Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife

by Linda Berdoll

  Reed’s affection for knives was notorious. Frank Reed looked at Lewis and rolled his eyes. He did not relish the idea of what mayhem his brother might incite, but Lewis merely shrugged. Nevertheless, Frank was worried. Robbery was one thing, slicing up women another. Larceny, yea. Defilement, perchance. Blood, however, made him squeamish.

  “Get on that horse,” Reed told Elizabeth, “or you’ll see sissy here gutted in front of ye.”

  He flicked his head in Georgiana’s direction. Convinced that was not a bluff, Elizabeth ceased resisting. Thus, Reed forced her upon a horse of questionable lineage and suspect ownership. Frank jumped on behind Lewis and, with the horses straining and grunting under heavy loads, they all disappeared down a narrow lane off the main road.

  *

  Within the quarter hour, Darcy returned. His man carried the missing pin and some spares as well, the master’s temper assuaged by happening upon an expedient forge. As they approached and Darcy saw the women standing yet outside the coach, his reclaimed humour vanished. From that distance, he could not see they that were crying. But the ransacked trunks were evident; their contents exposed and in disarray.

  The infamy was obvious.

  Kicking Blackjack into a fierce run, he drew him to a hard stop at the coach and leapt from the saddle, landing squarely upon both feet. The women appeared unhurt. However, when he did not see Elizabeth amongst them, the colour drained from his face. For upon that realisation, the magnitude of the outrage fell upon him like a flatiron.

  The coachman had yet to move from his seat. He sat with a look of stunned dismay, his hands dangling purposelessly. However, the arrival of Mr. Darcy aroused him from his stupor. So decidedly was he inspirited, he took the six feet from his seat to the road in one jump and was met by Darcy before he reached the ground.

  “Who was it?” Darcy asked him. “And where did they go?”

  Although Mr. Darcy demanded this in a peculiarly calm voice, the man returned his gaze with compleat lack of comprehension. He had no idea who it was. Or where they went. That information had fled his mind, perchance keeping company with his recently discarded wits. With implausible patience, Darcy repeated the questions again, but grasped the man’s lapel firmly in encouragement. Not a word was extracted. He shook him ever so slightly.

  Perchance of a mind this gentle advocacy might escalate, the driver finally croaked out, “Three men, Reed…his brother—that one what you fired—and another,” and pointed up the lane.

  Barely acknowledging the information, Darcy motioned for his remaining postilion to toss the part to the coachman, who caught it. In the time it took the man to regain his senses enough to understand his duty was to repair the coach, Darcy was at the luggage searching for a weapon. Only then did he realise he had wrested a crested brass lapel button from the coachman, and flung it to the ground.

  As he caught the reins to remount, his logical mind made a brief consideration in favour of not pursuing the three men alone. Should he remove his saddle from -Blackjack and give it to the postilion who still sat atop the harnessed coach horse? He knew himself most likely the better rider. However, he decided he dared not spare the time. Let the man cling to the harness and try to keep up as best he could.

  As he began to remount, he recognised his wife’s bonnet as it lay in a heap in the road. A little beyond sat one shoe. He stopped and walked to the bonnet, took it in his hand and fingered it fleetingly. The torn ribbon was mute evidence of the brutality of the abduction.

  Looking from thence, it appeared he studied the shoe for a moment, but he did not move to retrieve it. Instead, he silently handed the bonnet to Georgiana and remounted Blackjack.

  Digging his heels fiercely into the horse’s flank, he disappeared as quickly as that into the trees.

  The cold placidity of his face was more horrific to those who saw it than any other expression they might have conjured.

  *

  Once entrenched in the woods some ways from the coach, Elizabeth had become a very disobliging kidnap victim. So much so, the bandits did not get on fast. Hence, Tom Reed pulled the horse up short when he saw smoke curling from the fireplace of an inn.

  “The Strangled Goose,” said the sign.

  Frank Reed had hoped that ransom had been the impetus for Tom’s seizure of Mrs. Darcy, but obviously, that was not the only thing he had in mind. Frank might risk hanging for some sovereigns. But not to allow his brother to have lewd rites with Mr. Darcy’s wife. Bitterly did he complain to Tom that the stop might be costly.

