“Might we cut through all the niceties?”Withey growled.
Elizabeth swallowed hard but controlled her countenance. Any sense of self-preservation disappeared with her need to warn Darcy. “I shall speak forthrightly, my Husband. Unlike the affable Mr. Wickham, Mr. Withey prefers the reputation of a rakehell.”
Her captor interrupted, “Tell him how he paid my gambling debts three times. Remind your husband how he took the punishment when I broke the balcony window playing cricket.” Withey waved the gun about as he spoke, and Darcy considered the opening, but Elizabeth remained in danger, so he squelched his desire to strike.
With great effort, Darcy held his anger in check. “I apologize for my forgetfulness.”
Elizabeth noted the beginning of understanding in Darcy, so she tried a brazen experiment. “Mr. Withey, might I ask to speak to the gentleman with the Scottish brogue whom I met earlier?”
“MacIves?” James Withey asked disdainfully.
She prayed she had not made a mistake. Darcy crept closer and closer, and Elizabeth needed to keep Withey occupied until her husband could act. “I do not believe I caught the gentleman’s name,” she offered.
With no more than a clenching of his jaw muscles, Withey became Gregor MacIves. Before Darcy’s eyes, the man’s bearing, his natural gait and movements, his gestures, and his vocal quality transformed. “Ye missed me, Lass?” The man caught Elizabeth about the waist and pulled her against his body.
Darcy’s hands fisted at his side, but he maintained a strained control for Elizabeth’s safety.
His wife eased herself out of the man’s grasp. “Mr. MacIves.” She purposely smiled at the man, “Might I introduce my husband, Mr. Darcy.”
“I didnae realize ye had a mon, Lass.” He brought the gun to point at Darcy.“I ken relieve ye of the burden; I will kill him for ye. Tis a mon’s duty to protect his womon.”
Elizabeth gasped when he made Darcy his target, but her husband appreciated the change in the situation. It kept her safe, and that was what mattered to him.
“No, I could not ask that of you,” she insisted emphatically. A fresh chill of dread went through her as she watched Darcy stand tall, making himself a larger target. Before MacIves could follow through on his threat, Elizabeth asked, “Why do you not send Mr. Whittington to speak to us?” She had gambled before and made headway with Darcy’s understanding, so she kept to her plan to show him what he faced. Darcy still looked a bit confused; yet, she knew she had piqued his curiosity. The sharp twist of his mouth said he had what he wanted: His enemy’s attention had fallen on him. However, she wished Darcy to truly see the evil he fought.
MacIves pressed his lips together in a grim line. “Ye be ’nouncing His Young Lordship to ye husband, Lass?”
“It is what a lady does.” She bestowed a polite smile on him.
As before, a change ensued; MacIves squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them seconds later, he held himself in the stature of a young nobleman.The boy known as Peter Whittington looked down in surprise at Elizabeth. “Mrs. Darcy, you have need of me?”
“Yes, Mr. Whittington. I believe you are acquainted with my husband.” She gestured toward Darcy.
Even though he maintained his stance, everything else about Wickham changed. No longer the rough Scottish lord of a previous century, the man standing before them was an immature aristocrat. “Of course. It has been some time since I have seen you, Darcy. Not since our first year at Eton.”
Finally, what Elizabeth wanted him to know stood blaringly clear before him. Each of these “characters” was Wickham at a pivotal moment in the man’s life. Darcy nodded his understanding, seeing how he might now get close enough to disarm his former friend. “Mr. Whittington, is it?” Darcy said, seemingly unruffled. “I nearly forgot that year was a complicated one for you. If I recall correctly, your father became quite livid regarding your responsibilities, often preferring the cane to emphasize his point. When your grades suffered, your father took it quite personally.”
Whittington muttered, “Thank you for reminding me of my shortcomings, Darcy.”
Darcy nodded. “You had some difficulty, as I recall, identifying your place. When word reached the school of my father’s furnishing your education, many thought you his by-blow, rather than his godson.”
“You turned from me that year,”Whittington accused.
“My mother took ill…there were other forces of concern in my life.”
Whittington recoiled with Darcy’s words. “I was your friend,” he insisted. “When you said nothing, they all believed the worst.”
