At the end of it, Mr. Darcy laughed appreciatively. “You brandished a knife at her?”
Elizabeth grinned; she had tucked it away after encountering no enemies, but she withdrew it from her bodice once more, and his eyes widened. He turned away to peer out the window and, she suspected, conceal his laughter.
“Very well done, Lizzy!” Sir Edward cried. “Well, I suppose Cathy will be wanting to hear all about it. Shall we return to our deliberations in the parlor?”
They all agreed, and they sought out the others with whom they shared their investigation. Back in the parlor, Elizabeth again told of her conversation with Mrs. Rushworth, and there was some debate as to whether the person in the passage was their villain or not.
“My aunt found a passageway,” Emma reminded them. “And Mrs. Rushworth herself found another. Did not some of the gentlemen find another passage in the cellar?”
“But the material point is that only Mr. Darcy, Sir Edward, and Miss Bennet were meant to be in that part of the castle, searching for the key,” Mr. Tilney argued. “Anybody else would have been straying from their assigned areas, and possibly even their search partner. For what other reason should they do so, if not something devious?”
This was agreed upon, though nobody quite knew what it meant. “The only women besides Mrs. Rushworth and those in this room are Miss Denham and Lady Susan,” Harriet said, fretting at Emma.
“And both are implicated in other murders," Mr. Darcy said gravely.
“Unless it is some lover’s token, carried by a man,” Cathy suggested with a gleeful expression. “Mr. Parker and Miss Denham are lovers, or Mr. Rushworth perhaps had something of his wife’s – and we know Mr. Willoughby and Sir Walter to have taken lovers.”
“So, it might really be anybody’s,” Mr. Darcy sighed.
Elizabeth caught herself reaching for him as an idea struck her. “I might discover who it belongs to. Perhaps theyhave not realized they dropped it in the passage. I could pretend to find it on the floor in the parlor and see if anyone admits that it belongs to them.”
“Brilliant,” he said with a nod, his hand clasping hers before he quickly withdrew. Luckily, the rest of their companions were distracted by their own excitement at this development and did not see the momentary gesture that flustered Elizabeth – or at least, none but Cathy saw it. She winked boldly at Elizabeth.
Elizabeth felt her face grow warm; she could scarcely look at Mr. Darcy. She had deliberately omitted one detail of her conversation with Mrs. Rushworth, that the lady had imagined an attachment between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. She had one pleasant conversation with the man and no longer wished to kick him out of a window, which certainly signified an improvement from a year ago, but to imagine them in love was madness!
***
The eight companions mulled over their various theories and speculations until it was time to dress for dinner. They still believed Lady Susan and Miss Denham to be the likeliest suspects, but all agreed that Mrs. Rushworth had only managed to incriminate herself and her lover far more than the contents of their dossiers.
Thus when Elizabeth entered the drawing room with Sir Edward and her sisters, she went directly to Lady Susan and Miss Denham. The two ladies had apparently grown thick as thieves since sharing a bedroom after the previous evening’s events. They sat together on a sofa, barely moderating their voices as they mocked Sir Walter, who was beside himself trying to flirt with all the ladies at once. He remarked thatElizabeth was in exceedingly fine looks, and said the same of her sisters and Emma, before finding a more willing audience in Mrs. Rushworth. That lady seemed torn between her vanity and her wit, and settled for accepting his vapid compliments with forbearance.
Elizabeth wore a long-sleeved gown, one of her newer, finer frocks, and had tucked thevinaigrette de toiletteup inside one of the sleeves, which she held close to herself as she moved across the room. She greeted the two ladies on the sofa, and was relieved when they invited her to sit with them.
“I fear I have been monopolizing the company of your charming niece, Lady Susan,” Elizabeth said as she sat down beside her. And then she began her performance. She flinched as if she had leaned back against something uncomfortable, and brought her arm down into the cushion of the sofa, discretely slipping the silver object out of her sleeve.
“Is something the matter, Miss Bennet?”
“I have sat on something!” And then Elizabeth pretended to discover the source of her discomfort, and displayed thevinaigrette de toiletteto the two women. “Does this belong to you?”
Lady Susan and Miss Denham shook their heads, and Elizabeth quickly pocketed the item again, affecting nonchalance. “Oh, well. How odd.”
Across the room, Mrs. Rushworth had leaned over a little to look past the preening baronet and observe what Elizabeth was about; she gave a knowing look, and the barest of smiles, as if she understood.
Elizabeth found she could converse easily enough with Lady Susan, despite her reservations about the lady’s character. It would have been odd for Elizabeth to abandon her so swiftly,and so she resumed her previous topic. “I hope you do not think me greedy, for I already have my two new sisters to become acquainted with, but Miss Woodhouse has also been very agreeable company under our strange circumstances.”
Lady Susan nodded. “Of course you young people wish to carry on together. Aside from Mr. Tilney, I suppose none of you have any particular reason to be distressed by the demise of the general and the captain, and that other fellow. That our host can make merry is odd, but so is everything else.” She gestured broadly at their surroundings.
Miss Denham sniffed. “I wonder that you can justify Miss, ah, Gardiner treating the scene of so many murders as a social occasion.”
“It is still Bennet,” Elizabeth corrected the petulant creature. But if these ladies believed that was all Elizabeth had occupied herself with, so much the better. Thinking it perfectly reasonable that she might move away from them at such a moment, she did just that.
She next approached the gentlemen speaking with Mr. Darcy – Mr. Rushworth, Mr. Bertram, and Mr. Parker. “Forgive me, Mr. Darcy. I just recollected that we meant to ask after that little trinket we found on tour of the castle this morning.”
She angled her body so that the ladies she already questioned could not see what she was about, and produced the silver object from her pocket once more. “We found it on the ground in the third floor corridor, which Mr. Tilney said is near to the bachelor’s wing. The craftsmanship is very fine, and I had thought it perhaps a sentimental token somebody dropped.”
Mr. Darcy offered her a small smile of approbation as the gentlemen gave the little silver tree a cursory glance. They all answered in the negative, though Mr. Rushworth kindlycommended her honesty in wishing to return such a fine little treasure.
“Perhaps Willoughby; I hear he likes the ladies as much as his uncle,” Mr. Parker said wryly.
