Page 11 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

Elizabeth took the paper. Eleven dates in Mary's upright hand, neat and perfectly useless. "You did what I asked, Mary."

"I did it badly. Watching people does not number among my talents." Mary's chin came up. "I have concluded that watching a person in secret is itself a species of deceit, and deceit does not prosper. Had we told Papa at once, Lydia would be upstairs this minute, interrupting my practice. You may wish to reflect upon that, Lizzy."

She went off toward the music room, the moral victory secure. Elizabeth folded the paper into the box with the rest. Mary was not wrong. How provoking!

Mr. Bennet came down with his coat buttoned and his hat in his hand. His face held the expression he had last worn when he lent Fitzwilliam the rifle. He kissed Kitty's forehead. He said nothing. The kiss said it.

The three of them climbed into the coach. Elizabeth held the box on her lap. Fitzwilliam gave the driver the Gardiners' direction, and Mr. Bennet sat with his hands on his knees. He watched Longbourn slide away behind the hedgerows and did not look away until there was nothing left to see.

CHAPTER 4

The coach had been on the road nearly five hours when Darcy saw the first rooftops of London through the rain. First came the soot-streaked chimneys of the northern approaches, where the city began in coal smoke. The rain had come on an hour past Barnet, thin and persistent. It had added forty minutes to a journey that already felt eternal.

Elizabeth sat beside him with the locked box on her lap. She had not spoken since Hatfield. Her hands lay splayed on the mahogany lid, pressing it shut.

Mr. Bennet sat opposite, cleaning his spectacles with a handkerchief. Third time since Hatfield. The man needed something to do with his hands, and his hands had settled on the spectacles.

"Gracechurch Street first," Darcy said. He had said it twice already. He heard himself say it and could not stop. "Your uncle will have had my express by early afternoon. He will have started already."

"My uncle is methodical," Elizabeth said. "If he has started, he has started well."

"Then Cheapside."

"Yes. And we bring the note. If the landlady knows the hand, we learn who Braithwaite's errand-boy is." She touched the box. "But it must be copied first. If Graves learns we hold the original, he will find a way to see it burned."

"You are thinking three moves ahead."

"So are you. I learned from a chess player." She turned to the window, a small smile there and gone.

The coach came into Gracechurch Street at half-four. The Gardiners' house stood narrow and red-bricked between a haberdasher and a tea merchant, respectable without pretending to grandeur. Privately Darcy held it the most sensible household in Elizabeth's whole family.

Mr. Gardiner met them at the door with his coat still damp. "I had your express at one," he said, showing them into the small parlor. "I have spent three hours at every coaching inn between here and the Borough. No one answering Wickham's description bought passage north these last two days. If he went to Gretna, he did not start from London."

"He did not go to Gretna," Darcy said. "Richard is checking the road, but I expect nothing from it."

"Then they are in London."

"Or were." Darcy set the box on the table, opened it, and laid out the unsigned note by its edges.

Gardiner read it. Then, without being told, he raised it to his nose, and Darcy watched the recognition arrive. "Bay leaves."

"Braithwaite," Elizabeth said. "He arranged the rooms himself."

Mrs. Gardiner appeared in the doorway. She took in the whole tableau, the box, the note, three gray-faced travelers, her husband's damp coat, and did not add so much as a raised eyebrow to it. "I will make the copy," she said. "Tea is coming. Sit, all of you. You have ten minutes before you go anywhere."

Nobody argued with Mrs. Gardiner. But the pot rattled against the cups when she poured, and she pressed two fingers to her temple when she thought nobody looked. She set an apple tart at Elizabeth's elbow. "You love these, Lizzy. Eat."

Elizabeth looked at the tart and did not touch it. Darcy had never before seen his wife refuse a sweet.

Mrs. Gardiner copied the note in a clear, unhurried script, sealed the original, and handed it to Darcy. "On your person. Not in the box."

He tucked it inside his coat, and they walked to Cheapside.

The lodging house was three stories of grimy white with a hand-lettered board in the window: Rooms. Weekly. Apply Within.

Gardiner knocked. The woman who opened the door was five-and-forty. The face said she had once been handsome and had since been disappointed by everything except gin. Her eyes went over the four of them and sized them up at speed. Two gentlemen of means. A young woman with good boots. An older man, grim and angry.

"We are looking for a young couple," Gardiner said pleasantly. "A fair-haired gentleman and a very young lady. They may have taken rooms here."