If he had not considered himself to be in particularly difficult circumstances he would not have agreed to aid the others, and he felt something like pangs of conscience as he watched the line of rough bestial brutes (as he thought of them) file into the breached house.
The others snuck on tip-toeing feet through the house and up the stairs to where the bedrooms of the family would be.The underling who’d killed a man was placed to stand inside the darkened servant’s stairway, to stab in the neck without warning any servant who was awakened by the noise and ran down to see what was the matter.
A clumsy country oaf accidentally kicked over an incidental table sitting where no rational table would sit in the middle of the hallway leading to the staircase.
The man on guard against the servants stiffened in the deathly silence that followed that clatter.
But no one wakened.
Led by Blight and carrying thieves’ lanterns that only showed their light in one direction, the others went up to the rooms.They softly tested the doors to each bedroom, and none of them were locked.
They easily found the quiet peaceful sleepers.
A quick movement by men used to violence, a knock over the head of each sleeping woman, and then before they could return to themselves, efficient gags were forced over the mouths of both women, making it impossible for them to scream, and difficult for them to breathe.
Hands tied together.Feet tied together.
And then the two burliest of the men in this gang slung one woman each over their back and carted them down the stairs and out into the estate’s large park.
This group of men had not been bothered at all while sneaking their way onto Darcy’s estate, following the line of ground, and avoiding all of the houses of cottagers, and the occasional roving of the groundskeepers.They had moved so well through the estate that one might wonder if they were guided by a person who had grown up on the estate.
Which they had been.
The man who had led them to dowager cottage was the man who had waited outside.He stood masked to ensure he was not recognized in the dark when the criminals led by Mr.Blight emerged from the now emptier house.This man’s eyes flicked over the two captives, blindfolded and gagged, being carried on the back of Mr.Blight’s friends, and something like regret for his actions and the past flashed in his eyes.
He led the party quickly over hills and through hedges and out to the blind where highwaymen had hidden in the old days before the Darcy family had suppressed them, and before the king’s justice was more than a laughable word.
A carriage awaited them, standing empty with a team of four ugly horses purchased more than twenty miles away.The coat of arms on the carriage had been carefully removed, but the gap in the paint where it had been, and the bolts that it had been attached to, were almost visible in the dark.
Mr.Blight sourly looked at the carriage.Still recognizable.
Would have made a damned sight more sense to rent a separate carriage for the night’s work, or better to purchase one, like he had the horses, and then push it off an isolated cliff into the sea in Cornwall when the business was done.But Lachglass had insisted that it behiscarriage which would carry the captives to his estate, because somehow that would make it more his own revenge.
Blight had prepared a hideaway, where he could flee to after the inevitable end had come, and Lord Lachglass was thrown in prison for a time, and all his associates arrested and hung.
They’d not hang Lachglass of course.Not a peer.Nor chop his head off, not for any crime lower than rebellion against the mad king and his fat son.
Would give the crowd ideas, it would, if aristocrats could go around being hung.
Blight spat on the ground after he saw the two women stuffed into the carriage.The crowd would hang him faster than Lachglass if they knew everything, and he could not blame them.He’d shout for himself to be hung, if he ever was asked.
He turned to the man who had guided them, and who stayed carefully out of the light in the shadows — to avoid being recognized, because even with the large syphilis sore sitting on his forehead, he was yet a handsome man.
Ha.
Blight wondered how long it would take the disease to ravage the man and kill him off.The pox tended to carry off a man slow and painful like.Drove them mad before it killed them too.Would drive them mad like Miss Bennet — she had been a pretty thing — had driven Lord Lachglass’s brains out the back of his head.
“Here’s the dirty ready.”Blight placed into Mr.Wickham’s hands the bag of guineas that was the agreed upon fee.Mr.Wickham had bargained hard for his help, but then the poor man was destitute these days, no longer as capable of charming those around him.Anyone who knew the signs would know exactly what was behind the makeup hiding the pox.
Didn’t matter none to Blight in any case.Weren’t his money, and Lachglass wasn’t holding to his money, or his wits too close no more.Not after he’d been hit over the head.Blight was particularly glad Lachglass hadn’t asked again after the boxing master he’d been ordered to kill.
Blight made an effort, he did.But the pugilist was constantly with friends or in open daylight for the three days Blight watched him.
Ha!He might like to kill a man twice as much as the next bloke.But Blight wasn’t going to get pinched and hung for Lachglass’s whim.Not old Blighty.That’s what’d happen if he stabbed or shot the boxer in front of witnesses.
So Blight gave up, he had other things to do — the boxer knew Lachglass wanted to have him murdered, and wasn’t likely to give him an opportunity for at least a month or two.
And, Lachglass, poor tupper, he’d forgotten plain about the screamed order to murder the man.
