“I do,” Darcy replied quietly, “dimly recall Miss Bennet.”
“Damned bad luck for her. Damned bad luck all around. I sent my man around to nose out the whole story when I first heard of it from Mother — cannot conceive of why Mama yet likes Lord Lechery, though he is her nephew. Miss Bennet, her father died three year back. I understand her uncle sustained business reverses in the late banking crisis, and then she had the misfortune after all that to be hired by Lechery. Damned bad luck for her.”
“What happened?”
“What a girl.” General Fitzwilliam laughed again. “Rather wish we’d had her with us in Spain and at Waterloo — I thought from the first evening we spoke that Miss Bennet would have made a fine soldier, if she’d been a man. I respect that in a woman, none of that fuzzy fainting that so many of the female sex respond to danger with. No, she banged him over the head with a vase, straightaway — you should see Lechery, it warms the cockles of my soul, it truly does, to see him with the bandages wrapped around his head like a turban. She broke his skull a little, the doctors say.”
Darcy nodded. “Does he have any notion where she disappeared off to?”
“A fine woman. Fine woman, I would have, I think looking back, made a play for her hand, if she’d had any dowry worth the word. What a fine, pretty, clever woman. Very easy to talk to. Smarter than most I’ve seen, and—”
“The story, Richard. The story.”
“Testy are you? I take it you have not been simply relaxing these last days. You should find a lushly proportioned opera singer.” General Fitzwilliam raised his hands in apology at Darcy’s glare. “I will tell you what I know, which is not much. Lachglass claims she beat him over the head for the purposes of robbing twenty pounds from his wallet which he claims is missing. And she also broke the vase, whose value far is above the hanging value. All lies — we both know the stories about him. He finally chose a woman who was beyond his abilities.”
“Yes,” Darcy said quietly. “But will the courts see it in that manner?”
“Cases like this. Damned cases like this. I’ve been talking to some Frenchmen a great deal, since we’ve been occupying their north frontier. And I learned… something else about my damned father a few years ago. Just an example. This is just an example, but the damned rights of the aristocracy need to be stripped down — when I heard the story about Lachglass, and when the name connected to it came out, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. That name, I tell you, it sent a chill shivering down my spine. It feels different. I’d known Lachglass bothers his servants — bothers servants. What a disgusting circumlocution. Let’s say it straight: He rapes them. He is a rapist. Perhaps some are happy enough to give up their favors and get some compensation for it, but he does not care greatly whether they are or not. My cousin is a rapist; it makes me disgusted to have the same blood flow in both our veins. And my mother defends him, and still swoons over her sweet nephew Arthur.”
“Any man of honor would do differently than he does.”
“When a man acts in such a way, it becomes the duty of someone to stop him. It makes me feel different about that sort of violence. This should not feel different, but it does. To know that my cousin tried to rape a woman of my acquaintance, a woman who I admire, both as a woman and as a human. A woman who is a gentlewoman, whatever may have happened to her family’s money, she is as much a gentlewoman as my mother or sister, or Georgiana. And he tried to rape her.”
“It makes me think as well,” Darcy replied.
“I’d challenge him to a duel if I had the slightest excuse. I will yet, and do more thoroughly for his skull than Miss Bennet did, much as my mother would hate me for her nephew’s death. But otherwise by the law we can’t do anything about him.”
Darcy grimaced, and he sat down next to General Fitzwilliam. Was there a way to punish Lord Lechery? Perhaps Darcy should challenge him. Once he married Elizabeth… if she would have him. He did not consider it presumptuous to believe that her opinion against him of four years prior was malleable, and likely already changed.
He hoped to marry her, and when — if — no, when he married her, he’d have the right to challenge Lord Lechery to a duel over her honor.
Right now, challenging Lachglass would simply point the constables towards where Elizabeth was. Her safety saved Lachglass for the moment from his deserved punishment.
