The door opened swiftly, and the Gardiners’ manservent regarded him with mild surprise. “Mr. Darcy? Welcome back, sir.”
“Is Miss Bennet returned?” Darcy demanded, not even bothering to stand up straight. He probably looked rather like a brooding bear, hunched forward and staring from the cold and urgency pounding in his chest.
The manservant blinked, but before he could answer, a softer voice interjected.
“Mr. Darcy?”
Mrs. Gardiner appeared at the end of the hall, her expression warm but perplexed. She came forward, smoothing her hands over her skirts. “I had not expected to see you this afternoon.”
Darcy barely inclined his head. “Forgive the intrusion, madam, but I must speak with Miss Bennet. It is urgent.”
A strange look crossed Mrs. Gardiner’s face. A slight furrow of her brow, a faint tension in the lines around her mouth. “She is not yet returned,” she said carefully.
The breath left Darcy’s lungs. “Not… yet returned?”
“She left a note saying she was going to Hatchard’s.”
Darcy shook his head. “Yes, I heard that, but I do not believe she went there. She came to me.”
Mrs. Gardiner blinked. “Toyou?”
“I was not home,” he admitted tightly, “but my butler told me she left in some distress. That was hours ago.”
Now it was Mrs. Gardiner’s turn to pale. “She… she has not come back. I was beginning to worry, but now—”
A cold certainty settled in his gut.
“What is this?” Mr. Gardiner’s study door creaked open. Apparently, he had heard the exchange and now joined them in the entryway, his brow creased in concern. “Elizabeth is missing?”
Darcy swallowed against the growing unease. “She came to my house to discuss something that had unsettled her—I think it might have been a message, a note she received.”
Mrs. Gardiner pressed a hand to her chest. “A note?”
Gardiner exhaled sharply and turned to his manservant. “Lewis, send for the coachman at once. And then tell me what you know of this. I want every detail of this afternoon—everything that happened before Miss Bennet’s departure.”
The household stirred to life. Footsteps, murmured voices, a hasty search for information. The manservant returned from sending word to the mews and stood by, his face very full of something.
“Wilson, you saw Miss Bennet before she left?” Mr. Gardiner asked.
“Aye, sir,” the manservant answered, his face lined with concern. “A message came for her—a note.”
Darcy and Gardiner exchanged a sharp glance. “A note from whom?” Gardiner asked.
Wilson hesitated. “A man named Temple. Said he was from your shipping office—I thought, perhaps, she had placed an order.” His eyes slid to Darcy with clear implication—because of him, any number of items must have been “ordered” for Miss Bennet of late.
Darcy saw Gardiner go rigid. The color drained from the merchant’s face. “I employ no one by that name.”
But Wilson shook his head. “He waited in the hall for a reply, sir. Miss Bennet, she asked if the message was meant for you, instead, but the messenger said her name, and it was written on the outside of the note. It was just after that that she decided to go to Hatchard’s.”
Darcy forced himself to focus, to sift through the tangled web of implications. The note. Elizabeth’s abrupt disappearance. A stranger waiting for her.
His uncle’s voice echoed in his memory—“There is smuggling happening through Gardiner’s shipping company. Prisoners, most likely.”
“Mr. Gardiner,” he said, watching the older man closely. “How well do you know your own shipping business?”
Gardiner turned to him, his face pale. “Only that it is honest, Mr. Darcy. Entirely honest. I have never once cheated a tariff or smuggled so much as a pound of tea without paying its tax.”
Darcy studied him, searching for any sign of falsehood—but there was none. “I believe you,” he said at last.
