Page 25 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

On her way up, Elizabeth passed Lady Catherine's door and heard singing. Two voices. Jane's, clear and steady, holding the melody. And underneath, lower, slurred, fighting for every syllable, Lady Catherine.

Was she improving? Perhaps.

Elizabeth stopped with one hand on the banister. Her ladyship managed four words before her voice broke apart. Jane simply carried on and held the melody open for her. After a moment Lady Catherine found her place and pushed through two words more. Thick. Furious. Utterly refusing to stop.

Elizabeth did not go in. How could she hold one more thing today? But she stood for the length of a breath and thought, something is growing in that room. Then she went to find her sisters, and the singing followed her down the corridor. Braithwaite had shot her ladyship, and still she sang.

Later, in the stable yard, she found her husband standing with Mr. Henson, the two of them speaking low, and Fitzwilliam's face wore the closed, hard look she had learned to read as trouble being managed. Above them the doves rustled in the eaves. From inside the stable came Alban's laugh, bright and oblivious. He was grooming Miss Maisie and did not know that a man had come asking for him by description. The man had gone away without leaving a name.

The October light was thin and bright. Elizabeth stood between the mounting block and the water trough. She could not feel it.

A cell had not stopped Braithwaite. He had Graves, and Graves had other men's hands to use. And the boy in the stable, six years old and laughing, was a thread that someone meant to snap.

CHAPTER 8

Richard came up the drive on a blown horse at midday, six days after riding north toward a border that Lydia Bennet had never been within a hundred miles of.

Darcy heard the hooves from the study and reached the front door in time to see his cousin dismount, legs buckling before he caught himself, boots caked, face gray with fatigue.

Richard took one look at Darcy's face and read it. "She is found."

"Three days ago. She is upstairs."

Richard closed his eyes. He stood on the threshold with rain in his hair, six days of horse and road on his coat. Once, heavily, he breathed out. Then, "Tell me everything."

Darcy told him, behind the closed study door, while the rest of the house ran on Lydia's care and Mrs. Bennet's requirements. The Cheapside rooms. Graves moving Wickham a street ahead of them. Mr. Bennet walking London to pieces. The Bull and Bell. The arrest. The cover story. Lydia on the bed in Southwark, blotch-faced and small, saying I am sorry, Lizzy.

Richard listened without moving, questions few and sharp. At the end he asked one more. "Where is he now?"

"In military custody. Gill's sergeant took him from the Borough watch-house. Two privates, a cart, Wickham in irons. The sergeant reported him gray and shrunken, a man run entirely out of charm. Nobody in the street paused to watch."

Darcy sat with the picture. Wickham in irons! He had imagined it for a year, and now it was fact, and it brought Georgiana with it. Fifteen, and silent at her pianoforte, learning not to trust kindness. The irons could not give any of that back. He found he wanted them anyway.

"And the man at your stables, asking after Alban," Richard said.

"Henson turned him away. Gill has sent a militiaman. The man has not come back."

Richard sat forward, elbows on knees, wearing the look he wore when the trouble involved people he loved and a threat he could not punch. "Then Graves is not defending a client. Witnesses warned. Evidence at risk. A child marked. That is a campaign."

"Yes."

"We go to London."

"Tomorrow," Darcy said. "In the coach. Today you go to bed."

"I have slept in worse places than a saddle."

"You nearly fell off your horse in my drive!"

"I dismounted with enthusiasm!" Richard scrubbed a hand over his face and left a streak of road dirt behind. "Very well. A bed. A bath, if your housekeeper can spare the water. And Darcy." He hesitated, which Richard never did. "How is Anne?"

"Tired. Steady. Running my aunt's sickroom like a general." Darcy watched his cousin's face. "She asked after you. Twice."

Richard said nothing to that. But he went up the stairs a good deal faster than a man who had ridden six days had any right to.

Darcy packed that evening, Elizabeth sitting on the edge of the bed with her arms crossed.

"Find Graves," she said. "Find what he has done and what he means to do. And come back."