Darcy said with as much contrition as he could muster, “I was young and a bit jealous of your easiness, but I never meant for you to suffer.”
Whittington bragged, “I did have an easier time with women.”
Darcy made himself offer a compliment. “Women always took to you.”
“All of them except my mother,” Whittington snarled. “She thought me too much like my father.” He looked off in sad remembrance, and Darcy moved again, but this time he silently told Elizabeth to do the same.
“Your father suffered much to please her.”
“Women are the shallow sex.”
Darcy eased closer.“Then it was you who punished Mrs.Wickham by destroying her room? She was too extravagant, I suppose? And what of the maid?”
Whittington puffed up with autocratic importance. “Mrs. Wickham is very much like my mother, Lady Whitlock, always insisting that her husband spend more than he has. My friend should have left the lady long ago, as my father should leave Her Ladyship.”
“And Lucinda Dodd, the maid?” Darcy insisted.
Whittington frowned.“She would not let me leave.Those born to serve should never reprimand their betters.”
Darcy watched as Elizabeth brushed a tear away. For himself, he made no comment. Instead, he called to mind what he knew of Wickham’s childhood and of the man’s years at school and university. “May I ask, Mr. Whittington, if MacIves is one of the Scottish relatives that you found when you sought proof of your ancestral connections?”
Peter Whittington became immediately angry. “You may trace your family to the Matlocks and the Attingboroughs and the D’Arcys and to the Saxon founders of this area, and all I could claim was a minor Scottish border lord who raided England for sheep and cattle and women to maintain his Highland keep. You have bloodlines dating back to the British nobility; my ancestors were nothing more than glorified thieves.”
“No family tree grows perfectly straight,” Darcy remarked dispassionately.
“Nay, we dinnae look so verra noble now, did we?” The Scot returned without their request and in the middle of the conversation, and for a moment, even Elizabeth appeared surprised, but she recovered quickly. “Yet I will not be shunned by a bloody prima donna lord. If’n he belies me family a’gin, he will receive whate’er I choose to mete out.”
Elizabeth whispered softly,“Too many sins and too little patience.”
“The borders, Lass, they be rough—it takes those who love the law and those who hate it to survive there—the clans, they know their own justice and their own loves—a hardened lot of murderers and thieves I call family.”
Although the man continued to point the gun in Darcy’s direction, he saw only Elizabeth, and as the Scot spoke, Darcy moved quickly to a point of advantage. Bringing his own weapon level with the man’s chest, he ordered, “I will have your gun, Mr. Wickham.”
A flutter of the man’s eyes was all the warning they received; instantly, everything changed.The man, known as Gregor MacIves, swung his gun in Elizabeth’s direction—and pulled the trigger.
“No!” Darcy leapt at the man, catching MacIves’s arm and sending them both crashing to the packed dirt. Holding on with all his might, he pinned the Scot’s wrist to the ground, wrenched the gun from the man, and tossed it to the side. Arms and legs flailing and twisting, they began a struggle for control—a dance of ignoble frenzy. A crushing
fist to the jaw. A punch to the kidneys. A knee to the groin. Fingers opened—grappling—a barely contained fury spilling forth. A lifetime of trust betrayed—of volition violated—a voracious vortex of evil sucking them both in—taking their restraint.
Each loathed for what the other stood—the odious paranoia of allowing hate full reign—they fought relentlessly. Sweat slicked Darcy’s face, but he battled on until MacIves pulled a dagger from his boot, and with one sweeping arc brought it down to pierce Darcy’s back. For a split second, Darcy clung to his opponent’s shoulders, and then he opened his hands and slid to his knees, a grimace of defeat flooding his face.
Triumphantly, the Scot stepped over the crouched master of Pemberley. Leaning down, he caught the knife’s handle, giving it a hurried lift to do more damage, before withdrawing it from the wound. “I told the lass I would kill ye for her,” he growled in Darcy’s ear. “I be raising yer bairn as me own,” he taunted. “We have played our game, Darcy, and I take the winning hand.” And just like that, in a twinkling of the eye, James Withey returned.
