by Pamela Aidan
Darcy won the toss of the coin. He shuffled the deck and offered Sayre the cut. That formality performed, he began dealing out the cards in tierce until each of them had received his dozen. Laying the last aside, Darcy retrieved his hand, and quickly touting up his ruff, sequences, and kinds, he chose his discards, closed his fan, and regarded Sayre with a raised brow.
Across the table, with the purse and sword dividing them, Sayre arranged his hand in a heavy silence that was dutifully observed by all the gentlemen dispersed about them. He licked his lips; bit the lower and then the upper before breaking the quiet that had descended upon them.
“Blank.” He coughed and then repeated himself. “B-blank.” Trenholme groaned softly in the background, eliciting a sharp command from his brother to “shut his jobbernowl.” Darcy nodded his understanding and marked down Sayre’s 10 points in compensation for his unusual lack of court cards. His opponent studied his cards with an assiduous eye and, with jaw set as stone, discarded cards and reached for replacements in the stock. One, two…Darcy betrayed no surprise in Sayre’s decision to replace half of his hand, but with a steady, disinterested regard, he waited for him to arrange his new cards. When they were finally ranked to his satisfaction, Sayre reached for the next two cards in the stock and, as was his privilege, noted them and set them back down. Relaxing somewhat, he leaned back into his chair.
“Darcy,” he invited with a fine show of noblesse oblige, indicating the depleted stock. Darcy pushed his discards over to join Sayre’s and snapped up three from the stock. Briefly noting their value, he set them atop the others in his hand, and lifting the last card, he committed it to memory and placed it back on the table.
“Your bid?” Darcy’s modulated voice still carried across the room and seemed to echo off the bare shelves.
“Forty-eight.” Sayre looked keenly up at him after laying out his ruff of spades. The attention of the room shifted from the cards on the table back to Darcy.
“Fifty-one,” he returned, displaying the diamond-pipped cards.
“Fifty-one it is,” breathed Monmouth. “Gentlemen, you are both down for five points.” Darcy gathered up his cards and waited for Sayre’s next play.
“Six cards, ace high,” Sayre announced and splayed them out in front of him.
“One quart,” Monmouth announced. “Four points to Sayre for a total nine.”
“The same.” Darcy pulled out his sequence for Sayre’s perusal. His Lordship’s gaze flashed expertly over the cards. A brow twitched.
“No winner,” Monmouth reported, “but a quint for Darcy for fifteen points, making a total of twenty. Gentlemen?”
“A quatorze of queens.” Sayre threw down each royal lady as if she were at fault for his previous deficiency.
“Of jacks.” Darcy displayed his cards.
“To Sayre.” Monmouth looked at Darcy with concern and put Sayre down for 14 more points. “Twenty-and-three.” His Lordship’s smile was more of relief than of triumph, and he hurriedly pulled out an additional ternary for 3 more points. “Twenty-and-six then.” Monmouth touted up Sayre’s points. “To Darcy’s tw ——”
A disturbance at the door drowned out Monmouth’s announcement, and the sight of Norwycke’s ancient butler entering into the room brought Sayre to his feet. “What is it now?” he growled before he’d had a clear view of the man. Then, “Good God, man! What the devil has happened!”
At Sayre’s first protest, Darcy had risen and swung around his chair, alert for any eventuality. He now stood by Fletcher, and the two of them exchanged warning glances as the old retainer stumbled farther into the room. The man was a fright. His neckcloth, half undone, dangled down over his thin chest, and his powdered wig was aslant. His rheumy eyes were stricken with fear and, oddly enough, thought Darcy, sadness.
“My lord…my lord,” the man gasped.
“Yes! Speak, man!” Sayre thundered.
“I could not, my lord! Served you, your father, grandfather…all my life. Could not betray —”
“Betray! Who betrays me?” Sayre’s voice raged and echoed against the library’s walls, wavering between anger and fear, and caused the ladies to demand what was the matter.
The old man swayed in the face of his master’s fury. “The servants, my lord. They will not take up your defense at the castle gate. Some” — he gulped — “some have said that they’ll not defend the evil within from the righteous anger without. Give up the child, my lord, I beg you!”