  “We can’t stop, Tom! There’s no time!” Frank bewailed.

  His brother told him to shut his hole.

  “Aye think Missus Darcy needs herself a nice lie-down,” he leered at her, tweaking her cheek.

  Elizabeth slapped his hand away. He clouted her in return. Tom drug her down from the lathered horse and by the time she landed upon the ground, she was swinging wildly at him. Undertaking the single handhold that would not pinch, kick, or bite, he grabbed her by the topknot and held her, flailing, at arms’ length.

  “She’s a prime article, this one is. The ’orn-colic’s a’callin’ me loud.”

  The taproom reeked of stale ale and the few people partaking therein quieted when they entered. Elizabeth looked about in vain for a sympathetic face. She endeavoured to call out that she had been abducted. However, before she managed a syllable, Tom Reed hit her again across the face. Was there any question (and unfortunately, there seemed not), the savagery of Tom Reed’s countenance was assurance that none of the basted patrons had an attack of pot-valour.

  He demanded a room. Upon seeing their weapons, a man in an apron silently pointed to the back and stepped away. As Reed disappeared into a room with Elizabeth, the door slammed solidly behind him. Jack Lewis found a table, wrested a deck of cards from two groggers and motioned for Frank. Thereupon Lewis, whose personal philosophy demanded he never turn down a chance to drink or rut, proceeded to see who drew high card for being next on Elizabeth.

  “A buttered bun is better than none,” opined poet Lewis.

  In the low-ceilinged alcove to which Reed drug her, he tossed her atop the mattress of a low cot that was not just stained, but one that emitted the unmistakable stench of urine. From thence, she crouched warily, simultaneously trying not to take a breath, and plotting both escape and defence. Initially, Reed made no move toward her. He did, however, with great deliberation, draw out his dagger. Admiringly, he laid it upon the table next to the bed.

  “Shut ye mouf if ye knows what’s good fer ye.”

  At this provocation, Elizabeth screamed with obvious deliberation. That rebellion accomplished, she added the lone oath she could recall. Howbeit Reed had been cursed widely and with some creativity, he had not once been called a chuff-nutted son of a doggie’s wife, hence, he laughed uproariously. Then, he stopped laughing.

  “That’s ’ow it is, eh? ’ow ’d ye think yer rich ’usband’ll like you tendin’ me like a French whore?”

  He unbuttoned his breeches, thus exposing a disinclination toward inexpressibles as well as his pillicock. The latter being in her direct eye line, it was difficult to ignore, so she took the only retaliatory road by endeavouring to bite him. Regrettably, the meaty hands he clamped upon either side of her face were not indicative of a similarly proportioned manhood, therefore her effort was for naught.

  He slapped her hard, and exclaimed, “Watch out fer me whennymegs!”

  She endeavoured to bite him again. Reed reconsidered. He was having a bit of trouble maintaining an erection in light of her attempts at emasculation. Hence, he withdrew her delivering him fellatio from his mental list of possible outrages to inflict and tossed her upon her back. Elizabeth was both disappointed and relieved at this manoeuvre, in that however she would have liked to exact that particular agony (a few mishaps in affection with Darcy had made her understand this was a sensitive spot upon a man), she did not necessarily want to clamp her teeth upon Reed’s nasty “whennymegs.”
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  She had little time to contemplate missed opportunities to ruin him. He leapt then upon her in a savage search beneath her petticoats, which incited an unexpectedly fierce grapple. Wriggling away, she left him holding nothing but a pair of empty stockings. Reed looked incredulously at what he held in his grip, then at Elizabeth.

  Instantaneously, and with fury, he cast them aside and set after her in a mad scramble across the bed. Well-nigh clear of him, he caught her by the ankle. Dragging her back across the bed by her feet rendered her splayed and skirt up. The perfect position for violation. She kicked at him with her bare feet, but he just elicited a strange lewd giggle as he held her down.

  “When aye’m done w’ ye, d’ye think aye oughter ’ave mercy and kill ye with one cut or make it last longer?”

  “Pig!” she spat at him.

  He would make it last longer.

  The roaring panic in Elizabeth’s head almost drowned out the sound of the door as it was kicked open and smashed against the wall. But it startled Reed, who looked thither from attempting to pintle Mrs. Darcy, to be greeted by the unthinkably harrowing sight of Mr. Darcy himself. And he did not appear to be in a forgiving mood.