“He is family still,” General Fitzwilliam added contemplatively, crossing his ankles in front of him under the table. “I’ve lately been thinking about blood, its importance, the duty a man has to those of his blood. If I could… if I gain the chance… I will kill him. It is the job of a family to deal with their own. Lachglass is a rabid dog. If your dog starts to go mad, you don’t have a furrier shoot the poor puppy. Not if you are a man. If you are a man you shoot your poor animal yourself.”
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The sound echoed to the breakfast room from Darcy’s front door. The sound of the door opening, and then, without waiting to be escorted, the subject of their conversation, Lord Lechery, the Earl of Lachglass, snarled into the immediately tainted room.
He wore a purple turban wrapped around his head, but the fringe of the bandage was rakishly visible. His nose was a giant twisted purple bruise that looked unlikely to ever recover its proper shape. Lachglass was a handsome man, usually brimming with good health and vibrancy, but at present he looked happily beaten in.
The earl waved a piece of paper in front of Darcy. His voice came out distorted by the completely blocked up nose. “Where is she! Is she here! Did she come to you!”
Darcy’s stomach spasmed with terror, while his chest roared with anger.
Lachglass suspected. Somehow he suspected Elizabeth was here. He must protect Elizabeth.
“The deuce?” Darcy replied calmly, sipping his coffee. “Old boy, no idea who you are speaking of. Rather impolite to hound a man at breakfast with such questions. Bad form, Lachglass. Bad form.”
General Fitzwilliam glared angrily at his vile relation, but when Darcy started speaking he twisted his face fractionally in confusion as he glanced at Darcy.
“The woman who beat my head in! That damned whore. I can’t believe,” Lachglass sneered viciously, “cannot believe you offered marriage to such a pathetic creature. Though she is skilled at refusing her betters what they deserve from her—” Lachglass erupted in laughter. He grinned at General Fitzwilliam. “Nice to see you here too, Soldier Dickie, such a lark — and Wickham. Old dear, George Wickham. Letting him run off with that sweet little skirt Georgiana. Both of you.” He made a series of kissing noises. “Little Georgie has turned out pretty, pretty. A pretty pity that she has such a fondness for men like that.”
Darcy went pale and cold.
He now recognized the paper Lachglass waved in his hands. The letter he’d written to Elizabeth after she refused his offer of marriage.
“Lech,” General Fitzwilliam drawled. “I am quite put out with you at present. If you say anything, of any sort, about Georgiana, I will challenge you.”
“Nonsense. You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.”
Lachglass blinked at the officer staring at him with his calm eyes, but General Fitzwilliam sat in a coiled manner that hinted at violence at Darcy’s breakfast table. The officer’s hand still gripped his sharp breakfast knife.
Lachglass pointed at Darcy again. “Our idiot here — he offered marriage to a governess, and she turned him down! Down straight.” Lachglass laughed again. He paced from side to side in the dining room, rather like an angry tiger in a menagerie going from one side of its cage to the other, the tail wrapped around the haunches. “Did she come to you? Did she!”
“I certainly have never,” Darcy replied severely, “offered marriage to a governess.”
“Ha! You have! To my governess. Mine. I’m going to have her hung for stealing from me. Hung you hear? Hung.” He stuffed the pages in Darcy’s face. “Remember this? Remember asking Swinging Lizzy to marry you?”
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“Perhaps if you let me examine those papers,” Darcy replied as he reached his hand out to grab the letter.
“Nope, nope, nope. Upon my honor, I’ll never give them back to you. Mine now. Jove! What a fool you were in love.”
“I do recognize my handwriting on the page,” Darcy said. “It is quite possible I did write whatever you think I wrote. But I am quite certain this was not a letter addressed to you. So you have added the theft of correspondence to your other sins.”
“Damn you, Darcy. We are almost related. You ought to help me find her and punish her, for family sake—”
“I am tempted to shoot you, straight through the head, for family sake.” General Fitzwilliam calmly poured himself another cup of coffee as he spoke, making that statement as decidedly and casually as he might state a plan to go for a ride in Hyde Park.
Lachglass sidled away from General Fitzwilliam. “What has gotten into you, coz, of late? You weren’t always such a mud stick.”
