“Of course,” Bingley agreed. “Why, that is precisely how it must be. Miss Lydia cannot have gone far, and Mrs Wickham is most resourceful.”
Darcy fought a roll of his eyes as the happy couple consoled one another with this naïve hope. “Fitzwilliam,” he announced to the glowering presence at his side, “I will ride west.”
Darknesswasfallingrapidly,and his sense of dread was escalating by the moment. Nearly two miles from Corbett Lodge, he dropped into a small valley where one of her tenants lived. It was the Smiths, a couple of advancing age with no children to attract a girl of fifteen to their home. Elizabeth would have left this as nearly the last house to search on her path, if he knew her as he thought he did.
His hammering heart and searching eyes were rewarded only a moment later when a woman’s figure emerged from the trees. Her steps were faltering, her head down in defeat, and her gown splattered and stained from her exertions. Darcy nearly threw himself from his horse and ran to her.
“Elizabeth! Are you hurt?”
She scarcely raised her bonnet—merely shaking it back and forth as she crossed her arms over her chest. Darcy heard a sob, and it tore through his heart.
“Elizabeth!” He reached her and clasped her shoulders, unnerved by the way her form slackened and she refused to look him in the eye.
“It is my fault,” she kept repeating. “I ought to have watched her better! I knew she would—oh, Mr Darcy, it is my fault!”
Darcy stripped off his riding coat and wrapped it about her against the evening chill. She shrugged into it as if grateful for the warmth, but still she would not lift her head.
“What can you mean, ‘your fault,’?” he asked.
“I feared she would do something foolish! Please, Mr Darcy, you must leave me. We are ruined, all of us! You cannot be seen with—”
“Elizabeth,” he interrupted. “Look at me.”
She closed her eyes firmly, but slowly lifted her tear-streaked face to him.
“Much better. Now, I pray you tell me what has happened.”
She drew a long, trembling sigh and nearly sobbed again. “I spoke with a farm maid who saw a girl who looked like Lydia. She was going south, they said—on the back of some man’s horse.”
Seventeen
“MrDarcy,thisisintolerable. I must be allowed to return to my family!” Elizabeth sensed that she must have been exceedingly red in the face and her voice was becoming shrill with panic and fury, but it no longer mattered. What could Mr Darcy be to her now? What of it, if he now found her so repulsive and shrewish that he could scarcely abide the sight of her? Lydia must be her only concern, for it was not as if she would ever see him again after this.
If only he had not insisted on putting her on his horse and holding her in his arms for the ride back.
He would brook no refusal. “I understand your urgency, but you can serve your youngest sister better at Pemberley.”
“You have said that thrice now, but I do not understand how my failure to return home at such a time will improve matters!”
“Why, do you not see? Your home is not safe until we discover where your sister has gone.”
“Not safe! What do you suppose will happen? Shall a group of moustachioed brigands arrive with pistols and demand our immediate surrender?”
“Not unlikely,” he answered, with no trace of irony in his voice.
“Oh, you are impossible. Pray, sir, let me return to my mother! I can imagine what a state she must be in.”
“Even your imagination would fail to capture the full marvel of her histrionics,” Darcy answered drily. “Not to worry, I will have her notified of your safety and a guard posted at Corbett until your family can be ready to remove.”
Elizabeth stiffened. “It is come to that, then?” she asked in a tight voice.
“Naturally, anything else would be inconceivable. Your family cannot continue on there after these events.”
Elizabeth turned her face as far away from his as she could manage—which was not very far. Tears burned, sobs welled up from within, but she would not release them. That the world would know of the family’s disgrace and they would now be turned out seemed a paltry matter compared to the real pain in her heart—that Lydia might be lost to her forever, and Mr Darcy was even more so.
His arms tightened about her waist as he drew rein—it had nothing to do with her, she knew. It was merely the demands of managing his mount. But for half a moment, she wished it was sympathy or something deeper that made him seem to rock her body against his, to sigh against her cheek as he slowed the horse.
“We should dismount,” was his gruff explanation. “We are within sight of the house.”
