“Well, if it is an oath upon sheep and trees, then it appears I have no choice but to accept your aid.”
“Not only any sheep and trees,” Darcy replied dryly.“The sheep and trees of my home county, the finest in all England, Derbyshire.And a goodly proportion of those sheep and trees belong to me, and it is from that income that I am paying the ferry’s bill.So you certainly have no choice but to accept my oath.”
She sighed.
Elizabeth leaned back and her head comfortably rested on Darcy’s shoulder.She closed her eyes as the carriage rocked them all back and forward.“I do not fear our Lord of Lechery, but I think my six hours in the London cold in naught but a day dress have left me with such a terror of cold weather that it will take more than one long winter walk to cure me.”
“Soon it will be spring,” Darcy replied.
General Fitzwilliam constantly glanced at the windows, and then every minute or so, he looked backwards through the window in the back of the carriage.
After they had been upon the road for about twenty minutes, he swore.“We are being followed once more.”
He knocked on the back of the driver’s box, and shouted through it, “Faster, man, don’t stop, though they throw all the law at you.”
The thin voice echoed back, “Don’t teach your old grandpa to suck eggs, General.”
General Fitzwilliam laughed, and nodded at the other two inhabitants of the carriage.“Good man, your driver.Deuced good man.We’ll make it through to the docks safe and right.”
But belying his stated confidence, General Fitzwilliam patted all three pistols in his jacket several times, but he stilled himself, took a deep breath.He glanced back the road and smiled.
Darcy looked back at those following them.“Three Bow Street Runners.I recognize the uniform and Mr.Blight.”
“We’ll ignore the warrant again.They don’t have the force to threaten us, and then on the ship, and out of London.Jove, I hope Mr.Blight tries something that will let me shoot him.”
Elizabeth shuddered.“I do not.”
“There is a story; he once killed a milkmaid who was sounding out that the earl had raped her.The girl was found, throat slit, with signs of having been despoiled.She had simply been tossed, blood soaking through the straw, onto a haystack in the barn of the big tenant farmer who employed her.The story said that he killed her, as he was seen in the village earlier that day, and then again afterwards.But the thing that chilled me, the physician who examined the corpse.He thought the pretty girl had not been forced before she had died, but after he’d already slit her throat.”
Elizabeth shivered at the story.
“Jove!”Darcy exclaimed, pale faced.“Jove, why did you sharethattale with Elizabeth?”
“Is it her who is too scared to hear the tale, or you?”
“Nobody needs to hear such stories.”
“Someone needs to act on such stories.Greatnobles accumulate violent and vicious hangers on.The sort who hear, ‘who will rid me of this chattering milk maid,’ and who then go on to dothat.”
“The murderers of Thomas à Becket were not a fraction so monstrous as you imply Mr.Blight to be.”
“That places a low value upon the sanctity of church and clergy,” General Fitzwilliam replied sardonically.
The carriage continued to bounce along rattling them up and down, despite the fine springs.
Elizabeth asked, “Where are we?Stuffed between you two like meat between bread, I can barely see the windows.Are we close to the Thames yet?”
“Close, yes, another mile to reach our docks at Wapping.”
The other soldiers had joined up around the carriage, but they did nothing to threaten the Bow Street Runners again, at least not yet.
The white knuckled carriage ride shook through the endless cobblestoned streets of the great city of London.Workmen dodged out of their way as they did not slow at the intersections, instead having two of the soldiers ride ahead to stop the traffic at each intersection so they could pass by freely.
Darcy could barely breathe.His own safety was nothing.Elizabeth’s was everything.
They burst into an open area along the Thames, with vast docks finished only ten years ago.Ships almost two hundred feet long, with towering furled masts stood in lines within the vast wet dock.
The carriage followed Major Williams who pointed the way to go.They were stopped at the gate to the dock complex by several guards in the red and white uniform with a six-inch brimmed hat of royal naval marines.
