Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (55 page)

Of course, he knew she had to have witnessed him kill Reed. That was undeniable. And unavoidable. What she beheld of the other two deaths was a bit more ambiguous. He had taken no more precaution to shield her from his rage than turning her face to his chest. Even in retrospect, that was the single act for which he held himself accountable during his savagely exacted vengeance—that she witnessed it. But just how much she saw, and how much she inferred, he had not yet determined.

He felt he must. The beating and attempted rape were horrific enough. To have inflicted larger trauma because of his rash retaliation was unconscionable.

Quite unwittingly, he stroked her face with the back of his fingers. In was an act he invariably undertook in times of great tenderness. This alerted her to an alteration in their wordless parlance. Therefore, when he spoke, she was not taken unawares.

“Lizzy,” he said with great hesitation, “as much as I abhor speaking of it to you, there is something I must know.”

She eyed him keenly and nodded once.

“What do you remember? What did you witness me do that day?”

(Thenceforward, “that day” would be a code entered into their common lexicon.)

It was her initial inclination to insist she remembered him committing murder not at all. In not wanting to be patronised, she concluded she should not be guilty of it either. She closed her eyes and allowed those horrifying events to replay themselves. Although she thought she might, she did not envision Reed’s leering face. For some reason, she could not recall his face, nor did she try. Oddly, when she closed her eyes she saw the yellowing wall-paper of the room and upon it a faded, yet delicate, pink flower print. Queer what one notices at such grievous times; she should not have thought she even saw it.

When she answered, it was without hesitation and not about the wall-paper, “When you came through the door, I saw only you. I knew you slew him, but I did not look. I looked only at you.”

She sat up, as if for added emphasis, “Had I seen, I should not have cared.”

That bit of defiance granted him a small little twitch of a smile. Thereupon, he appeared to steel himself for some unnamed blow.

“What of the other?”

This answer, she took her time in constructing.

Finally, she said, “I know what came to pass, but you held me so tightly against you it was just a vague impression. The singular grief I feel is for you.”

In a gesture he often bestowed upon her she took his distraught face in her hands
and stroked his cheeks with her thumbs, telling him, “When I allow myself to think of any of it, the one vision that comes to mind is of you as you came through the door.”

To her unasked enquiry, he said, “I remember nought but the fierce expression you bore. I have little doubt had you a weapon you would have taken the man out yourself.”

“Did you know I become angry when I am frightened?”

He smiled in recognition and said, “Yes, I have noticed that.”

“Once we were home safe, the thought of it all terrified me. At the time, I was too angry to feel anything else. I think I was not so afraid because I knew, somehow, you would come.”

“I shall always come for you.”

“I know.”

Elizabeth had decided she must instruct herself not to remember Reed’s face or that day, but this decision was hard fought. It would have grieved her husband to know that his enquiry did just what he feared it might, for it bade her investigate her memory.

Beyond the yellowing paper with pink flowers, if her recollection of that day did not reveal faces, her mind’s eye brought forth a mural of colours. She did not remember seeing Darcy’s sword obtruding from Reed’s gut. However, if she did not recall his countenance, she did recall the exact shade of magenta upon his face when her husband ran him through.

Added to that recollection was the bulging whites of his eyes stamped with fixed black pupils. But, the colour red she recollected most of all: that which flowed from Reed, the splatter across the floor, that which filled the air and bespattered her husband’s clothes. And the smell. The stench of the bed, but mostly the scent of blood. It was odd. She had no notion until that day that blood had such an odour.

No, she did not watch him run Reed through, nor see the other two men’s heads explode. And if what she did see was gruesome in and of itself, she did not tell her husband. She would let him believe her in a stuporous shock through the entire ordeal if that gave him a single moment’s peace.

It was, Elizabeth conjectured, unusual that her mind did not suffer more than it did as a result of such an attack. Her mind did suffer greatly, but not from that act. She had disassociated it from her miscarriage. That she dwelt upon in the privacy of her heart. Reed’s demise, however, she belaboured quite consciously and with no little rancour. She did not feel truly traumatised by his brutality. Was it that she could find no more heinous retribution to the man than he, as it happened, received?

Her husband seemed to suffer her ordeal more than she did herself. She suffered for his anguish. That was what she held against that cur, Reed, above every other outrage. His act demanded Darcy do something that bade him suffer.

There was entirely too much suffering. The one person who had not suffered was Reed. His end was merciful. And just. She refused to think of him beyond that.

It was decided that even family members would be denied the knowledge that there had been more than a simple robbery attempt. It would be futile to keep word of the
attack itself from circulating by reason of so many witnesses. The Darcys, however, would proffer officially that it was but a robbery. (Elizabeth refused to submit her father and especially the expectant Jane to the added distress of the indelicate matter of attempted rape.)

Her miscarriage was duly ignored. This information alone was under their compleat regulation, for the few who knew of it could be counted on for discretion.

On hearing of such a brutal robbery, Lady Matlock insisted the family (her mother-in-law could come or not) take up full-time residence in London. The lady never enjoyed country society, announcing it bestial. Thus, belabouring fear was as good an excuse as any to do what she wanted in the first place. James and Eugenia’s immediate vacating of Derbyshire was usurped by another’s arrival.

For, not unexpectedly, in a little over a fortnight Pemberley was visited by the Bingleys. It was just enough time for Elizabeth to regain sufficient inscrutability to assure Jane that the robbery was but that.

