Page 55 of The Vanished Bennet Sister

He had known she would not. The knowledge that she failed to do so was accompanied by a feeling he could only describe as pride. Not the pride of proximity, nothing so reductive as that, but the pride of recognising a trait and seeing it enacted precisely as expected.

She stood where she was, stared at Alice without flinching and did not give an inch of the ground she had taken.

Darcy turned and made a single gesture towards the other end of the street.

The two Bow Street officers came forward with professional, unhurried authority of men. As men of professional repute, they had handled such situations before and did not require everyone to be in agreement before proceeding. One had his hand on his pistol as he reached the doorstep. The other was close behind.

A hefty man appeared in the hallway behind Alice. Darcy noted that he had moved with a speed that did not quite fit his size, the speed of a man accustomed to anticipating when intervention was going to be required. He positioned himself in the doorway with the simple, massive intention of being an obstacle.

"James!" Alice cried out, appearing both thrilled and relieved.

"Stand aside," the first officer ordered.

James did not move.

Both pistols came out. James looked at the pistols, then at the officers, and must have performed the calculations available to a man with no weapon and two firearms levelled at his chest, and the calculation produced an inevitable result.

He stood aside.

Alice made one further attempt, one hand going to the door frame and her mouth beginning a word, but the second officer took her arm firmly and nudged her aside. The door was fully open, and they were in.

Mr Thwaite went ahead of all of them.

He had been standing at the edge of the group, contained, appearing to be holding himself in close check. And he was now simply inside, moving through the house and not stopping to consider a specific, pre-planned direction. There was nothing theatrical about it. It was, in summary, the motion of a man whose whole purpose had resolved itself into a single goal: finding the woman he loved.

Darcy followed with the officers. Elizabeth was beside him; he did not look at her, but he was attuned to her with the complete, unignorable awareness that had been his companion since their time together in the carriage. He wanted to act. To say something heartwarming and encouraging, but he was also aware that the moment did not belong to either of them and he was not going to insert himself into it.

They went up.

The upper floor was narrow, with three doors along a short corridor. The first stood open, its interior empty. The second was locked.

Mr Thwaite stopped at the second door and put his hand on the frame,

"Mary! Mary, it is Thwaite. Can you hear me?"

The silence lasted a couple of seconds, which were the longest seconds Darcy had stood through in recent memory. He was aware of his own breathing, the heavy silence around him and Elizabeth at his shoulder.

Then a sound came from behind the locked door. Not words; a sound, involuntary and unmistakably human, the sound of someone who had been holding themselves in check for a considerable time and has just been permitted to stop.

Mr Thwaite turned to the officer, who retrieved the key from Alice's unwilling possession in the next minute.

He applied it to the lock, which answered with a positive click.

Darcy stood in the corridor and let Mr Thwaite go into the room first. He watched the moment of reunion between two people who cared deeply for each other with the quiet respect it deserved, without drawing any part of it towards himself. He was aware, at the edge of his vision, of Elizabeth raising her hand to her mouth. He was aware, a moment after, of the sound she made: subdued, involuntary, the sound that made it clear that she had been braced for the worst and was largely relieved that things had turned out better.

Then Elizabeth moved into the room and he remained in the corridor with the officer, while feeling like a huge boulder had been lifted from his shoulders.

He thought: Mary Bennet is safe.

He thought, almost immediately after: I am in love with Elizabeth Bennet and I cannot deny it any longer.

He turned to the officer, who was making notes in a small book with a professional air that made it clear that for him, the emotional content of a scene was secondary to its legal documentation.

"The woman downstairs," Darcy said. "And the man. What’s the update on them?"

"Both in custody, sir."

"Good."