“At last,” he laughed with mad gayness. “At last here to face justice. You are come at my invitation to SUFFER.” He jerked his injured hand to the side, and his voice dropped, barely audible across the grassy clearing. “Oh, my little governess. How I will make you suffer.”
Captain Dilman shouted, “Release these two women and surrender yourself, or I’ll shoot you myself.”
“Now, now, all of you point your guns away from me,” Lachglass hissed, poking the barrel of his pistol into the back of the whimpering Mrs. Bennet’s head for emphasis. “This weapon has a hair trigger. It has nearly gone off twice in the last minute already. Shoot me, and in my final jerk, I’m sure to pull it and splatter her brains with me.”
Darcy exclaimed, “Be reasonable, Lachglass. You don’t want to die.”
“So tiresome. Life is become tiresome.” He sighed, looking Byronic with his puffy pale face filled with ennui. “I care not very much. I am ugly now you see.” He gestured with the bandaged hand at his nose, not moving the pistol in his other hand from Mrs. Bennet’s head. “Your wife made me ugly.”
Neither Darcy nor Elizabeth had anything to say to that.
“Haha!” the earl crowed victoriously. “Come to me, Elizabeth. Come closer. It will be one or the other. Your mother’s life or yours. Will you be such a coward as to stand and watch me blow a hole in your mother’s head? Will you? Will you!”
“Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!” For the first time since they arrived Mrs. Bennet said something. “Me! Shoot me! Not her! Not my daughter! Let him shoot me!”
Elizabeth started walking towards the laughing Lachglass. Darcy grabbed her arm, but Elizabeth with a surprising strength wrenched herself away from his grasp. She spoke in a frighteningly calm voice. “We must get him to point anywhere but Mama.”
“No… this is too dangerous.”
Elizabeth walked slowly forward. Her eyes focused on the pistol that was stuck towards her mother’s head. “Here I am,” she shouted when she was thirty feet away from him.
How did Elizabeth sound so calm?
“Haha! Come closer! Closer so I can see your eyes as you die.”
So saying, Lachglass pulled the gun from Mrs. Bennet’s head, lowering his arms again to aim at Elizabeth.
A crack of a single rifle shot rang across the field, firing as Lachglass began to move.
The earl’s head exploded into a blood blotch, with the entry wound right above his nose and dead center between his eyes.
His gun went off in his dying convulsion, as he’d promised, and it fired uselessly into the air above Elizabeth and Mrs. Bennet.
Kitty had been sitting behind him at such an angle that she was splattered with brains and blood. She began screaming.
Elizabeth ran up to her sister, ignoring Mr. Blight and the other men who worked for the deceased Lachglass. She held Kitty tight, and whispered some sort of consolation to her, and then after an instant she went to Mrs. Bennet and grabbed her, beginning to pull at the ropes binding her to the chair.
All of the earl’s men, except Mr. Blight, threw their weapons to the side. But Mr. Blight began to aim his pistol at Elizabeth as he snarled angrily.
Three soldiers shot him dead as he moved, splattering his body with bloody holes.
Darcy ran up to Elizabeth, and he helped her with a hunting knife to saw the restraints off Mrs. Bennet and Kitty. The women embraced each other fiercely, and then Elizabeth turned and threw her arms around Darcy, squeezing him as tightly.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, kind Jesu. They all were safe. It all was over. Oh, God.
She was so warm, and she smelled fragrant, and they squeezed each other till he could feel her bones.
The soldiers came up; they tied ropes around the hands of Lachglass’s retainers, to take them before the courts for acting as accomplices to Lord Lachglass in his crimes. Captain Dilman stepped up to the corpse of the earl and poked him with his foot.
Dead. Very dead. The man was very, very dead.
Chapter Twenty-Two
One Week Before in Cambrai
General Fitzwilliam fitted the big broken plaster nose over his real nose, and he allowed his valet to work some actor’s plaster into his skin, substantially darkening the color and giving him an ugly scar along his neck.