“Oh, my God!” cried Trenholme.
“Child? What child?” roared Sayre. The question was taken up by the rest of the room as they rushed to Sayre, but Darcy swiveled around, intent on a quite different object.
“Fletcher! Where is Lady Sylvanie?”
While the whole of the room formed a clamorous circle about Sayre, Darcy and Fletcher scanned its shadowy recesses in search of the lady. Several of the candles, he noted, seemed to have been extinguished, casting the edges of the great old room into darkness.
“There, sir, at the door!” Fletcher’s clear voice galvanized him into action, and soon both men were circling the other distraught, fearful guests in a bid for the door. That achieved, they stepped together into an empty hallway, lit in only one direction by a few feeble candles. Which way had she taken? “Mr. Darcy, I fear —” his valet began.
“Yes, into the darkness. Come!” Darcy plunged forward, Fletcher beside him, racing into the deepening shadows. They quickly reached a juncture with another corridor sunken almost completely in night. Another decision! “Listen!” Darcy commanded and endeavored to quiet his breathing and the beat of blood through his veins. Faintly, the tapping sound of a woman’s slippers disturbed the unearthly somnolence that seemed to hang in the air. “There!”
“She is making for the older portion of the castle.” Fletcher’s whisper echoed eerily as they turned in pursuit of the sound. “She’ll be the very Devil to find if —”
“Then we must enlist the aid of Providence,” Darcy said over his shoulder as he took the hall at a rapid stalk, his ear cocked against the tapping of his quarry.
“I have, sir, and regularly since we arrived at this…place.”
As most men born to privilege, Darcy had long become accustomed to the presence of servants about their duties in even his most private apartments; therefore, the utter lack of any of that class in their traversal of the castle impressed him as singularly ominous. The old butler had spoken the truth. Little — if any — aid in defense of Norwycke could be expected from Sayre’s people, and once emboldened by the numbers outside, they were more than likely also to take up the hunt for Lady Sylvanie and her companion. He and Fletcher must reach them first or who knew what outrage might be committed to haunt the halls of Norwycke and the consciences of its inhabitants and guests?
Ahead of them and around another corner, a door was heard to shut with a soft click. Rounding the corner first, Darcy was confounded by a Stygian darkness that, try as he would, he could not pierce. Evidently they had passed belowground. “A candle! Fletcher, did you see any candles?”
“A moment, sir!” Darcy heard his valet fumble about his clothing, and in short order, a candle was shoved into his hand. “Hold it before you, sir.” Darcy stretched out his arm. Never before had the sound of a flint being struck been so welcome.
“You brought a candle?” Darcy caught Fletcher’s eye in wonderment as the flickering candle created a hesitant pool of light. His valet merely returned him a crooked grin before both of them turned to survey the passage. From the look of it, they were in a long-unused portion of the castle’s storehouse, for a series of doors set in stone walls marched along as far as their meager light could illumine. Holding the candle high, Darcy took a few exploratory steps, his ear cocked to the side to catch any sound, but all was silent.
“Mr. Darcy,” Fletcher called in a low voice, “the candle! Please, sir!” Darcy returned swiftly and handed him the candle.
“Have you discovered something?”
“When you walked before me, sir, I noticed — There! Do you see, sir?” Darcy peered down in the direction of Fletcher’s finger. Footprints! Vaguely outlined in the dust of the abandoned hall were his own footprints where he had preceded Fletcher down the passage. If his could be detected, then could not Sylvanie’s be also? Taking the candle, Darcy held it low, searching for a disturbance in the dusty passage that was not of his own making. Precious minutes ticked by while he ranged to and fro across the corridor, but his careful search was finally rewarded.
“Here! Fletcher!” he shouted in triumph. Then, hoping that the door would not be locked from within, he pulled on the handle. The massive door, swinging back obediently on noiseless hinges, opened upon a room that seemed unusually bright after their dark passage through the castle. Both Darcy and Fletcher blinked and squinted as they stepped inside, their one small candle ridiculously faint against the light that now surrounded them.