  Instinct told Reed that this was a situation demanding immediate offensive. Expertly, he flung his beloved knife at Mr. Darcy’s head. For a man unused to attack, Darcy parried the stroke quite adeptly. Hence, with a quivering thud, the dagger sank to its shank in the soft wood of the doorpost. As he rarely missed, Reed simultaneously reared and reached for his pistol, preparing to exact a coup de grace.

  Instead, and to Reed’s obvious and decided horror, Darcy drew a sabre. The stinging jangle it made as it was pulled from its scabbard made Reed’s teeth hurt.

  It was thus that the breadth betwixt them was cut in half.

  With not a moment of contemplation, and in the space of two long steps, Darcy ran Reed through. With such force did he render the puncture, his sword bypassed Reed’s backbone and pinned his body to the wall. His hand on the hilt, and the hilt at Reed’s gut, Darcy looked directly in Reed’s gaping eyes as he ground the blade deeper. The stabee opened his mouth as if to speak, but he produced nothing more than a trickle of frothy blood and a gagging sound.

  Putting his boot against Reed’s body, it took both hands for him to retrieve his sabre. He did not watch Reed’s body fall to the floor, nor see it twitch in the spasms of death.

  He saw not, for he had turned to Elizabeth.

  Neither spoke. She did not by reason of dumbfounded astonishment. His silence came by way of yet unadulterated, heaving rage. But betwixt them passed a moment of satisfied concurrence.

  At last, he reached out and clasped her to him. To do so, he used but one hand. The other yet encased the bloodied sword in an icy grip.

  “Lizzy, Lizzy,” he said, crushing his face to hers, “Thanks be to God.”

  She knew she was almost blubbering, but could not stop herself, “Darcy oh Darcy oh Darcy oh Darcy.”

  “Can you stand?”

  She nodded her head, but when he lifted her from the filthy bed, her legs buckled. Hence, with him having not relinquished the sword, she wrapped her arms about his neck and he half carried her back into the tavern room. He surveyed the occupants surrounding Frank Reed (who had divested himself of his wig, but stood, in obvious ignominy, still wearing the Darcy livery).

  “Who else was it, Lizzy?”

  With a wavering hand, she pointed to Lewis. If Darcy recognised Lewis as the contemptible poltroon who de-toothed Bingley’s boxer, it was not evident. The single reaction he had upon this introduction was outwardly benign. But for a man of Lewis’ recent vocation, when Darcy lowered his chin, the gesture was not misunderstood.

  A reckoning was to occur.

  Both bandits stood taut, eyeing Darcy’s blade. Abruptly, and with considerable ferocity, Darcy flung his bloodied sabre down. It hit with a clank, then rolled against the wall, leaving a splattering crimson trail across the floor. The discarding of that gruesome weapon, even in so violent a fashion, led Lewis and Frank Reed to hold the hope their fate would not be so immediate as Tom’s. They clung to that faith even when Darcy recognised the gold encrusted handle of his father’s Catalonian over-and-under pistol in Lewis’ waistband.

  But Lewis did take a little half-step backward when he yanked it out.

  Retribution was not to wait. Hesitating just long enough to check the load, Darcy drew Elizabeth’s face to his chest. He thereupon shot Lewis and then Frank Reed squarely in the head. So rapidly did he fire, neither man elected a reaction, save for the resultant mist of blood.

  Without another word, followed resolutely by a postilion whose loyalty would evermore be incontrovertible, Darcy and Elizabeth quitted the tavern.

  The people in the room stood in stunned silence for full half a minute. No one dared move until the horses pounded away. Then, one man alone walked over to the sword lying by the baseboard. He picked it up. The others in the room stood still as stones, their gapes not wrested from the two corpses at their feet. When the man raised the sword and drew his gaze the length of it, the other patrons in the room then did as well. Thereupon, they all, as if by pre-decision, turned to the room from whence Darcy and Elizabeth had come. However, it would be a few more minutes before any would venture a look.