He watched carefully what the man did, as he would need to replicate it while in England. When he had planned this scheme with Darcy, they decided it would be best if he never spoke while in England, since his voice was recognizable.
General Fitzwilliam was sure he could look the part of another, he did not believe he could reliably disguise his voice in such a way that would fool anyone who knew him, and he would have many acquaintances in the army camp in Brighton.
“You will be well, Fitz?” he asked his brother as he quickly made his preparations to disappear.
“On the contrary,” his brother replied, “I expect I shall be exceedingly unwell for the entire time.”
General Fitzwilliam barked out a laugh.
The regimental surgeon sat across from his patient who bounced up and down on General Fitzwilliam’s small bed. He said, “I’ll take enough blood from him to ensure that he won’t be well.”
Fitz winced and flinched away from the surgeon. “I just need to look a little pale.”
“It will be good for you. I am sure that there is some underlying illness you know nothing about which will be improved by the bloodletting. Everyone has some underlying illness, the only question is if they know about it or not.”
“I’m going to expect a particularly good bottle of Scotch, Richard. For letting you set this lunatic at me.” He laughed. “Never made a lick of sense to me how bloodletting could do any good. We generally want to avoid bleeding in the army. If I ever was in a serious bad way, I’d not let the doctor cut me. Suspect it is just their trick to keep the patient so ill that they need a regular visit.”
“None of that suspicious nonsense.” General Fitzwilliam turned away from the mirror, and he hunched so that there was a prominent looking hump in his back. “How do I look?”
“Nothing like the general, that is for damned sure,” the surgeon said.
Fitz whistled. “Very, very fine disguise. I’d pass you on the street without knowing you.”
“Well then, I’ll be off for our rendezvous in Brighton. I have a message of my own for my cousin, but do you want me to give him any personal regards?”
Fitz laughed. “Damned glad again, I need not claim any relation to that man. I’d ask you to wish him a jolly Happy Christmas, and a fine New Year as well, but after your personal regards have been received, he’ll hardly be in a proper state to appreciate those from anyone else. The pity.”
General Fitzwilliam laughed and started whistling. “It will be such a fine day. I think some part of me has wanted to do this since I was seventeen and I saw him beat his poor horse to death because he fell off. It will be a good day — make sure you look as ill as possible, and groan, and do not let anyone who is not in the conspiracy examine your face closely, and—”
“Don’t be a mother hen.” Fitz grinned. “Ten days or so of nothing to do but lie in bed and pretend to be sick, and maybe read a novel.” He worriedly glanced at the surgeon. “I will be well enough that I can read?”
The surgeon said in a serious voice, “I fear General Fitzwilliam even lacks the strength to keep the pages of a book raised. He certainly can sign no papers until the period of crisis is past.”
“Deuce. Should have known this was a crap assignment. Well, General Fitzwilliam will order you to read to me.”
“I have many duties,” the surgeon replied with an almost malicious smirk. Of course it was General Fitzwilliam’s opinion that all the best surgeons had a malicious streak. It was necessary to do the hacking parts of their job right.
“Don't ya worry. Don’t ya worry,” General Fitzwilliam’s valet, Jacob said. “Much as I hate to let the old general—”
“I’m only thirty and five.�
�
“—go off all alone into danger, I’ll keep ya company. I’ll even read to ya. Even one of those novels, and not the bible, though the bible would be good for ya soul.”
“Especially,” the surgeon inserted, “when you are so ill as to be quite on the verge of death, and with a contagious illness, so no one will be brave enough to bother General Fitzwilliam as he engages in deathly struggle with it. Major Williams, I’d recommend asking for him to read from the Bible to you.”
“All in hand I see.” General Fitzwilliam began whistling again, and he left the room. Ten minutes later he was on a horse to Calais, accompanied by an old veteran soldier who could be trusted in anything. From there he hopped on a packet boat owned by the Rothchilds whose captain owed him a favor.
*****
Two tied, blindfolded, and gagged gamekeepers in the employ of Lord Lachglass sat against the far rocky wall of the finely constructed hunting blind overlooking the field where Darcy and Elizabeth had come to parley. They both had large purpling bruises on their foreheads.