General Fitzwilliam made not reply.
“So! Elizabeth Bennet. Darcy, you are damned going to tell me if the woman who tried to murder me sought refuge here. Swinging Lizzy hasn’t visited her relations, nor any friend I can track, but her aunt and uncle did receive a letter written on fine, expensive stationery, and delivered through a poor beggar boy who disappeared before he could be questioned by the constables. Someone with resources is hiding her and protecting her.”
“Ah, Elizabeth Bennet. Now I remember who you are talking about.” Darcy quirked his head. “She did that to you? A woman.” And Darcy laughed with a pretense of good humor. “What a silly sight you make. If I’d been banged over the head by a slight short girl stealing twenty pounds from me, I’d just salute her for her success and never tell anyone that I let a woman get the drop on me. What say you, Fitzwilliam?”
The officer grunted and sipped his coffee. His cold blue eyes never left his cousin’s face, and his right hand loosely lay over the handle of his knife, in such a way that it was clear he could grab the weapon and stab Lachglass in a single fast motion.
Lachglass looked carefully at General Fitzwilliam and paced to the opposite side of the room from his cousin. It was only when the table was between them that he began to shout again. “Over the head! She beat me over the head. She tried to kill me, just so she could steal a purse full of coin from me. She stole twenty pounds off my body. So did this murdering thief come to you and sell you some story about being raped, needing refuge, and a lie about how she now wanted you—” Suddenly Lachglass broke into high-pitched giggles. “I laughed out loud for twenty minutes when I found this letter. Marriage! To a governess. You offered her marriage.”
“If I ever did, it is certain that I would trust her story above yours, had she come here to ask for my aid, which Miss Bennet did not.”
“I’ll need to inspect your rooms. Let me wander round them. Let me wander round.”
“I shall not. And I would kindly ask you to return that letter. It was ill conceived for me to have written it in the first place, and Miss Bennet ought to have taken closer care of it to prevent it from falling into the hands of those who had no business being privy to my affairs. In the unlikely case that I ever meet Miss Elizabeth again, I will reprimand her for doing so.”
“Haha! You’ll meet her again! You’ll meet her when you watch Swinging Lizzy walk the gallows walk. I’m going to have that slut hung.”
“Cousin. I think you’ve stepped past the boundary with that last insult against Miss Bennet.” General Fitzwilliam had silently stood, and then he quickly moved so that it seemed it had taken but an instant for him to step inches away from Lachglass, who awkwardly shuffled backwards from General Fitzwilliam. “I too have met Miss Bennet. It is my duty as an officer of the crown to defend all British womanhood. I am challenging you to a duel. Apologize publicly to Miss Bennet, or we will face one another across the field of honor, and I will blow your brains apart.”
Lachglass paled further.
And then his face became red. “You are just, just…” Lachglass sneered and turned up his nose. “Soldier Dickie, I have never heard such a ridiculous excuse for duel. I am fully in my rights to not accept such a challenge.”
“No? You admit then to being an honorless coward who hides his rapes behind accusations of theft. I shall tell everyone of our acquaintance that you refused to meet me if I do not hear either an apology to Miss Bennet’s character, or if I do not see you tomorrow morning on the field of honor.”
“Ha! Were you in love with her too? You should be fighting Darcy in that case. You’ll get to watch her hang as well.”
“Lachglass, let me be clear.” Colonel Fitzwilliam’s voice was quiet and far more menacing for not being raised. “If you are too much of a spineless coward to meet me, I will not be able to fight you in a duel, but I will tell every man in London about your worthless cowardice. If you pursue this deceitful and ridiculous charge against the lady, I shall also testify as to every evil fact and story I have ever heard regarding your character in the court. And I shall testify to Miss Bennet’s good character, and your vile and evil one. When I am done, everyone will know to despise your name, and she will be free.”
“Your old man would cut off your allowance if you defamed the family name in court. Besides, you’ll be back in France and unable to testify.”
