter effort was unsuccessful. Was I wrong in the first as well?”

Elizabeth’s skin grew hot, and she looked away, stammering out a barely coherent response. “Feeling! Why… improper—that would be most—what I mean, sir, is that we are… well, apart from you being my employer, we are neighbours, and r-relatives, and…”

“Are we friends, Elizabeth?”

She sucked in a breath, her lips quivering, and stared him in the eye. “F-friends. Yes, I… I think so.”

His entire figure seemed to relax, either in relief or disappointment. “Friends,” he whispered, then shook his head and sighed.

An instant later, he straightened and reclaimed his bearing. He turned from her and began to pace uncomfortably, glancing at her every few steps before he stopped and spoke. “As your friend, I must bring you the discouraging news that we have not yet had word of your sister.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes. “I feared you would say this.”

“I still have riders searching all the lands nearby, but there are simply too many houses and cottages. Even a cellar could conceal her, particularly if it has a lock.”

A cellar! What horrors had Lydia endured? Elizabeth nodded, clenching a fist to her mouth as the tears began to pour afresh. She had been snarled amid fury at Lydia for her foolishness and fury with herself for her blindness, but now all she could feel was failure and despair. Her poor youngest sister—only a child! Elizabeth’s body was quaking with sobs, and at last she broke. All the ugliness and horror of pain claimed her, and grief washed through her. She faltered, put her hand out blindly for something to lean against.

And then, she felt it. A firm shoulder, a strong arm about her; and Mr Darcy, who never lacked for an outrageous thing to say, silently held her to his chest as she wept. Patiently, gently, he allowed her to exhaust her grief, until she was sniffling and drawing back on her own. Even then, he gave her a handkerchief and waited in perfect solicitude as her tremblings subsided.

“Thank you,” she managed in a broken voice.

“Do not give up hope. One of the last rumours we heard before returning was that Mrs Younge—you know her as Mrs Brown—was seen departing on a post chaise two days ago. She was reported to be alone.”

Elizabeth was numbly biting down on the tip of her thumb as her eyes glazed over in thought. “Then it does not seem as if she would know where Lydia is?”

“Unless Wickham had intended to meet her en route somewhere.”

“What of Mrs Godfrey?”

“Do you mean Isabella Wickham? No word at all, which surprises me not a bit. She was never one to stay in the same place.”

Elizabeth squinted, then her eyes focused sharply on his face. “The first time I saw her, she was arguing with the innkeeper in Lambton. Is he her brother, as she claimed? Would she be hiding with him?”

Mr Darcy’s brow furrowed. “Samuel Jameson is an honest man. I cannot think he would be party to any scheme to harm a young lady. We did ask at the inn, but the proprietor swore he had seen neither George Wickham nor a girl of your sister’s description.” His gaze strayed; his jaw hardened. “However, he does keep poultry, or rather his wife does. They have large shelter and yard not far from town. It would be worth looking there.”