by Lady Waller
Once back in her room she lifted him onto the bed. She nudged him under the chin. “My hero, Lord William the Frog.”
He bowed for her and she laughed again, doubling over with the effort.
The one rainbow moment shining through his dark curse.
Chapter Seven
Elizabeth wondered at the man beneath the frog as she scraped out several books from under her bed. A trace of dust came with the books and tickled her nostrils. She wiped her nose with her sleeve and peeked at the frog dozing on the middle of her bed.
He spoke—when he spoke—as if a gentleman with proper upbringing. How long had he been stuck in this fairy’s curse? Was he old or young? Sadness poked at her heart. What if she couldn’t save him?
So far he’d been kind and brave. And he listened to her when she spoke, as if her words held meaning. Any suitor could learn a thing or two from William. The thought brought a sense of guilt to mingle with the sadness. William wasn’t his true name.
“Did you find it?” His eyes were still closed.
“I’m afraid I haven’t. Perhaps the maid or Jane moved it to Papa’s study.”
“Shall we look there next?”
“I worry if we go downstairs now we’ll be accosted by Mr. Collins, Mama, or one of my sisters.” She shoved the hoard of books beneath her bed. A yawn snuck up on her and she covered her mouth, mortified at the intensity of it.
“Why don’t you rest and we can venture down when it’s safer,” he said.
Since his eyes were still closed, Elizabeth assumed he felt the need for rest too. She climbed on the bed. “Just for a few minutes.”
Her eyelids drooped and sleep came easy.
Heavy clomps on the stairs stirred Elizabeth awake. William the frog sat at the edge of her pillow, watching her.
“Have I been asleep long? Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked.
“I tried, but after you batted me away the second time, I withdrew from any further attempts.”
A slamming door from down the hallway caught her attention.
“I heard a carriage and horses arrive not too long ago,” he said.
“Papa and Jane must have returned from the search party. I wonder if there is any good news about Mr. Darcy?” She sat up and moved off the bed to sit at the vanity. Her hair stuck out in many directions. Quickly she tied it back and pinned it into a simple bun.
William hopped from the bed to the floor to the top of the vanity. “Do you wish for good news?”
“About Mr. Darcy? Of course I do.” Hopefully some kind soul had helped him home the way she planned to help William break his curse.
The bedroom door burst open and Jane fluttered inside, tearing off her gloves. “Help me change, Lizzy. Mr. Bingley will be here soon.”
Surely she hadn’t slept until supper time. The light from the sun still showed bright through the windows. “Is there news?”
“None good, I’m afraid.” She backed up to Elizabeth in the silent request to undo her dress buttons.
Elizabeth turned to William and made a motion with her hand for him to turn his back. He crawled behind the vanity mirror.
“Tell me the news.”
“There has been a rumor started within the regiment that Mr. Darcy returned to his home of Pemberley. The stable boy simply allowed his horse to escape the stables and is the cause for all the confusion.”
“They’re accusing the stable boy of lying?” Elizabeth tugged Jane’s dress down over her arms. “What possible motive would the boy have to lie?”
Jane pulled a light pink dress out of the chifferobe. “Mr. Bingley isn’t convinced and has sent a rider to Pemberley. He is to meet Papa and Colonel Forster here for tea and they’ll decide what action to take next. The more time that passes, the more they fear they shall never find him.”
She stepped into the gown, which only needed to be tied at the waist. Elizabeth obliged her and absorbed the gossip.
“Mr. Wickham might come too,” Jane said, checking her hair in the mirror.
Elizabeth couldn’t confess to her sister that she’d rather spend time with a hoard of toads than with Mr. Wickham.
“It would be a perfect time for you to get to know him better since Mr. Collins has accepted an invitation to dine with the Lucases. You’ll only have one suitor vying for your affections,” she continued.
Uneasiness crept along her spine. After their most recent encounter in the woods, affections were the last thing the man could expect from her.