  38

  Mrs. Annesley was nearly beside herself when the hack delivered her back from Bexley at half-past eleven when she knew the appointed time of departure for Pemberley was nine. The woman was horrified to be the perpetrator of any disruption of the Darcy plans and had readied a profusion of apologies, explanations, and excuses. However, she saw she had not to invoke any to the Darcys, for their coach had not waited. It was unnecessary for her even to enter the house, because Goodwin was sitting impatiently in the coach, thus emphasising her tardiness.

  Gratefully he did not denounce her lack of punctuality, but his pursed lips announced his displeasure as surely as had he carped.

  Goodwin was unhappy to have to wait for the old woman. He would have much preferred to travel with Mr. Darcy. However, Mrs. Annesley was an agreeable enough woman (she did not have much to say). Thus he harboured no extreme regret in the assignment of escorting her, save for the peculiarly mouldy odour she emitted. That scent abused the most easily offended of his five, finely-honed senses.

  When bound for London, Mr. Darcy, Mrs. Darcy, Miss Darcy, and Mrs. Annesley had ridden in the first coach. Hannah Moorhouse, Anne Wright, and he rode in the second directly behind them. Mr. Darcy was thereupon a married man and Goodwin knew he had to accustom himself to their new mode of travel. But riding with mere maids sullied his also pronounced amour propre. (Goodwin had few subtle sensibilities.)

  Though his supercilious demeanour intimidated Anne, Hannah was another matter. Since becoming lady-maid to Mrs. Darcy, she had become somewhat of a bother to him. She was far too garrulous and inquisitive. She inquired of his health. She inquired if he favoured the weather. The dinner. The…whatever. That his reply was seldom more than a grunt did nothing to deter her. Her loquacity, however, did not extend beyond mundane matters. She revealed not one iota of Mrs. Darcy’s privacy.

  This was a trial to Goodwin, for nothing would have given him greater pleasure than to report such a transgression to Mrs. Reynolds. Had that come to pass, Hannah Moorhouse would be gone from service within an hour. But that was her saving grace. Her discretion was compleat about the Darcys and their doings. He had never learned of a single utterance that betrayed their privacy. Hence, he had forgiven her need of conversation and continued to grunt disapproval and murmur his agreement to her endless inquiries.

  Goodwin was a terse, solitary soul by inclination as well as occupation. As a manservant, he knew to keep his position he could never expect to marry. That had never presented any sort of disadvantage of employment for him. He had never had much interest in women. True, he loved his mother unequivocally. He admired his aunt’s (Mrs. Reynolds) strength of mind. But the chambermaids were fligh
ty and sometimes crude. He despised coarseness in women. He despised coarseness in men as well. He supposed he simply despised coarseness.

  If he held her lady-maid as somewhat a nuisance, one might have fancied Goodwin had held additional resentment upon the intrusion of Mrs. Darcy into Mr. Darcy’s life. On the contrary, he believed Mrs. Darcy to be quite beautiful and refined. Refined, but not exactly sedate. He admired sedateness, but not nearly as much as he despised coarseness. In his mind, sedateness could be disregarded altogether when it was replaced by such unaffected charm. Moreover, she never failed to speak to him. As he was used to being regarded by women as part of the wallpaper, it was not surprising he found himself somewhat besotted with her.

  This esteem had unequivocally and absolutely nothing whatever to do with the glimpse he caught of her in a soaking night-dress. Indeed, the entire matter of that little incident in Mr. Darcy’s dressing room was exceedingly unfortunate. Goodwin had been so mortified at his unpropitious entry to the bath that his heart did not return to a normal beat for days.

  He and Mr. Darcy had acted alone and in concert for so long, he had quite instinctively responded to the sound of disorder. So far as Goodwin knew (and he should know better than anyone save Mr. Darcy himself), there had never, ever, been a lady in his master’s bath. Clearly, what constituted Mr. Darcy’s privacy had altered irrevocably.

  They had been more than two hours leaving London behind the Darcy coach. A small, if bitter, pill to swallow was their lapse meant their coach’s trip across the West End avenues was travelled singularly. Nothing was quite so satisfying to Goodwin as the looks of awe that identical coaches in tandem incited amongst the spectating minions. It was possible their driver had similar pretensions, for he urged the horses forward more vigorously than usual, as if to overtake the first coach upon the road.