“I am afraid I know nothing of paintings, Uncle.”
“Very well. A pity your father was not available, but I can manage this. I’ll not be a moment. Then I can drive you home.”
My father. An image of him hearing of our visit to Netherfield and setting out himself to join us danced through my mind with all the allure of a blackening thundercloud. I could not havethat. If I could not hasten my uncle away, perhaps I could meet my father on the road and turn him back. “Oh, but is that not very much out of your way?” I asked quickly. “I can happily walk back to Longbourn. It is barely three miles.”
“My dear Lizzy! Surely your mother would not hear of it. No, no. I brought you, and I shall deliver you home safely.”
“Thank you, Uncle, but I must insist. I always take my constitutional in the afternoon, and the weather today is very fine. It will save me the trouble of setting out again once I have got home. Truly, I will have it no other way.”
“Well… if you insist, Lizzy. I think it frightfully dangerous for you to wander so far, what with the reports of thieves and miscreants about. Has your father never forbidden it?”
“No, never, so long as I take care to bring none of them home.”
He rolled his eyes. “Very well. Off you go, now. I will set out when I have done.”
I watched him go, a tremendous anxiety easing from my chest. All would be right. I was that relieved, truly, so much so that I was swaying where I stood. I put a trembling hand out behind me to rest it on the fireplace screen. It was flimsier than I thought and shifted beneath my weight.
But that was not what startled me. It was the soft grunt of a body behind the grate that sent my poor heart into apoplexy.
Darcy
Theyoungladywasa fair athlete, I had to confess. An instant after she kicked the fire screen into my ribs, she had scampered across the room with one of the vases in her left hand. Her right clutched a silver candelabra, which was even now poised threateningly above her head.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Show yourself!”
I had been only peering over the screen, instinctively holding my ribs, but what I saw of her eased my concerns. Why, she was but a girl! Or, rather, a young lady, but possessed of an intelligent face and lithe figure. Certainly, no shrew or farmer’s wife who could set up an alarm or deliver a roundhouse punch to my jaw. I pushed the screen aside so I might stand.
“Stay back!” she cried.
From the corner of my vision, I caught her right hand lifting that candelabra, and then I was flat on my back, nearly slain by that great lump of silver hurtling at my temple. She’d thrown the thing with brutal accuracy, and it was a moment before I could see anything at all.
I was still behind the screen, though it was pushed out considerably from where it had been. My head was going to split apart where I lay. I was quite sure of it.
“Good God,” I moaned, gingerly touching the back of my skull. It was sticky and wet where it had met with the fireplace bricks upon my landing. “What the bloody devil are you about, woman?”
Her disembodied voice wafted over the screen. “Oh! What a relief. I thought for a moment you were dead.”
“I might be. Come, tell me if this is merely blood leaking out of me or if you have knocked a hole in my brain.”
“I will come no closer! Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
I parted my hair with weak fingers, feeling for the gaping hole in my cranium I was sure must be there. All I found was a deep gash and a considerable deal of pain. Curse it all, Bingley had both my handkerchiefs! I had nothing to stanch the flow, which was even now spreading on the bricks and into my coat.
Gingerly, I pressed at the knot on my head and sat up. The world shifted and spun, but then steadied around the young lady’s face. “Lizzy,” the man had called her. A daughter of Longbourn.
Whatever in the world she was doing there, she sounded like precisely the person I needed to talk to. But how to explain my presence to her? I had technically broken into the house! I could not risk my good name by revealing myself to a gentleman’s daughter.
I held up my free hand in a placating gesture. “Fear not, madam. I mean you no harm.”
“You are the thief!” she cried. “The one everyone has been making such a fuss about! Stay where you are, or so help me, I will knock out more than your brains.” She shifted the vase to her right hand and reared it back with clear intent.
Her words spurred inspiration. She was prepared to believe I was a known housebreaker? Very well, I would become one for the moment, if only to save face for us both. “I suggest you reconsider,” I answered mildly, trying my best to recapture my dignity. It was not easy, with blood pouring from a throbbing wound just behind my ear.
“Why? To give you time to trick me? I am no simpering fool!”
“I can see that.” I carefully dusted the front of my jacket with my free hand. Fortunately, the fireplace had been properly cleaned, and I was not entirely covered in soot, but I would be lucky if my valet did not give his notice upon seeing my suit. “That vase is quite valuable, I understand. ‘Twould be a pity if you were to waste it on my poor crown.”
She blinked and lowered her weapon, and I did not miss the shifting of her dark eyes as she glanced about for something less dear to lob at me. “What do you propose I do, sir? Pretend I did not just catch you in the act of plundering valuables?”