Jane reached out and brushed the edge of Elizabeth’s sleeve. “I suggest you change your dress and wash your face. You look as though you’ve been crawling through the bushes.”
Elizabeth smiled and chose to avoid any further discussion of Mr. Wickham. She ushered her sister out the door. “Give my regards to Mr. Bingley.”
She closed the door and found William sitting at the edge of the vanity. If frogs could have expressions, Elizabeth believed William wore a troubled one. “I’m sorry that took so long.”
He laid his head down on top of his front feet. “I’m not sure the book would help me anyway.”
“How I wish I could set up a system to overcome the communication part of your curse. I want to help you, but I don’t know how.” The sun dipped in the sky, casting shadows in her room. Horses neighed as Longbourn’s expected guests arrived.
“You have shown more kindness than I deserve,” he said. “Perhaps it is time I return to the woods and try a different path to end this.”
She sat down in the chair in front of the vanity, her shoulders slumped. “How strange the past few days have been. Mr. Darcy went missing. I sorely misjudged Mr. Wickham’s character. I met you in the woods.”
He lifted his head and focused his gaze on her. The intensity in his eyes held her captive. Intensity of which she’d only seen in only one other person.
Mr. Darcy.
No!
“Are you Mr. Darcy?”
“Croak,” he answered.
She stood and paced the room in frustration. “How can I ask who you are without asking who you are?”
William answered with another croak. Frustration burned her from the inside out. She dropped to her knees and pulled a dusty book from beneath her bed. On the top, she wrote the letter W on one side and the letter D on the other. Without saying or hinting as to her intentions, she set the book on top of the vanity by William.
He hopped on the mirror and glanced down at the book. Then he jumped and landed on the D.
William had knowingly chosen the D for Darcy. Her heart rate doubled in speed. How could she have not seen it from the beginning? But no. It couldn’t be true. Mr. Darcy was a man she’d sworn to dislike and William was a frog whom she liked immensely.
“Oh dear,” she said. Fitzwilliam Darcy had been in her bedroom. He’d slept in her bed. “Oh dear,” she said again as she pulled herself up to the vanity chair.
“But how?” she asked.
Mr. Darcy croaked.
She took several deep, calming breaths. Nothing changed the overall task. Mr. Darcy still needed an ally to help him break his curse.
“Perhaps I should take you to Mr. Bingley?” His closest friend might have a better idea of what to do next.
“No,” he said. “If I only croak when presented to a rational group of individuals, then they will cast me aside and mark you for being out of your head.”
Irritations prickled the base of her spine. “I do not belong to the group of rational individuals?”
A small sigh escaped his frog lips. “You misunderstand me.”
Elizabeth stood and crossed the room to the window. “I believe you’ve accused me of that before.”
“You are my only hope.” His voice held a fraction of sorrow.
In the distance she could make out a man in regiment uniform approaching Longbourn. Hadn’t his reaction become ungentlemanly when she’d mentioned a talking frog? In the short time that Mr. Darcy and the Bingleys had been in Meryton, t
here had only been one person it’d been suggested had a quarrel with Darcy. Mr. Wickham.
She turned away from the window. “Now that we have a major part of the riddle solved, the undertaking to figure out the rest shouldn’t be as difficult.”
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I don’t know how or why this has happened to you, but I think I might know who.” She tied the apron around her waist and lowered her hand. “I’m going to attempt to trick Mr. Wickham into a confession.”
Mr. Darcy croaked and backed away from her hand.
Elizabeth wiggled her fingers, not sure what to think of his apprehension. “Don’t worry. I’ll be perfectly safe. And if he isn’t the culprit, then at least we’ll be able to mark him off our list of suspects.”
And we can go back to being less than friends, she thought.
§
Darcy crept into Elizabeth’s hand. The joy of her cleverness in discovering his real name ebbed away like a drying creek. Her demeanor had changed as if the hours they’d spent together were erased and there was only the time before when they didn’t trust or understand one another. He doubted the easy friendship between them would return, so he allowed her to put him in the dreaded pocket without further delay.