“Cousin.” As General Fitzwilliam spoke, he stepped again and again into Lachglass’s physical space, pushing him until he was pressed into the wall, cowering away from his shorter relation. “I despise myself for not acting to curb your propensities before. I was stopped because you are family, and your actions were, by the standards of most in Britain none of my business, and your rank is superior to mine. I despise myself for knowing of the crime, and doing nothing, but let me say this clearly: If I ever hear about you abusing one of your servants again, or any other woman, I will splatter your brains apart. You can refuse to fight me, but I will find an opportunity someday when you are by yourself to splatter your brains with a pistol anyways. Do you understand my words?”
He sneered back, but he was clearly rattled by the calm and composed voice of General Fitzwilliam. “You would not dare.”
“I pity the girl who will be the reason that you discover I will dare. But you, I pity you not at all. Now fucking leave. I never want to see your disgusting face again. And if you say anything against Georgiana, if any information about what occurred between Wickham and her finds light and air after all of these years, I will assume you released the information and I will shoot you dead for it whether you show up for the duel or not. Get out, and damn yourself to hell.”
With a pale parting sneer, Lord Lechery retreated from Darcy’s house.
Jove, he’d been tense.
Darcy let out a long shuddering sigh. Everything in his room looked nicer, sharper, cleaner now that Lachglass was no longer in the same room.
General Fitzwilliam paced vibratingly from one side of the breakfast room.
“Good show,” Darcy said admiringly to his cousin. “That was a deuced good threat. It chilled me. I’ll also tell everyone the coward refused to face you.”
“Eh, that’s not the important issue right now.” General Fitzwilliam smirked at Darcy. “Apologies for rather impolitely sending a guest away from your house.”
“He was not precisely an invited guest.”
“Lech never is. Never is.” General Fitzwilliam pierced Darcy with a hard, questioning look. “Is she?”
Darcy paused. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t pretend to be dense. We both know you aren’t.”
Darcy sat down at the table and frowned at the geometrical pattern inlaid underneath the glass surface. Should he trust his cousin with the information?
He glanced up and sighed. General Fitzwilliam was grinning lopsidedly.
“I would have,” Darcy said in a disgusted voice, “immediately denied the question if she were not here.”
“I’m onl
y impressed by how quickly you lied to our Lord Lechery. Not much more than a second of hesitation. I had thought you abhorred all deception.”
“One can only be dishonest when deceiving a fellow human. Lachglass does not deserve such an appellation.”
“When? When did you make an offer to Miss Bennet?”
“At Rosings. When we all three were there.”
“At Rosings!” General Fitzwilliam chuckled. “I am not surprised by the outcome.”
“For myself,” Darcy replied with a wry smile, “I have never been so shocked — no, I have now received an equal shock. The evening I found her in my drawing room with the story that she believed she had killed your cousin.”
“But why on earth did you tell her about Wickham and Georgiana, and in details?”
“It seemed like the proper idea at the time.”
“Oh?” Fitzwilliam tilted his head to the side, and then, consciously untensing his body, he sat back down to the table, and began to eat Darcy’s fine sausage again.
A soldier’s stomach, able to eat anything, anywhere, no matter what had just happened, because you never knew when the rations might run out. That was what Richard told Darcy about his appetite. For his part, Darcy could not eat more.
“She had thrown at me a variety of accusations,” Darcy replied a little defensively. “One of which was the story Wickham had given her. I… well I was heartbroken at the time. And I now have come to see my manner, and the rudeness with which I treated her, and her family, and all of her friends gave her little reason to trust in my words.”
“At least it has been four more years. And Georgiana is married,” Colonel Fitzwilliam grunted. He stood and rubbed the small, growing bald patch on the back of his skull. “It would in truth be more Mr. Tillman’s place to defend her honor than ours now. Was he ever told?”
“Georgiana said she spoke to him about it, when he made his proposal.”
“Good, good. Despite my threats Lachglass may release this information. Though I will kill him for that if he does, and you may testify that I said I would at the trial, if it should come to such.”
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