Page 22 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

"Yes."

"And then the real work begins."

"With you beside me. I would not attempt it otherwise."

"That," she said, "was never in question."

Two tasks would not keep until tomorrow. The first was Jane's. He wrote the story out for her plainly, fever and all, and sent it after the first rider. It would reach Netherfield before breakfast.

The second was harder. He had spent Georgiana's secret today without her leave, before a man she had never met. She must hear of it from her brother, and from no one else. It could not go by the post. Would a man who paid landladies for gossip scruple to pay a post-boy? Darcy would write tonight and send it north by one of his own men, hand to hand.

Even so, he would put nothing on paper that a stranger could use. It would carry no name, no place, and no year, only words his sister would know. I have had to speak of the old sorrow you trusted to me alone. Two good men heard it, and it will go no further. I am sorry I did not ask you first. You need fear him no longer. It would be the hardest letter of the lot.

The fire burned low. Upstairs Lydia slept with the blanket to her chin, and for the first night in three, nobody in the house lay waiting for dawn.

But the unsigned note sat in Darcy's coat pocket, in its small, angular, careful hand. Somewhere in London the man who had written it was already arranging his next move.

And they did not yet know his face.

CHAPTER 7

The coach left Gracechurch Street at eight for Netherfield, and Lydia was asleep before Aldgate. She had woken at six, puffy-eyed and silent, and eaten Mrs. Gardiner's toast without argument. Lydia had dressed in a borrowed day dress that was too long and too narrow in the shoulders. In it she looked younger than her sixteen years. She had said thank you to Mrs. Gardiner, and yes sir to Mr. Gardiner, and nothing at all to Mr. Darcy, whom she could not yet look at directly.

In the coach she sat between Elizabeth and their father. Elizabeth had braced for chatter. Did Lydia not always talk in carriages, about scenery and officers and bonnets and nothing and everything? This Lydia tipped her head against the seat and was asleep in ten minutes, mouth open, hands loose in her lap.

Mr. Bennet watched her sleep. "She slept the night through," he said quietly. "Your aunt looked in at two. She had not moved."

"Good." Elizabeth tucked the blanket over Lydia's knees. "And in truth, her misery makes our story stronger. She needs weeks of sleep. Months."

"She needs her mother." He said it without a grain of irony, and met Elizabeth's look. "I know what I have said about your mother these five-and-twenty years. I know the jokes. But Amelia Bennet loves that girl with a ferocity I have never matched, and Lydia needs the ferocity."

Elizabeth did not argue. Mama's love was loud, exhausting and frequently misaimed. It was also a force of nature.

Lydia's head slid sideways onto Elizabeth's shoulder. Warm and a bit strange. Lydia had not leaned on her since she was very small, since before she learned that being loud won more attention than being close. Elizabeth held still.

Taken by force, or coaxed out the door with compliments. A cellar and a chain, or a cottage in Surrey that never existed. Both of them Braithwaite's targets, in the end. Which was worse, to be afraid and know it, or to walk smiling into the trap believing it was love?

She stroked Lydia's tangled hair. At least yours will not be cut.

The thought came without warning, and her chest went tight. Across the coach, Fitzwilliam leaned forward and put his hand on her knee. A question without words. She shook her head once. I am all right. Not now. He sat back.

Her father fell asleep an hour out, head tipped back, mouth open, spectacles sliding down his nose. Elizabeth reached across Lydia and pushed them gently up without waking him.

"He walked thirty miles in three days," Fitzwilliam said, very low.

"I know."

"On those boots."

The boots were cracked and separating at the soles.

"We will get him new ones," she said.

"I have already spoken to Gardiner about it."

Of course he had! Managing every logistical detail from first express to last constable, and in the middle of it, noticing an old man's boots. His tenderness always arrived that way, in practical gestures, and it always caught her off guard. "Thank you."

He shook his head. Do not thank me for looking after your family. They are also mine.