She was right. The riddle would be solved quicker now that she pieced together his name with the one person who hated him and wished him ill-being. But Wickham had chained the witch in the woods and had planned to kill Darcy after he’d been turned into a frog. What foul deed would he plan for Elizabeth when he found out she knew the truth?
Once Elizabeth set her plan in motion, Darcy would add a twist that would take Wickham away from her and Longbourn. That man would not hurt her.
She pulled on the top of the pocket. “Try to refrain from croaking whilst we are around the rational people, please.”
He didn’t answer. Doubtful she expected one. Her feelings were hurt again. If she would only look past her pride, she’d see that he held her in the highest respect. More so than any woman he’d ever met.
A group of voices mingled together in solemn tones. Since he couldn’t see, he assumed Elizabeth joined the guests and the rest of her family in the downstairs sitting room.
He picked out Charles’ voice from the rest. “I’ve sent a rider to Pemberley and one to London to his sister Georgiana. We won’t hear back from them for a couple of days, but I don’t think we should stop searching.”
Darcy warmed to his friend’s persistence. Charles Bingley was indeed a treasure among gentlemen. He’d never be able to return the favor.
“I’ll make sure Papa continues to help with the search however he can,” Jane said. “Isn’t that right, Lizzy?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth answered.
The youngest Bennet girls’ chittering from the opposite side of the room announced Wickham had arrived.
Anxiety rushed through him. Would Elizabeth wait to speak with him privately or would she accuse him in front of her family. The latter would be safer for her, but the audience might hinder her plans for a confession. At this point she only suspected Wickham and he couldn’t confirm the man’s guilt.
He could feel Elizabeth move through the room, but he didn’t know which direction or who she planned to talk to next. Her youngest sisters’ voices became clearer and he assumed the girls were near Wickham.
“Mr. Wickham, how kind of you to join us,” Elizabeth said, her dry tone indicating her true feelings about his kindness.
Just as Darcy feared, she didn’t plan to waste time confronting him.
“Good afternoon, Miss Elizabeth. Take any interesting walks through the woods lately?” Darcy imagined Wickham looked down on her with a sneer.
One of the younger sisters—Darcy couldn’t tell their high pitched voices apart—interrupted the terse greeting. “Lizzy snuck out to see the witch again. Take care Mr. Wickham, I hear she sells love spells.”
“How many times must I say that Mrs. Hucklebee is not a witch,” Elizabeth chastised. “She’s a lonely old woman in need of a friend. I take her bread as a kindness.”
Elizabeth knew the witch! How could he signal to her to keep pressuring Wickham?
“When is the last time you met with this hag?” Wickham asked.
Bravo, thought Darcy. The man would hang himself if he simply kept talking. Elizabeth was too loyal to allow him to speak about a friend of hers with such disrespect.
“Curb your tongue, Mr. Wickham. If she is indeed a witch, then she wouldn’t take kindly to your insult. And I last visited her the day before yesterday.”
“Mr. Wickham! Are you leaving so soon? Lizzy, what have you done?” One of the sisters screeched at Elizabeth as Darcy heard boots clomp away from them.
His frustration mounted. The curse was bad enough, but stuck in a pocket while Elizabeth accosted the villain tore at his pride.
The gentle sway of Elizabeth’s movements and the lessening of the gaggle of voices led him to believe she left the sitting room. She reached in and pulled him to sit on a window sill in the kitchen. Together they watched Wickham stomp off through the garden towards the path that led to the Dark Woods.
“Should we follow him?” she asked.
“Too dangerous,” he answered.
“What did I say that angered him, I wonder.” Elizabeth leaned closer to the window.
Darcy wanted to say “witch” but only the most annoying of croaks came out.
“You really are no help,” she said with small smile. Her dark eyes softened. “That must have been very frustrating for you. Locked away from the world in a pocket while he struts around as if he’s done nothing wrong.”
He placed one webbed hand on the glass pane.