The location had been chosen by Lord Lachglass so he could put a pair of his most trusted men in this well-hidden hunting blind and have them shoot Elizabeth and Darcy if anything went wrong.
Both of the gamekeepers had that morning, long before General Fitzwilliam beat both of them over the head with a short truncheon, agreed they would do no such thing, and if the pair ran away, they would shoot over their heads, and then claim to their employer that they had both missed.
That was before they had seen the soldiers.
The pair in fact would not have dared to shoot at all, if they had had the opportunity.
The Scottish soldier who had months earlier pretended to the Bow Street Runners to be illiterate as Elizabeth escaped England, stood next to the general, keeping an eye on Fitzwilliam’s back as he’d taken the shot. “Ye made a fine shot. Fine, fine shot I tell ye.”
“I did.” General Fitzwilliam wiped his handkerchief over his forehead. “Deuced closer than I wanted. But clever of Mrs. Darcy to get him to shift his aim point. But damn. A hell of a close matter. My cousin is a lucky man. She would have been a fine soldier if a man.”
“A brave woman. That she is.”
“That she is.”
“A fine shot, sir,” Fergus repeated as he quickly disassembled the rifle and without properly cleaning it packed the pieces away into long loaves of bread they’d carefully carved to let them fit the disassembled weapon in this morning. It was a trick they’d learned from the guerillas fighting the French in Spain. “A fine shot.”
General Fitzwilliam let out another long breath, some of the tension going, though he still needed to escape the murder scene and safely return to Cambrai, and his half-brother and his duties. “One of my better efforts,” he said, as the two of them hurried out of the hunting blind, walking through the denser parts of the forest. They went directly away from where the soldiers and the excitement was still audible. “Did I ever tell you of the times I hunted with Lord Lachglass? On this estate. We once shot at deer from this very hunting blind. Lachglass was an excellent shot, but he preferred to wing the birds to killing them, so they’d suffer before they died. It was my first realization — something was rotten in his soul.”
“A fine shot on your part, sir. Ye made a fine shot.”
“I should have done this years ago. Years and years ago.”
They reached the stream that General Fitzwilliam remembered from hunting on his uncle's estate so many years ago, and the two of them used a bar of soap they’d packed with them to wash off all the residue of the powder from the gunshot.
“How does my disguise look?”
“Perfect, General. Perfect.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
A drizzle fell from the sky when Elizabeth, Darcy and the soldiers returned to Brighton that evening with Mrs. Bennet and Kitty. Jane and her husband, and Mary and the Gardiners had independently decided to come to Brighton after receiving the letters Elizabeth and Darcy had sent out describing what had happened and the portion of their plans that was not illegal.
Elizabeth’s stomach still ached with the after echo of her fear, and she did not think she would ever forget the fear of those minutes, or the sense of terror she felt as Lord Lachglass’s gun turned towards her.
Jane ran out of from under the porch where she stood with the rest of them as soon as she saw the group arrive, followed by Lydia, Mary and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner.
Mr. Gardiner embraced his sister.
Mama had not entirely recovered from the shock she had suffered, and every few minutes she profusely thanked Mr. Darcy, and the soldiers, and everyone else. Elizabeth had the impression that she did not understand that it was not one of the soldiers who shot Lord Lachglass.
Kitty had recovered from her own shock more easily than Elizabeth ever would have expected her to, and after they had mostly cleaned the blood off her dress she had been fairly amiable and almost cheerful as they had walked back to the carriages. She talked a great deal with Captain Dilman, curious about how Lydia did, and about a brother-in-law she had not yet met.
Except… there was something in Kitty’s eyes, something that was in all their eyes. It had been a desperate and frightening situation, and that they would all survive had been by no means a sure thing.
Everyone talked, and Colonel Pike asked what happened, and Captain Dilman gave his report, and they went into the drawing room, where the housekeeper provided them tea. Colonel Pike claimed to be a confirmed and permanent bachelor, though perhaps he was less confirmed than he pretended, as he glanced at Mary from the side as he said that.
