“She was not meant to be taken,” another muttered. “The girl is useless to us.”
Useless.
Elizabeth bit the inside of her cheek to keep from reacting. Could that be… good? If they had no use for her, then perhaps they would release her. But that was a fool’s hope. Nothing about this had been that simple from the moment she had mistakenly been drawn into it.
A third voice—calm, thoughtful—cut through the murmuring. “She is not useless.”
A French accent... The man she had met earlier. Elizabeth made her breathing even more shallow so she could listen more intently.
One of the others scoffed. “What, because she blinked at you with wide, innocent eyes and feigned ignorance? You think that means she is not ourmademoiselle?”
“She isnot,“ the Frenchman said coolly. “And I do not say that because she ‘feigned’ ignorance. The right woman would have no need to feign.”
A low murmur rippled through the gathered men.
“She gave the signal at the ball,” someone else protested. “Or do you think that was a coincidence? Who else would it have been?”
The Frenchman exhaled, slow and patient, as though explaining something to a child. “The woman we were expecting was promised money. She would have demanded it, not played the frightened innocent. She would have known what to do with the key.”
“Then she knows too much,” said another.
Elizabeth’s heart pounded, her breath shallow.
“Dispose of her before she exposes us.”
A silence.
Elizabeth could hear the faint creak of wood, the distant lap of water against the docks, but she was too focused on their voices to absorb anything else.
“We cannot,” someone muttered.
A scoff. “Why not? She is nothing.”
“No,” the Frenchman replied. A pause. “Sheissomething. Do you not know who she is?”
Elizabeth’s pulse hammered.
“She is tied to the gentleman.Milord bedonnant,” the man snarled.
“So? Asinge en redingotewith too much money and too little sense. A political sod, like all the rest of them.”
“And thegras anglais,” continued the Frenchman, “is tied to his puppet master, the earl.”
A curse. Someone shifted, the scrape of boots against wood.
“Matlock,” one muttered darkly.
“And Fitzwilliam Darcy,” another added, spitting the name. “He has been sniffing around too much already.”
A hand slammed against a wooden surface. “Then we use her.”
Elizabeth forced herself not to flinch.
“How? Ransom her?”
“Trade her,” another suggested.
“For what? No, no, far too conspicuous. We make her talk.” This was the Frenchman’s pronouncement… the one that would prevail.
