No, an express rider. Horse lathered. The man rode with an object, weaving between festival carts and startled children. His coat was unmarked, but his satchel bore the crest of a noble household—which one, Darcy could not see from that distance. Dust caked his boots to the knee. He dismounted near the market stalls, his eyes scanning faces. Then he began moving from group to group, asking questions.
Darcy could not hear the words, but the gestures were clear. The rider lifted a folded express—thick, with a large seal set in wax—and pointed vaguely across the green.
Darcy moved without thinking, weaving through a knot of youths near a cider stand. The rider was asking again—this time a butcher’s wife—and she pointed, almost too casually, toward the far end of the field.
Where Collins stood.
Darcy’s blood ran cold.
The vicar was at his most insufferable, posturing beside a rather uninspired squash display. His hands moved as if delivering a sermon on the moral superiority of root vegetables. The express rider cut across the field.
Darcy stopped walking.
The rider reached Collins and handed him the envelope with a crisp bow. Collins’s face lit up like a boy being given a puppy. He broke the seal immediately, eyes devouring the page.
Darcy did not need to read the words to know.
Lady Catherine.
A flush of self-importance colored Collins’ cheeks as he cleared his throat and, without hesitation, began reading aloud to those nearest him. Heads turned, conversations hushed, and a ripple of whispers spread outward like wildfire.
Darcy’s pulse thundered in his ears as he slipped through the crowd, trying to remain unseen without being unseen—a trick he had mastered in drawing rooms, but never before in a public square ripe for spectacle.
Collins was still crowing over the letter, now fluttering it in the air for the benefit of a clutch of middle-aged matrons who leaned closer with a kind of delighted horror. Darcy could not make out the words, but he could see the effect. The women gasped and tittered, glancing toward the cider stalls—and then directly at him.
One put a hand to her mouth.
Another whispered something to her companion, and they both turned away, but not before he caught the faintest sneer.
And that was only the beginning.
Caroline Bingley stood several yards away, dressed too finely for an open-air gathering and watching the scene with a tightening frown. She had not heard Collins’ letter—of that, he was certain—but she was hearing enough now to know something was amiss. A gentleman near her made a remark Darcy could not catch, but he gestured toward Darcy, then toward Bingley. Caroline’s head jerked, her fan stilled mid-sweep, and her mouth fell slightly open.
She turned in a slow, horrified circle, scanning faces. Looking for her brother.
He moved again, quickly now, toward the cider cart where a knot of laborers and farmers had formed an unhurried ring around a barrel-top table. Tankards in hand, boots scuffed from the field, they leaned on elbows and spoke in half-lowered tones, the kind reserved for matters both scandalous and satisfying.
Darcy slowed his steps, pausing just beyond the edge, half-shielded by a faded canvas tent. A potboy from the inn dashed past with a pitcher. No one noticed him listening.
“…never liked the look of him,” one man was saying. “Too stiff. Walks like he is afraid to catch a crease.”
“Thinks he’s better than the rest of us, that’s plain,” said another. “Did you hear what was in that letter?”
A scoff. “Letter, nothing. Old Carrick knew something weeks ago. Said the fellow tipped obscenely high and asked too many questions.”
“That’s the one—Darcy, is it? The guest at Netherfield? Wonder if Mr. Bingley ever heard of this. Shoddy affair, it is.”
A collective murmur of agreement passed through the group.
“Strange business, him coming down here at all. Nothing to interest a London man in a place like Meryton. Not unless he was hiding from something.”
“Or someone.”
Darcy’s pulse flickered. He shifted slightly, just enough to catch a different angle of the crowd. Beyond the green, Elizabeth moved with her sisters among the booths—trailing just behind Kitty and Maria Lucas, who were laughing over a painted fan and mostly ignoring the murmurs.
But they had caught Elizabeth’s ear… he could tell that by the flicker of her jaw muscles. She turned her head, searching.
Found him.
