Elizabeth ran as fast as her feet allowed.
“Where are you off to?”the colonel called out.
From Oakham Mount, she could see all the way from Meryton to Netherfield. She heard his horse thunder up beside her. The colonel, apparently realizing her intent, reached down from the horse and easily settled her behind him.
“Do you see him?” she asked before they reached the top.She held the colonel tightly as the horse leapt the final distance to the crest.
“I see something by a stile.”
The colonel’s horse ate up the distance.
An apple-green ribbon was draped from the post. She said, “That belongs to Mr. Wickham.” With his assistance, Elizabeth slid to the ground, untying the knot.
The colonel stood in the stirrups.
“Can you see anything, Colonel? Anyone?”
“No. What I can see clearly are drag marks in the mud.”
As soon as he pointed to where two parallel trailed in the wet earth, Elizabeth took off running. “The chalk cave,” she yelled behind her. “They are not far.”
Without hesitation,Elizabeth rushed into the cave, the darkness blinding her. Feeling the colonel’s presence at her back, she squinted until her eyes adjusted to the change of light.
Two men were in front of her, one on the ground, one on his knees beside him.
She approached, kneeling beside Fitzwilliam. Darcy barely acknowledged her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him to her as Colonel Fitzwilliam put his hand on Mr. Wickham’s chest to see if it was rising and falling or whether it was still. When the colonel shook his head, she knew they were too late to help Mr. Wickham.
Her beloved’s body shook in grief. Tears streamed down her cheeks in silent sympathy.
Elizabeth kissed Darcy’s forehead, her hands on each side of his face, gently encouraging him to look away from Mr. Wickham, to fill his sight with someone who loved him dearly and who was alive.
Wrapping her arm around his neck, she held him to her chest, her fingers caressing every inch of his face, smoothing his brow, tracing his cheekbones, brushing over the rough whiskers on his jaw, and feeling the whisper of his breath from his lips.
“Here, I brought brandy.” The colonel unscrewed a flask.
“Please, my love,” she begged.
He sat erect as if finally seeing her.
“I…no, I do not need brandy.” Darcy grabbed her hand with his. “I could not leave him out there,” he explained unnecessarily.
“You certainly would not.” Quick to reassure him, she kissed the back of his hand. “Pray, tell me about the good in him.”
Darcy closed his eyes. When the colonel started to speak, Elizabeth glared at him until he closed his mouth tightly.
Into the silence of the cave, Darcy said, “He is my half-brother.”
Stunned, Elizabeth’s mind spun with the implications. The colonel looked like someone hit him over the head with a millstone.
“Your half-brother?” the colonel repeated, still in shock. “Your father’s son? It is what all of us suspected for years.”
“My parents married three years before I was born. My father was in love with Lady Anne Fitzwilliam but there was no possibility of her father approving of the union. The favorite daughter of an earl deserved a duke, not a squire. Nor did my mother have any interest in Gerald Darcy of Pemberley. No, her interest was with a stable boy at Matlock Farms.”
“Good heavens! George Wickham is the son of my aunt, not my uncle?”
Elizabeth could not keep her mouth from gaping open in imitation of the colonel.
“He was.” Darcy wrapped his arms around Elizabeth and pulled her tight. “When our grandfather discovered that his precious daughter was with child, he had the stable boy transported to the colonies and betrothed her to my father with the caveat that they married quickly. Lord Matlock insisted the babe be sent to Scotland, where a tenant farmer would raise him on one of the Matlock estates. My father’s only request was that if the child was a boy, that he would not be raised as his heir.”