They had been all talking while they waited.
Everyone talked; the Gardiners’ fortunes had been improving of late, for while prices everywhere were still depressed, business matters were not so bad as they had been immediately after the end of the war. Darcy spoke to Jane’s husband a great deal, who Elizabeth could tell he liked.
It was a crowded party that was happy for the most part.
After a while the rain stopped, and Elizabeth needed some air, so she stepped out with Darcy onto the porch. She learned back into his arms and he held her snugly and tight. He kissed the top of her hair, and once more, and then again. She relaxed deeper and deeper, the terror and bloodshed of this morning began to seem as a distant past, something gone, forever.
The sun was setting, turning the sky brilliant reds and oranges and crimson, and there was a rich smell of vegetal growth everywhere, and the white seabirds flew high in the sky, squawking and flapping their wings.
The stooped beggar with the scar on his neck shuffled along the road in front the colonel’s house again, and he turned to look at them and he smiled. And Elizabeth and Darcy smiled back at General Fitzwilliam, and then in his disguise he shuffled away towards the ship that would take him back to France.
Elizabeth and Darcy kissed again, smiling at each, squeezing each other tight, and feeling how they were well and alive. And then they went back inside, to rejoin the rest of their family.
*****
General Fitzwilliam was snuck by the guard at the door to his rented house in Cambrai into his own room. The guard was partially in on the conspiracy, and his eyes silently asked a question that he had too much decorum to directly ask upon seeing his general. However General Fitzwilliam’s grin showed him clearly that the result of his quest had been a success.
Of course no one outside of General Fitzwilliam, his brother and Fergus knew precisely what he had returned in secret to England to do. But everyone who knew Major Williams had been in the bed pretending to be both General Fitzwilliam and ill, could make fairly good guess. But all these men were military veterans who had seen General Fitzwilliam in his old days as a colonel lead them bravely under fire, with presence of mind and a sharp tactical skill.
General Fitzwilliam quietly padded his way into his room where his half-brother lay on the bed with a thin sheen of sweat standing over his forehead
, staring up at the ceiling blank eyed.
He turned his head absently and moaned piteously upon hearing the entry into the room, and then when his eyes realized that it was his brother, Fitz jumped out of the bed and threw off the covers. “Thank Jove, thank the skies, and the grounds, and everything that you are back.”
He wore a fine silk nightshirt of General Fitzwilliam’s that General Fitzwilliam rather liked. The instant Major Fitz stood, he groaned in pleasure and stretched his arms high above his head. “Jove, I could run a mile.”
“You seem surprisingly happy to see me, since this is the end of your vacation.”
“Vacation! Leisure. The deuce! This was no vacation. Have you ever tried, when you were entirely healthy, to lie in one place for more than a week without moving? There was a close call when the Duke stopped in for one of his inspections the first day you were out, and after that we decided I must always stay near the bed prepared to look the invalid. Vacation! This was the hardest most unpleasant duty you’ve ever given me.”
The young officer paced back and forth stretching his legs and almost growling as he worked the kinks out of his body. “A run, on foot. And then a horse gallop for a ten-mile distance, at least. At least.”
“I cannot win, I tell you to lie in bed and you complain, I tell my other men to exercise and drill and they complain. You all just will not be satisfied.”
“Making a man lie in a bed for ten days without break is a damned fool way to reward a man. You might use it to torture those who you want to pretend you are pleased with, but who have secretly angered you.” He turned and looked at General Fitzwilliam suspiciously. “Say… I haven’t done anything?”
“I’m still in too good spirits to needle you by pretending you had.” General Fitzwilliam with an annoyed grunt got the last of the plastered nose off his face. “Strange that I do not feel some remorse, or sense of tragedy, or guilt, or something of that sort. My mother’s nephew. My cousin. The deuce of it is, I don’t feel anything of that sort. Just a solid, cold satisfaction at delivering a fine shot.”
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