Darcy did not tell Elizabeth that Bingley, who had greater opportunity, had heard a great deal about what mayhem Darcy had wrought that day. It seemed the entire countryside, indeed, knew of what he had wrought. And Bingley knew it had not been by duel, thus, no insult was incurred. He understood that it had been an execution of sorts. As well as he knew his friend, the one thing of which Bingley was certain was that Darcy never reacted by overreaction. If he had the blood of three men upon his hands, extreme injury must have demanded it.

Though he was as close a friend as Darcy had, even Bingley hesitated to speak to him about the dastardly doings. He chose simply to repeat what he had been told and wait to see if Darcy corrected it. Darcy had remained silent. This information by silence from Darcy was not new to Bingley. He understood exactly what his friend was telling him and he did not revisit the subject again. Nor did Bingley speak of it to anyone else either, especially his wife. He knew had Elizabeth wanted her sister to know, she would have told her herself.

Elizabeth recovered her strength with dispatch after her miscarriage, but at her husband’s request had waited a month before returning to the paddocks to take up with Boots. Actually, he argued for longer. (Indeed, had she allowed it, he may well have opted to have her toted about in a sedan chair for the better part of a year.) Although she knew herself perfectly healthy, in that he was guilt-ridden over the entire event she did not argue his solicitations for four weeks. She would do whatever she could to give his heart ease, be it invoking amnesia or keeping afoot.

But enough was enough.

The first time Elizabeth appeared at the stable, John Christie immediately brought her horse to her. (“Elizabeth, will you please reconsider that horse’s name,” Darcy continually bid her.) The entirety of this task was accomplished with the boy’s gaze cast directly upon the ground. As he legged her up, young John deliberately averted his face. Clearly, it was not a genuflection. She thought him perhaps embarrassed to look upon her, having heard gossip of the abduction. She refused, however, to bear untoward distinction from an act not of her doing and questioned John about this and that until his eyes flickered to her, then hastily away.

Whether it was because he was an orphan, he was bashful, or perchance she often saw
him sneaking sugar to Boots, Elizabeth had become fond of her young groom. She had heard him as he talked incessantly and softly to the horses in his charge, which was a bit of an incongruity for his voice retained the vestiges of his harsh east London accent.

Therefore, when, in that brief glimpse of his face full, Elizabeth saw a stricken expression far exceeding simple sympathy, she was taken aback. Concerned, she dismounted and drew him aside. He was taller than she was, and howbeit rangy in build, slight of figure yet. Maturity had not yet thickened his bones nor firmed his chin. Indeed, it undertook an independent wamble that announced his composure was about to collapse. Elizabeth thought Darcy correct to believe him younger than he attested, for at that moment he appeared very much a child.

Her initial attempt to cajole him into looking at her resulted just in his abandoning the mumbling he had bestowed upon his feet. Yet it was still an astonishment when he burst into tears. Before that day, she had seen him betray no emotion beyond the kindness of sugar for Boots.

“Mrs. Darcy, it was me own doin’, it was me own fault alone!” he cried out.

“Pray, just what was your doing?”

“Whot ’appen’ to yer was me own fault.”

Assuring him he was quite innocent of the miscreant doings of highwaymen, she bid him to tell her of what he thought himself guilty.

“Reed! Aye knew ’e came back here that night. The night of the fire, and Aye din’t speak.”

Elizabeth exclaimed in surprise and disbelief. Clearly expecting it, John flinched all the same. They both knew that information would have led to Reed’s imprisonment.

He began to cry again and then stopped himself. Grasping his cuff in his fingers, he wiped his nose with his shirtsleeve.

Quietly, he admitted, “’e said ’e’d kill me.” He opened his mouth as if to say something else, but dropped his head repeating, “Them ’orses. Them ’orses.”

“’Tis done,” she calmed him, reaching out. “You should have told, ’tis true. Nevertheless, who among us can predict the future?”

“But that’s nothin’ to whot Aye caused by not tellin’. Them ’orses wouldn’t ’ave died. Reed wouldn’t ’ave been able to…rob yer ’ad Aye told Mr. ’ardin then.”

Thereupon Mr. Darcy appeared in the lane, ready to accompany Elizabeth upon her inevitable, and in his mind, detestable, ride (“Recalcitrance, Lizzy. Utter recalcitrance,” he had accused her). Upon seeing the master, John turned and bolted in a full-out run of terror. Innocent of the conversation, Darcy approached Elizabeth and looked in John’s direction in all good humour.

“Where does your groom go in such haste?”

Elizabeth, still stunned, recounted what John had told her. At first, Darcy looked upon her incredulously. Then he stomped his foot in fury and whirled about to catch sight of which direction John had taken.

“He bloody well better run, for were I to catch him…”

Abruptly, he stopped himself, realising he had actually issued a curse in Elizabeth’s presence. (He never cursed. Not even in the easy but often profane camaraderie of gentlemenly company.) Elizabeth, of course, did not think her virtue sullied by hearing the word. If anything, it was good that her husband had issued a profanity then, if
just because it interrupted his anger long enough to reconsider the pursuit upon which he almost embarked. She raised an eyebrow at him and he shook his head a little, possibly to avert the ridiculous picture of himself that must have crossed his mind: running after a groom, ludicrously waving his crop.