Elizabeth walked slowly forward.Her eyes focused on the pistol that was stuck towards her mother’s head.“Here I am,” she shouted when she was thirty feet away from him.
How did Elizabeth sound so calm?
“Haha!Come closer!Closer so I can see your eyes as you die.”
So saying, Lachglass pulled the gun from Mrs.Bennet’s head, lowering his arms again to aim at Elizabeth.
A crack of a single rifle shot rang across the field, firing as Lachglass began to move.
The earl’s head exploded into a blood blotch, with the entry wound right above his nose and dead center between his eyes.
His gun went off in his dying convulsion, as he’d promised, and it fired uselessly into the air above Elizabeth and Mrs.Bennet.
Kitty had been sitting behind him at such an angle that she was splattered with brains and blood.She began screaming.
Elizabeth ran up to her sister, ignoring Mr.Blight and the other men who worked for the deceased Lachglass.She held Kitty tight, and whispered some sort of consolation to her, and then after an instant she went to Mrs.Bennet and grabbed her, beginning to pull at the ropes binding her to the chair.
All of the earl’s men, except Mr.Blight, threw their weapons to the side.But Mr.Blight began to aim his pistol at Elizabeth as he snarled angrily.
Three soldiers shot him dead as he moved, splattering his body with bloody holes.
Darcy ran up to Elizabeth, and he helped her with a hunting knife to saw the restraints off Mrs.Bennet and Kitty.The women embraced each other fiercely, and then Elizabeth turned and threw her arms around Darcy, squeezing him as tightly.
Oh, God.Oh, God.Oh, kind Jesu.They all were safe.It all was over.Oh, God.
She was so warm, and she smelled fragrant, and they squeezed each other till he could feel her bones.
The soldiers came up; they tied ropes around the hands of Lachglass’s retainers, to take them before the courts for acting as accomplices to Lord Lachglass in his crimes.Captain Dilman stepped up to the corpse of the earl and poked him with his foot.
Dead.Very dead.The man was very, very dead.
Chapter Twenty-Two
One Week Before in Cambrai
General Fitzwilliam fitted the big broken plaster nose over his real nose, and he allowed his valet to work some actor’s plaster into his skin, substantially darkening the color and giving him an ugly scar along his neck.
He watched carefully what the man did, as he would need to replicate it while in England.When he had planned this scheme with Darcy, they decided it would be best if he never spoke while in England, since his voice was recognizable.
General Fitzwilliam was sure he couldlookthe part of another, he did not believe he could reliably disguise his voice in such a way that would fool anyone who knew him, and he would have many acquaintances in the army camp in Brighton.
“You will be well, Fitz?”he asked his brother as he quickly made his preparations to disappear.
“On the contrary,” his brother replied, “I expect I shall be exceedingly unwell for the entire time.”
General Fitzwilliam barked out a laugh.
The regimental surgeon sat across from his patient who bounced up and down on General Fitzwilliam’s small bed.He said, “I’ll take enough blood from him toensurethat he won’t be well.”
Fitz winced and flinched away from the surgeon.“I just need to look a little pale.”
“It will be good for you.I am sure that there issomeunderlying illness you know nothing about which will be improved by the bloodletting.Everyone hassomeunderlying illness, the only question is if they know about it or not.”
“I’m going to expect a particularly good bottle of Scotch, Richard.For letting you set this lunatic at me.”He laughed.“Never made a lick of sense to me how bloodletting could do any good.We generally want toavoidbleeding in the army.If I ever was in a serious bad way, I’d not let the doctor cut me.Suspect it is just their trick to keep the patient so ill that they need a regular visit.”
“None of that suspicious nonsense.”General Fitzwilliam turned away from the mirror, and he hunched so that there was a prominent looking hump in his back.“How do I look?”
“Nothing like the general, that is for damned sure,” the surgeon said.
