He ranted until the pugilist was long gone.
And he stood there, abandoned in the training gym, alone except for Spitey Blighty watching him with his blank face and contemptuous eyes.
“Kill him!”Lachglass clenched his teeth so hard that one of them audibly cracked and part of the tooth that had been hurting on and off for a month broke away.“Kill that damned, insulting boxing master.Stab a needle in his back.”
There was the sneer again.Like Spitey Blighty was considering refusing the order.But he bowed and left the room.
Lachglass rang for his valet to help him dress and gave orders for the carriage to be prepared.He had no purpose for London.
“Also,” he ordered to the servant, “have the windows of the carriage blocked with black drapes, so no one can see within.”
Now that he was dressed, Lachglass stepped up to a mirror to properly tie and arrange his cravat.He looked into his own eyes, red from his unmanly tears.His eyes, they glittered, speaking to him.
They demanded revenge.His eyes demanded revenge onher.
Lachglass bared his teeth at the mirror, and he growled at his own image.
Chapter Seventeen
Late at night early in June two women prepared to go to sleep in a solidly built house of three stories — the uppermost floor was only used by the staff of domestics.This building was called a “cottage” by the owners of the magnificent estate on which it rested.One of the women was middle aged, and one young.
“Lord!I’m so fagged,” Catherine Bennet smilingly said to her mother.Kitty still luxuriated in the feel of cashmere shawls and tightly woven fabrics she now enjoyed because of Elizabeth’s excellent marriage, “we were up so late at the assembly last night.”
The letters of introduction for his new family that Darcy had sent to all of his acquaintance, and the letters of praise for Elizabeth from Mrs.North and Becky to Mrs.Reynolds, had done a great deal to make the entrance of Kitty and Mrs.Bennet into the society round about Pemberley easy and smooth.
Mrs.Bennet’s middle daughter was not present with them, as Mary had taken her share of the money Mr.Darcy and Elizabeth gave them to stay in London with the Gardiners.She attended improving lectures, read the improving books she bought ample amounts of, and improvingly practiced the piano.And she described all this in improving letters to her mother, written in perfectly straight lines.
Mrs.Bennet was generally liked, as she was friendly and talkative, and if she was vulgar, the plain reality is that many of her new neighbors also were.
Kitty was pretty, not so pretty as Elizabeth or Jane, but a fine looking girl, with bold flashing eyes, and an easy confidence about herself that had not been ruined by the years of poverty after her father’s death.She liked to be able to dance and wear pretty clothes once again, and to be seen as a Miss of modest consequence.
Mr.Darcy had allowed it to become known through the medium of his lawyer that he intended to do something — though nothing exceptional — for his sister-in-law when she should marry.So Kitty’s circumstances were sufficient for those families not on the hunt for a splendid match for their sons, while her beauty and vivaciousness drew the attention of many of those sons.
These were not the dark days of the war, when the absence of gentlemen off serving as officers with Wellington, or upon the wooden walls that barred the English channel from the little ogre meant that even a pretty girl would often sit out half her dances at a ball, or be reduced to making the circuit with one of her sisters or female friends.Kitty could dance often as she wanted at the assemblies, and she had made new eternal boon companions from amongst the other young women of the neighborhood.
Miss Kitty was quite as happy as she could wish to be.
At present she was not eager tomarry, instead she was eager for a planned visit to Paris with Mama and Mary in the fall, when she would see Elizabeth once more and be able to thank Mr.Darcy for his kindness to them.
However as the great Scots poet of a generation prior said, “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley.”
A group of six men hunched in the bushes outside of the cottage, waiting for the candles to be extinguished.
Five of these men were ruffians of the worst sort, four of them had worked the noble trade of the highwayman upon the High Toby in the past.Three would in the future, and two would be hung for it.Two more were London back alley knifers, both of whom had killed a man.
The sixth had once nearly been a gentleman, but he had fallen in the world since then.
One of the Londoners had killed more than one man in his time on this earth.
That man was the scarred Mr.Blight.He had never healed quite right from Elizabeth’s blow, his jaw ached right in front of the ear, and he fancied that he now bit his tongue far more often than before.
He hated Elizabeth for that, and for that reason, even though Lord Lachglass’s plan was ridiculous, and doomed to see him destroyed, likely with Blight himself, Blight was happy to hunch in the shrubbery outside the house wherehermother and sister lived.
When the lights were extinguished, and the sounds of movement ceased, one of the ruffians worked the locked latch open on the door.
The wooden door popped open fast and easily, just a simple latch, nothing like what a man in London would use to blockade his castle from the evil ones outside.
One man hung back in the darkness of the woods, keeping an eye about for any sign that they’d attracted attention from the big house.This man was the one who had once been a gentleman, and he had no taste for violence.