James stepped away from Fitzwilliam Darcy’s slumped-over form. Leaning against a wooden panel, he caught his breath while he watched with amusement as Elizabeth Darcy crawled on hands and knees toward her husband.
The sound of the gun exploding so close to her head sent Elizabeth diving for cover.Then the sting of the grazing wound caught her breath in her throat, and, for a moment, Elizabeth expected to open her eyes and see heaven; but the stream of blood running down her head said she lived. Behind her, a battle raged; bodies fell against each other as she tried to right herself and go to Darcy’s aid. The blood—her blood—ran into her eye, and Elizabeth swiped at it with the sleeve of her gown—the blanket long gone. Fingers groping for a hold against the stall’s wooden slats, Elizabeth caught the second rail and, with determination, pulled herself to her knees. Then she heard the gasp, and through streaks of sweat and blood, she saw the man she loved more than life crumble to the floor, a dagger thrust deep into his back.
“Fitzwilliam!” she exclaimed, needing to be by his side. Crawling across the hay-covered earth, she fought to reach him—fought to touch him.
Yet, as she made contact, a force compelled her backward. James Withey caught her hair, snapping her head around and forcing Elizabeth to her feet. “No,” he hissed. “No one helps Darcy. We let him die.”
Elizabeth battled the tears bubbling in her eyes as the red lines blurred her vision.“What do you want?” she demanded; her bottom lip trembled in panic.“You won! Just get out! Leave Pemberley!”
“Not without you,” he declared, grabbing Elizabeth’s arm and pulling her toward the door.
She contested his efforts with all her might, but when she turned her head to wipe the blood from her face against her sleeve, James used the momentary slack of her momentum to pull Elizabeth forward—catching her to his side and lifting her where he might carry her, skimming across the frozen ground. Frantically, she caught at everything to stop their progress, but nothing held, and then Elizabeth grabbed the broken handle of an ax and clasped it to her.
James pressed his shoulder to the stable door, sending it swinging open with a bang. Dragging Elizabeth toward the horses, he did not see her take a firm hold of the broken handle; but as he slowed, preparing to mount, he loosened his grip, and she spun away from him, arcing the stick upward, striking Withey firmly under the chin and dazing him long enough for her to turn toward the stable and Darcy.
Yet, the sound of a gun cocking behind her brought Elizabeth up short of the door. Anger’s color ebbed with the realization. Somehow, James Withey had prevailed. She froze as her bloodied face took in his rictal grin.
When the stable door slammed open, Stafford and Worth expected Darcy to exit with his wife. Instead, the real-life Pemberley phantom carried a bloody Elizabeth Darcy toward the waiting horses.
“Hold for the clean shot,” Stafford ordered as they both took aim at the abductor, but with his back to the horses, he offered no easy shot; and both men hesitated.
In amazement, they watched as Elizabeth executed an escape attempt that would knock a normal man unconscious, but left her captor only momentarily stunned before he took aim with a carefully concealed pocket pistol; and before they could react, James Withey took dominion of Darcy’s wife again.
“Nice try, Mrs. Darcy,” he mocked as he pulled her into his body, Elizabeth’s back tight against his chest. “Before I set you free, you will pay for such impudence.” He purposely cupped her breast in intimidation and squeezed it possessively.
Elizabeth clenched her fists at her sides, but she did not fight him. Her thoughts remained on Darcy. If she left with Withey, the others could help her husband.That was her mission: saving Darcy’s life. “I will not fight you,” she declared.
“Order Darcy’s friends away.” Withey pulled her closer to him, expecting Stafford and Worth to attack.
Elizabeth nodded her agreement. Taking a deep breath, she called out, “Lord Stafford, please take Mr. Worth and move away. Mr.Withey has a gun to my head and will not hesitate to shoot.”
“Tell them to put their weapons down,” he ordered softly.
“Please lay down your guns,” she added.
Worth and Lawrence assessed the situation. “Where is Darcy?” Stafford asked as he bent to place his gun in a nearby snowdrift.
Elizabeth could not suppress the sobs waiting to escape. “Help him!” she managed to say before James pushed her toward Pandora.
