Page 13 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

They did not find her. They searched until the light failed, which in October meant half-five. Every lodging house and public house east of Cheapside gave back the same answer. No, sir. No one like that. Try the next street.

How were they to search all of London? They could not. They knocked at the next door.

Mr. Bennet came in at eight, wet to the bone, his boots ruined, with nothing to show for it. He would not take the pallet Mrs. Gardiner made up for him. He sat in the chair by the fire with his eyes open.

Upstairs, in the Gardiners' narrow spare room, Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed. She pressed her palms to her temples. "I keep thinking of the separate rooms," she said. "Braithwaite did not want Lydia ruined. He wanted the appearance of ruin. The scandal, not the act. She is a weapon to him, and a weapon must be kept in working condition."

Darcy sat down beside her. The bed creaked. "That is the most ruthless observation I have heard today. And I have been making ruthless observations since dawn."

"I have had half a year's practice at thinking like him. I do not recommend it."

She slept. He did not. A letter came for him in the night, by hand. In the night? Before Mrs. Bennet had so much as found Lydia's bed empty? Graves had not moved Wickham in answer to the search. He had moved him before it began.

Mr. Bennet was gone by half-six. His note lay on the hall table in his neat hand. Gone out. Drury Lane and south. Do not wait breakfast on me.

They sat in the kitchen while Mrs. Gardiner made coffee. Elizabeth came down dressed quick, curls brushed but not pinned. "I search too," she said, before Darcy could open his mouth. "A different quarter. Wickham is hiding, but Lydia does not know how. She will not sit quietly in a room for long. She will tease him to take her out, and George Wickham never refused a chance to be admired. A loud young woman with no ring, on a handsome man's arm, buying ribbons? Some milliner will remember her!"

It was true. Lydia was the visible half of the pair. "Take your uncle with you."

"I will take my aunt. She knows the shopkeepers in this part of town, and a woman asking after a young woman draws no attention at all. A man of your bearing asking the same questions draws a crowd."

Darcy opened his mouth. Closed it. Was she ever wrong?

He sent his note to his solicitor by one of his own men. Then he worked the streets between Covent Garden and the Strand. Fourteen establishments between eight and noon. Coffee houses where gentlemen read newspapers and pretended not to gamble. Taverns where they gave up pretending. The same shake of the head at every door.

At the billiards room the proprietor leaned on his cue rack. "Fair-haired, handsome, spends freely? Sir, you have described half my custom!" He found this very droll. Darcy did not.

At noon a boy came to Gracechurch Street with a note from Mr. Bennet. Found a tavern keeper near Drury Lane who remembers a fair-haired man with a loud young wife. They took rooms two streets away, above a chandler's shop. Going there now.

Darcy went out fast. He found Mr. Bennet in a narrow street that smelled of tallow, staring up at dark windows over a chandler's shop.

"Gone," Mr. Bennet said flatly. "One night. A man came for them this morning in a hired carriage."

This morning. Again! Hours ahead of them, again. "He is being told where we search," Darcy said.

"How?"

"You asked your questions round Drury Lane all yesterday. This shop stands two streets from the tavern that remembered you. Graves does not need to follow us. He has only to pay a shilling to a pot-boy. Has anyone been asking? We leave a trail of our own questions, and he reads it. Every time we come within a street of Wickham, he pulls them another mile."

Mr. Bennet took off his spectacles and cleaned them. But when he set them back on his nose, his eyes behind the glass were harder than Darcy had ever seen them. "Then we stop chasing and start thinking. Where does Graves put them next?"

"Somewhere we have not looked. South of the river. Southwark, the Borough."

"Then that is where I go tomorrow."

"Mr. Bennet. You have been awake thirty-six hours."

"I am aware. My knees have told me so at every stair." The look permitted no argument. "She is sixteen, and she is alone with a man who was paid to take her. Every hour I sleep, she spends believing that man loves her."

"Then sleep a few of them, sir, so that you are some use to her when you find her."

Mr. Bennet was quiet a moment. "Four hours," he said at last. "Not one more. And you will not tell Lizzy I agreed so easily."

Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner were in the parlor when they came in, and Elizabeth's face gave the answer before her mouth did. "Nothing! Not a shop nor a lodging house between here and Whitechapel." She sat. "Lydia has never stayed indoors willingly in her life, Fitzwilliam. Somebody is keeping her in." She drew a breath. "But my aunt made a useful observation. Tell him, Aunt."

Mrs. Gardiner drew out her bonnet pin. "A man moving a young couple twice in two days is spending money. Hired carriages. Advance payments to landlords who ask no questions. That is not Wickham's money, and no solicitor bears such costs out of his own pocket. Graves is billing somebody. And where there is billing, there is a paper trail."

Not useful today. Very useful the day the prosecution opened.