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Then he returned his attention to the dark and silent house. The longer he waited, the more reasons he would find to abandon the venture. “I will go now.” Creeping closer to the house, he examined the wall for convenient hand- and footholds, thankful that the garden fence would shield him from the street.
Hmm. If he climbed onto the portico over the back door, he could reach either upper-floor window and peer into the rooms. The sashes above the ground-floor windows would provide meager but adequate footholds to then climb into one of those rooms. As boys, he and Richard had delighted in climbing the outside of Pemberley, entering random rooms through unsecured windows. His mother had chastised them for startling the maids, but his father had been quietly amused.
Richard cupped his hands to give Darcy a boost up to the roof of the portico. Standing there and peering up at the windows, Darcy felt absurdly like the lover in some tawdry novel. Except that he had no romantic intentions—well, that was not the purpose of this visit. He only wanted to talk with Elizabeth, which somehow took the endeavor to new levels of absurdity.
Standing on the portico, Darcy peeked through one window, hoping to identify something through the glass. Fortunately, the curtains had not been drawn, revealing a bed draped in white. There appeared to be only one slumbering form, so the room did not belong to the colonel and his wife. But it could be Lydia’s. If Darcy entered her room, he could be accused of compromising her and might be forced to make an offer of marriage. That thought was nearly enough to make him swear off the entire enterprise.
He examined the room for several minutes, but he could conceive of no way to ascertain the identity of the room’s occupant without actually entering it. He would simply have to take his chances.
After saying a silent prayer, Darcy transferred his feet to the barely adequate foothold provided by the sash over the ground-floor window before carefully pushing open the upper window. Fortunately, it was not latched, and the pane swung inward noiselessly. It would be a tight squeeze, but there was sufficient space for him to enter the room. Darcy’s feet pushed off the lower-level window sash as he simultaneously heaved himself up into the open window. Seconds later he was through the window, crouching on the worn carpet covering the floor and praying that nobody had heard his entrance.
Chapter Ten
The creaking of a floorboard roused Elizabeth to wakefulness. In the fog of sleep, she initially supposed the noise to be made by the colonel’s maid, but why would the girl be by the window?
Opening her eyelids a crack, Elizabeth could see that the window was open and a dark figure was standing in front of it, silhouetted against the gray night sky. Her heart pounded against her ribs, and sweat dampened her palms. A man was in her room!
Closing her eyes again, she feigned sleep. Elizabeth was the only one who could stop him and alert the household to this threat. Frantically she recalled the objects on the table beside her bed. Could any be of use as a weapon?
Another creak of the floorboard announced the man’s location: a few feet from the bed. The time to act was now. Simultaneously opening her eyes and thrusting out her arm, she grabbed the heavy brass candle holder from the table and hurled it at the dark figure.
The candle holder found its mark, striking him above the eye. He grunted and flinched away but did not fall. Elizabeth opened her mouth, preparing to cry out.
“Elizabeth, I pray you, do not scream!” the figure said in a familiar—albeit hushed—voice.
Shocked, she froze in the bed, taking a moment to recognize the voice. “Mr. Darcy?” Hurriedly she pulled the covers up to hide her chest; her modest nightrail was completely inadequate to shield her from his gaze.
What was happeni
ng? Surely this was a dream! Of all the men of her acquaintance, Mr. Darcy was the least likely to appear unexpectedly in a woman’s bedchamber. But by the same token, he was unlikely to be here for some nefarious reason. Had the figure revealed itself to be Mr. Wickham, her screams would have awoken the entire town of Brighton.
“Eliz—Miss Bennet. Do not be alarmed,” he urged in a low voice. “I wish you no harm.”
She licked dry lips. “What do you wish with me?” After all, his idea of harm and hers could be quite different. If he were discovered in her bedchamber, it could do great damage to her reputation. Were he a different man, she might believe him to be executing an underhanded scheme to force her to marry him, but surely Mr. Darcy would not resort to such machinations.
“I merely wished to converse with you—in private.”
She could not stifle a chuckle. “Surely there are less drastic ways to obtain a private audience.”
“The subject is rather urgent.”
“Urgent?” she echoed acidly. “Then by all means, welcome to my bedchamber.”
Ignoring her sarcasm, he edged closer to the bed so he could lower his voice. “I believe Wickham presents a danger to you.”
Elizabeth huffed out a breath. This again? He had risked her reputation to repeat a warning he had given that afternoon? She stifled an impulse to demand that he leave her room at once; no, the fastest way to be rid of him would be to let him speak his piece, refuse his entreaties to abandon Mr. Wickham, and then demand his departure.
“I see,” she said slowly as she leaned toward the bedside table and lit the candle in the holder she had not thrown. The yellow glow revealed a small cut over one of Mr. Darcy’s eyebrows. Elizabeth refused to feel regret; if he chose to break into her bedchamber, he must accept the consequences, including projectile candlesticks.
Still, it was most disconcerting having him loom over her while she crouched under the sheets. She slid to the far edge of the bed and gestured to the other side of the generously sized mattress. “This discussion may take a while. Why do you not seat yourself?”
Mr. Darcy regarded the space she indicated as he might a pit of venomous snakes. Elizabeth supposed it was rather a bold offer. But he had climbed through her window; surely he had forfeited any right to be shocked.
“Very well.” He perched himself so gingerly on the far edge of the bed that he was in danger of slipping off at any moment. She no longer entertained any doubts about whether he had inappropriate intentions. In fact, another woman might have been insulted at his eagerness to avoid her proximity.
Once situated, however, Mr. Darcy appeared to be distracted. He stared at her face…no, her hair. It was unbound, a mass of dark curls spilling around her face and shoulders. He would only have seen her with her hair pinned into place; of course, he was staring. No doubt it was a mess of snarls. Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment; this was another reason gentlemen should not enter ladies’ bedchambers unannounced.
No, he was the one who should be ashamed here, not Elizabeth. Lifting her chin, she tried to present herself with the composure of a lady while also shielding the front of her nightrail with the coverlet. “You came to issue a warning?” she prompted.
