Page 16 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"It was not your fault." She hiccoughed. "I was the one who went."

"Some of it is my fault. I will carry that part."

She cried harder. He patted her back in slow circles, as he had seen Jane do it. He had no notion if he did it right, but he kept on.

Below them someone laughed in the taproom. Mr. Bennet thought it was probably Wickham, and he held his daughter a little tighter.

The boy with the note reached Gracechurch Street as the Gardiners' clock struck nine.

Elizabeth was in the parlor, drinking coffee she could not taste, bent over a map of London that her uncle had spread across the table. She had ruled the city into sections with pencil, crossed off the streets already searched, circled Southwark and the Borough. Fitzwilliam sat writing letters at the desk. He had been at it since five. She had felt him leave the bed and had lain still ten minutes, listening to his feet on the stairs, before giving up on sleep herself.

A boy brought the note to the kitchen door, breathless and paid. Her father's hand.

Found them. Southwark. The Bull and Bell, south of the Borough Market. Wickham playing cards in the public room. Lydia upstairs. Come now. Do not bring the constable yet.

Elizabeth read it twice. Her breath caught, and then released. Three days of searching, and at last they had them. "He found them!"

Fitzwilliam was on his feet before she finished it. "Gardiner."

Her uncle appeared, read the note over Fitzwilliam's shoulder, and set down his tea cloth with great deliberateness. He had been waiting for exactly this. "I know the Bull and Bell. Rough house. Not a place Wickham would choose for himself, which means Graves chose it for him. The last place in London anyone looks for a gentleman."

Fitzwilliam paused, the note still in his hand. "Graves moved Wickham twice in two days. Why is he still there on the third morning?"

"Because Graves has been watching the ground we searched first. Your father-in-law pushed south past the Borough, where nobody was looking for us. We are ahead of the man for once. I do not propose to waste it."

"How far?"

"Twenty minutes afoot. Less by hackney."

"Hackney." Fitzwilliam was reaching for his coat. "Elizabeth."

She was already wearing hers.

Mrs. Gardiner came into the hall, looked at the three of them coated and moving, and said, "I will have the spare room ready for the girl when you bring her back."

When. Not if. Elizabeth loved her aunt just then with a ferocity that startled her.

The hackney rattled fifteen minutes through streets that smelled of river and fish and thin money. Nobody spoke. There would be talking enough at the Bull and Bell.

The Bull and Bell stood squat and soot-blackened on a corner. Its sign was a cracked painted bull with a bell at its neck. Dock laborers idled outside with their coats open to the October chill.

Mr. Bennet stood in the doorway.

He looked terrible. Three days of walking, four hours of sleep in a borrowed armchair, boots past saving, coat spotted with rain and street mud. But his eyes were clear and hard, and the front of his coat was wet. He did not seem to have noticed. "She is upstairs," he said, steady. "Third floor. Alone. Wickham is in the public room playing vingt-et-un with men who do not know his name."

"Have you spoken to her?"

"I have spoken to her." He looked up the dark stairwell a moment before he went on. "I told her the truth. About Wickham. About Braithwaite. Not all of it. Enough."

"How did she take it?"

"Badly. Which is to say, honestly."

Fitzwilliam's words from the hall at Longbourn, or near enough, carried back to her deliberately, and she heard what he meant by them. I did what you asked. I spared neither of us.

"She wept." His mouth tightened. "I left her my handkerchief."

"We will take her to Gracechurch Street," Fitzwilliam said. "Mrs. Gardiner is preparing a room."