The cook returned to her station in front of the stove, causing Lizzy to grab him and stuff him in the pocket. Not long after a door closed. She took him out and placed him on the edge of a desk. “We might as well look for the book in Papa’s study whilst he’s occupied with the guests. We know the who, but we still need to figure out the how. Well, you know the how, but I don’t. Then we can focus on turning you back into a proper version of Mr. Darcy.”
Darcy puffed his chest. “I am always proper. Even as a frog.”
She didn’t smile, and he released the pent up breath.
The bookshelves overflowed with books, some with the spines out, others stacked in a haphazard manner. He did his best to read the titles from his viewpoint. Nothing matched the description of fairies or curses.
Elizabeth turned and twisted books with little huffs of breath showcasing her disappointment with each failure.
Darcy crawled across the desk, noting the stark difference between his tidiness and Mr. Bennet’s chaos. He glanced at Elizabeth’s profile. She seemed right at home amidst the chaos.
“Aha!” she yelled, then clamped a hand over her mouth. She tilted her head to listen and when apparently satisfied she hadn’t alerted her family to her whereabouts, held up the book. “Aha.”
The gold title across the black cover read Tales of Fairies in Scotland.
She opened the book and flipped through the pages.
“Should we read it here or somewhere less conspicuous?” he asked.
Her cheeks turned a slight shade of pink. “I’m not sure I should take you back up to my bedroom now that I know who you are.”
Darcy bobbed his head in understanding. All of their actions had broken with society’s rules governing an unmarried woman and gentleman. He’d never stopped to think how her reputation could be ruined while he remained in frog form. If at any point they broke the curse and he returned to human while they were alone…
“What if we go into the garden? Then I can hop away if someone disturbs our research.” Or he could hide behind the barn if he turned into a man and pretend to come from the woods. They were close to ending this. He could feel it in his gut.
Elizabeth hugged the book to her chest with one arm and held out her other hand. “To the garden, then.”
Wickham doubled back down the path to Longbourn, careful to remain hidden. He stayed behind a cluster of trees and watched Elizabeth enter the gardens. She carried a book, but he couldn’t read the title. His heart rate slowed to a normal pace. How silly of him to think that a simple woman had untangled his well-constructed plan.
However, the witch remained a loose end. One he needed to tie up quickly. With the search party scouring the woods, he’d been unable to eliminate the hag.
He’d started the rumor about Darcy traveling to Pemberley to lessen the intensity of the search, but that dolt Bingley refused to take it as truth. If anything, the rumor made the man more determined to find his friend.
Elizabeth sat in the grass and untied a white apron. Just as Wickham decided she was not a threat to his plans, a small movement caught his attention. A frog hopped from one side of the grass to the other.
She spoke to it.
Darcy!
Rage filled him to his core. He knew it. Elizabeth Bennet had known the truth and she had taunted him inside the house with her defense of the witch. She only pretended to be naïve. How much had Darcy told her? Why hadn’t they told everyone else in the house?
Their reasons didn’t matter. He couldn’t let her find a way to turn Darcy back human. Now that he knew exactly where the frog was hiding, he’d wait until dark and he’d kill Darcy.
Elizabeth too, if she stood in his way.
Chapter Eight
Elizabeth flipped through the pages and ran her finger along a bright illustration. Two golden fairies hid behind a tree and watched a man on a horse. The man had dark hair and wore a stern frown. Below the illustration was a warning that fairies lingered everywhere in the forests. All men should be wary of their mischief.
Mr. Darcy’s situation didn’t seem to fit. And he didn’t seem interested in reading about the fairies with her. He hopped in the tall grass, chasing down his dinner.
Mama would expect her to come to supper soon. The smell of pork and fresh baked rolls wafted from the kitchen windows into the gardens. Her stomach tightened. They were just as far away from a solution as when they’d started a couple of hours ago. Mr. Bingley and Colonel Forster had left sometime in between, deciding against supper to leave more daylight for searching.