“Darcy!” Lady Sylvanie appeared suddenly out of the penumbra cast by the many flaming candles. She advanced upon him, an imperious look upon her face. “You should not have followed me!”
Stung by her continuing hauteur in the face of her impossible situation, Darcy drew up and matched her will with his own. “My lady, should or no is immaterial,” he declared icily. “I am here, and here to warn you that you can proceed no further. You endanger your brother’s life, the well-being of his guests, and the future of the servants of this house with this detestable course! Give over! A mob is at the very doors of the castle. Release the child to me, and I will see to it that you and your companion leave Norwycke unharmed and bound for wherever you will.”
“You will see…!” she sputtered.
“You have my word on it, but you must understand this.” He leaned over her, his eyes commanding. “I do not negotiate. Your game is played out, and you have lost!”
“You are mistaken, sir, if you think to frighten me or engage my sympathy for my ‘brother.’” Lady Sylvanie’s lips curved in derision. “What sympathy did he have for me when he packed my mother and me off to a cold pile of stone and moss in Ireland? Did he care that we almost starved?” Her voice rose higher. “Does he quake before his god at the remembrance of what he has done to his own father’s wife, his own sister, who shared his blood?”
“Sayre has, indeed, much to answer for —”
“And answer he shall! Tonight he was to have been called to account, if you —”
“If I had ruined him, as you hoped?” Darcy bridled. “What else? Was I to offer you marriage after I had brought him low?”
“If I wished it,” she replied. Her eyes flashed insolently, then narrowed upon him. “And I may still.” She turned from him then, hugging herself as she stepped away. “I will have vengeance, Darcy! I will see Sayre brought down!” She turned back to him, the fairy fierceness he had admired when they first met glowing now with unnatural fervor. “It is promised me, and no one will deny me now!”
Darcy looked at her in wonder. So deep, so unforgiving was the lady’s resentment of her past and her family that she had set herself at war with all the world. If she had ever been whole, her looks and words warned him that now she was not. She had become instead a broken creature for whom the world was not atonement enough for her pain.
“You would destroy Sayre and all around him then, lady? Those innocent of your mistreatment as well as the guilty?”
“Have you never desired revenge, Darcy?” Lady Sylvanie’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. Against his will, he stepped closer to catch her words. “Has no one ever hurt you, almost destroyed you?” Darcy froze, a chill frisson traveling as lightning up his back. “Taken what was most dear to you…” One name, excluding all other thought, burned in his mind. “…twisted it, defamed it beyond recognition or redemption?” Bitter anger rose from his heart so suddenly it almost choked him.
“Yes,” she drawled softly, “you have. You desire it still. What is its name?” Wickham’s smirking face — the triumphant mien, the satirical eye — arose before him as it had been when he had discovered it at Ramsgate, then again, in Hertfordshire. “Remember it, Darcy! Think on what was done to you, to those you love. The betrayal, the pain.” Georgiana! He saw once more the sorrow-laden shadow that had been his sweet, innocent sister before…Wickham. He had come so close, so very, very close to destroying them all.
He has been so unlucky as to lose your friendship. The accusation in Elizabeth Bennet’s voice and in the eyes she had laid upon him arose in his mind’s eye and flayed him anew. He saw himself that night, mute before her charge, his last opportunity to recover himself in her esteem — ruined! Wickham! A deep groan formed in his chest.
“You have suffered its bitterness long enough, borne the pain of it beyond endurance!” Lady Sylvanie’s words drew him. “Reason will not soothe, logic does not answer; they have no power. Embrace passion, Darcy. Embrace ‘th’unconquerable will, and study of revenge.’ I can guide you, help you — comfort you — in the way!”
Revenge! The temptation she offered grew in his mind, and for a moment, Darcy allowed himself a glimpse into the desire that had lurked deep within his heart from the first time Wickham had deceitfully shamed him in front of his father to Georgiana’s months of pain.
“But the child, Your Ladyship.” Fletcher’s soft plea broke through Darcy’s heightened senses and arrested Lady Sylvanie’s flow of words. “Have mercy, dear lady!”