Nigel Worth followed Stafford’s example and lowered his gun. “She does this for her husband,” he whispered to the viscount.
Withey gave her a leg up as Elizabeth rucked up her skirts to sit astride Pandora’s back. “Do not try anything adventurous, Mrs. Darcy,” he warned as he mounted Darcy’s favorite stallion.
Elizabeth, needing to maneuver Withey away from Pemberley so the others could tend to Darcy’s wounds, nodded her affirmation. Misery scraped at the back of her throat as she accepted her fate.
“Stand back!”Withey ordered as he kicked Demon’s flanks and took up the leading line on Pandora’s harness.Without further ado, he led Elizabeth toward the forest road.
Stafford and Worth stared in admiration as the blood-encrusted face of Elizabeth Darcy passed them. Sitting on Pandora’s back, she shot a pleading look and a nod of her head toward the open stable door.Withey kept her horse abreast of his and the gun pointed directly at her, but she told them what to do without words. As soon as she and her captor passed them, Stafford and Worth ran to the stable.They hit the door and skidded to a stop when they found a bloody Fitzwilliam Darcy trying to open a nearby stall.
“Darcy?” Stafford caught him under the arm and lifted his friend, supporting Darcy’s sagging weight. “Let me get you into the house.”
“No!” Darcy gritted his teeth. “Saddle the horse.” Pain sheared through him.
“You cannot—” Worth began, A contemptuous glare from Darcy stopped him midsentence.
Barely moving his lips, Darcy summarized the situation. “Elizabeth is my wife.”
Stafford nodded his agreement. “Saddle the horse, Worth. Let me see what I can do for Darcy.”
The solicitor agreed reluctantly, but he did what the viscount said. Meanwhile, Stafford wrestled Darcy free of his jacket. “Wickham may have hit a lung,” Stafford whispered as he used rags he found in a nearby bucket to bind Darcy’s wound.
“And he may not have,” Darcy observed.
Lawrence leaned closer. “Mrs. Darcy struck Wickham with a blow that would have brought another man to his knees, but it barely stunned him. You cannot fight him, Darcy. You must kill him—without reservation—if you expect to stop him. If he gets a chance, he will rape your wife. He touched Mrs. Darcy quite inappropriately as a show of power.”
“He seeks revenge.” Darcy exhaled the words.
“I will follow you,” Stafford asserted. “I will finish it if you cannot.”
“Thank you, St
afford.”
Within five minutes, Darcy sat upon Vulcan’s back. It took all his determination to simply pull himself into the saddle. Stafford placed a horse blanket about Darcy’s shoulders—neither of them considering his return to the tight-fitting jacket. “I will bring your coat for Mrs. Darcy,” he said as he handed Darcy a gun.“Be careful, my friend.”
With a nod of his head, Darcy kicked Vulcan’s sides and sent the gelding in an easy gallop toward the forest road.
“They will follow,” Elizabeth said quietly as they turned toward the road leading to Kympton.The horses suffered with the frozen tundra and with having stood outside in the cold so long, but Withey took no note of the conditions. He simply pressed Demon a bit harder. After that, they rode in silence for nearly a half hour, keeping to the more treacherous back roads.
Elizabeth shivered from the cold and from the panic gripping her heart. She worried for Darcy and for the colonel and for Lydia. Her family lay dead or dying, and she rode away with the man who had brought devastation to her home.“I cannot go on,” she said from the depths of her resolve.“I will let you take me no farther, M. Withey.”
“What will you do, Mrs. Darcy?” James Withey snarled. “Will you have me shoot you? Right here? Right now?”
Elizabeth did not look at him, but she answered just the same. “If that is my only choice.”
Her captor ignored her verbal challenge; instead,Withey turned the horses toward a nearby church.“Let us see what God has to offer us today. Maybe something left over from the collection plate.”
He slid from Demon’s back and reached up to help Elizabeth from the saddle. She let her eyes fall on the small whitewashed building, and an errant thought struck her.
“Mr. Withey, might I speak to Mr.Wickham?”
“Why?” Her request shocked him. “Why him and why now?”
“I wish to speak to Mr. Wickham,” she insisted.
The Phantom of Pemberley Page 40