Page 12 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"I run a respectable house."

"I am sure you do. We are the young lady's family."

Whatever she saw in them satisfied her. The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage and tallow.

"There was a couple," she said, leading them into a sitting room where a fire guttered in an uncleaned grate. "Took the second-floor rooms, paid the week in advance. That was the odd thing. Handsome fellow, but skint, you could see it in his cuffs, and he pays in advance? I thought, someone has given him money."

"When did they arrive?" Darcy asked.

"Last night. Past eleven. The girl kept calling him 'my dear Mr. Wickham' as if they were married already, but no ring on her, and I am not blind." A pause. "She was very young."

Elizabeth's grip tightened on her reticule.

Darcy saw it and kept his eyes on the landlady. "And when did they go?"

"This morning, early. A letter came for him in the night, by hand, not two hours after they came. No postmark, no frank, just a boy at the door with a sealed note. He read it and his whole manner turned. Pacing. Agitated. Told the girl they were leaving at first light. Gone before I came down at seven, and left me unpaid meals and a broken chair. I shall be writing to someone about the chair!"

"The boy who brought the letter. Did you know him?"

"Street lad, ten or twelve. Didn't say who sent him, and I didn't ask, for it is not my business what a gentleman gets by post."

Darcy looked at Elizabeth and found his own thought already in her face. Graves.

"The rooms," Elizabeth said. "May we see them?"

Two rooms on the second floor. Adjoining, but with separate doors.

Separate doors? Darcy noted it and set it carefully aside.

The rooms were stripped bare, a washstand, a bed in each. Elizabeth searched. Drawers, window ledges, the space under the beds, her fingers along the mantelpiece and behind the grate. She found nothing.

Mr. Bennet stood in the doorway of the second room, where his daughter had slept. He looked at the bare mattress and the window onto an alley strung with washing. His hand gripped the door frame until the knuckles went white.

Elizabeth touched his arm. "She is alive, Papa. She is in London. We will find her."

He nodded and let go of the frame.

In the hallway Darcy turned back to the landlady. "The girl. Was she well? Frightened?"

"Frightened? Lord, no! Giddy as a cat in cream. Full of talk of Gretna Green and wedding clothes and how jealous her sisters would be." The woman folded her arms. "She wasn't frightened. But the gentleman was. After that letter came, he was frightened enough for the two of them."

Out on the street the rain had thickened. Darcy stood under the eaves with three people looking to him for a plan, and half a plan to give them. "Wickham was moved," he said. "The letter came, and he ran. Braithwaite's people are still directing him. Graves, or someone Graves pays."

"Can we find Graves?" Elizabeth asked.

"I know his name, not his offices. My solicitor may. I will write tonight."

"In the meantime," Gardiner said, "we search. He has no money of his own. He will go where another man's credit keeps him comfortable."

Then Mr. Bennet spoke, for the first time since the lodging house door, and every trace of the sardonic drawl had been stripped out of his voice. "He is vain. Vain men go where they can see and be seen. He will not sit in a garret. He will find a tavern near the theaters, or a coffee house where he can play cards and feel a gentleman. Look at the places that seem expensive and take credit."

He was right. Darcy knew it at once. "Then we divide," Darcy said. "Mr. Gardiner, the inns south of the river. Mr. Bennet, the theater district. Elizabeth and I take the streets between here and the City, where rooms are let without references."

"I go alone," Mr. Bennet said.

"Papa."

"I have sat in a chair for twenty years, Lizzy. I believe I can manage a walk." He put on his hat and walked into the rain, shoulders squared, leaning forward. Darcy had seen that walk before. It was Elizabeth's.