Lady Sylvanie hesitated, then turned from Darcy to face the valet. “The child will come to no real harm, save for a few plucked hairs and several nights away from its mother. Its usefulness is nearly at an end. Lady Sayre will be convinced she has conceived before the week is out, and then the child will be returned.” She laughed. “Can you imagine! That cow! She believed my tale that if she suckled a peasant’s child and swallowed some herbs, she could cure the barrenness of her womb. As if I would help her against my own interests!”
“Lady, you have no week.” Darcy recovered himself from the mesmerism of her words. “You have only minutes before the mob that confronts your brother at this very moment descends into this hall in search of that child.” He advanced upon her, determined to force the issue. “I say again, my lady, give over. It is all ended. Bring him to me now, or your safety can in nowise be certain.”
“Give over! When all is within our grasp?” The voice rang out strongly and echoed against the chamber’s stone walls. A door set low in the wall and down a few steps behind Lady Sylvanie opened, and the bowed shape of her companion ascended the stairs, a child limp in her arms. “The time is at hand, and we stand in no need of your feeble help!”
“Doyle!” Lady Sylvanie gasped sharply as the old woman pushed her aside and faced Darcy.
“Mr. Darcy has worked it all out, have you not, Mr. Darcy? Or is it your manservant who has pieced it all together? Clever man” — she sneered — “but not clever enough. Men never are.” Darcy’s astonishment at her boldness was nothing to his doubt of his senses when the crippled serving woman seemed to grow before his eyes. Her preter-natural increase in stature was matched by a decrease in age as, with a mocking smile that was now level with his face, she untied her widow’s cap and threw it from her. Hair black as night, touched lightly with streaks of gray, tumbled down about her shoulders.
“Lady Sayre!” exclaimed Fletcher, in awe at the now straightened figure that stood defiantly before them.
“Yes, Lady Sayre,” she answered him but did not take her eyes from Darcy. “Not that plaything upon which my stepson has lavished the title. Twelve long years it has been, and all would have been set to right already tonight, Mr. Darcy, if you had acted as you were bid.” Her eyes slid to her daughter. “He is right in one thing, Sylvanie. We must leave now, but we do not leave empty-handed, defeated. We will have our full measure of —”
With her attention diverted from him, Darcy moved to seize the child; but as he made his move, the woman brought a small, intricately carved silver dag
ger to the child’s throat. “Mamá!” Lady Sylvanie cried as Darcy froze, his eyes flying to meet hers in alarm. “What are you doing?”
“‘Une femme a toujours une vengeance prête,’ ma petite!” Lady Sayre replied with a laugh. “Stand away from the door, sirs!”
From the corner of his eye, Darcy could see Fletcher slowly moving around them. “What will you do with the child once you are free from Norwycke, ma’am?” Darcy demanded, centering the lady’s attention upon himself.
“I think you know, Mr. Darcy.”
“Another visit to the King’s Stone? It has been you; has it not? Rabbits, kittens, pigs…” Lady Sayre’s lips twitched as he cataloged her activities. “It was you I saw that first night, returning from the Stone and your latest —” His face darkened with disgust. “In point of fact, the entire plan has been yours from the beginning. Tell me, is Sayre’s agent still alive, or is he buried in some forgotten place in Ireland?”
“Tell him it is not so, Mamá.” Lady Sylvanie looked desperately at her mother, but she did not reply. “The child is in no danger,” she declared again hotly as she turned to Darcy, “and the man was paid off. I saw the purse! He is somewhere in America!”
“Truly, my lady?” Darcy addressed Lady Sayre in a voice heavy with sarcasm. “Sayre’s man is living happily in America, and the child will remain unharmed?”
“Tell him, Mamá!” Sylvanie’s eyes glistened with anger. At that moment a shout echoed faintly from somewhere above them.
“The rabble from the village has breached Sayre’s defenses,” Darcy observed calmly. “Most likely they are ranging through the castle as we speak. Madam, I believe you have run out of time.”
“Sylvanie, leave us!” Lady Sayre ordered, her eyes flaming.
“Mamá, I cannot leave you —”
“Go, now! You know where!” cried Lady Sayre. With a low wail, Sylvanie shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “Sylvanie, obey me!”