Page 4 of Mr. Darcy’s Victorious Bride

On the stairs, Elizabeth heard the singing.

It came thin and rough through the sickroom door, pushed out of a mouth that would only half obey. A hymn. Rock of Ages. The same four bars Lady Catherine had sung for weeks, over and over. The words past the fourth bar would not come. She would not go on to another song until she had conquered this one. That was her ladyship all over. She did not retreat. She battered.

The door stood ajar. Elizabeth paused on the landing. She did not go in.

Anne de Bourgh sat beside the bed, one hand on her mother's arm. Mrs. Jenkinson was settling the pillows. Lady Catherine lay propped against the bolsters, her left side slack, her right hand fisted in the coverlet. Her eyes were open, and they were furious.

That was what everyone forgot, or chose not to see. The apoplexy had halved her ladyship's body and left her mind entire. She was in there still, whole and raging, behind a face that drooped and a tongue that had turned traitor.

The singing stopped. Lady Catherine's right hand opened and closed on the coverlet, twisting the cloth while she strained for words.

Anne looked up and saw her in the doorway. Something crossed her face. Shame, perhaps, or the fierce protectiveness of a daughter who did not want her mother seen so reduced. And by Elizabeth, of all people in the world!

Anne rose. She came to the door and stood in the gap, her back to the bed, and lowered her voice. "Mrs. Darcy?" she whispered. "My mother is not... not at her best just now."

"I had no intention of disturbing her," Elizabeth returned. "But it seems she is, perhaps, improving?"

"She sang through a different hymn this morning," Anne said. "This was meant to be her third."

"And at night?" Elizabeth asked, as low. She had heard sounds through the wall these past nights. Not singing. Something harder.

Anne glanced over her shoulder. Mrs. Jenkinson, small and gray and steady, was smoothing the blanket over Lady Catherine's curled left hand.

"At night she tries to speak," Anne said. "Words, not song. Mrs. Jenkinson sits up with her. She says it costs her." Anne's voice dropped further. "She waits until she believes we are asleep. She does not want anyone to hear her fail."

The words landed somewhere Elizabeth had not braced. Was that not exactly what she had done with Lydia's notes? Kept the whole business hidden rather than let anyone watch her fail at it? What a thing to have that in common with Lady Catherine de Bourgh!

Past Anne's shoulder, Lady Catherine's right hand had gone still on the coverlet. Her eyes were on the door. She had heard every word.

Elizabeth met them. Lady Catherine looked back.

Neither of them spoke. What was there to say? Between them lay the cellar, the chain, the brand, and the shot that felled the woman who had ordered it all. Lady Catherine had hired the man who ruined them both. A fortnight since, Fitzwilliam had brought her from Rosings against her surgeon's word, so no one could bury her in Kent. Now she lay in a bed belonging to the nephew she had wronged, tended by his servants, unable to command so much as her own lips.

Elizabeth kept her gaze locked with the lady's. Looking away would have been pity, and her ladyship would sooner have taken poison than pity. Lady Catherine's lips moved. A single raw sound came out, guttural, effortful, a word or the ghost of one. Her eyes never left Elizabeth's face.

Then she closed them. Dismissal. Half-paralyzed in a borrowed bed, and still the woman knew how to dismiss a visitor.

Elizabeth's breath had gone shallow. She did not want to take pleasure in the woman's misfortune. And a part of her did. Not so much at Lady Catherine's suffering, but more that the lady now understood what it meant to be a captive. To understand betrayal. Elizabeth was not Jane. She did not easily forgive. But she could not bring herself to gloat or worsen Lady Catherine's suffering. So Elizabeth made herself walk on.

What was her ladyship building in the dark, with her four bars of hymn and her secret midnight words? Whatever it was, it would keep. It would have to. Elizabeth had a sister to find.

In her own chamber she dressed quickly, dark traveling dress, sturdy boots, her short curls pinned back without ceremony. She did not look at the bed, still rumpled from the first honest sleep she had had in weeks. That bed belonged to a different woman. A woman who had been free for one whole evening.

My dearest George.

Lydia had sixteen years and a head full of ribbons, and she believed a man loved her. Elizabeth had believed worse things of better men.

She took the stairs at a pace no lady would own to, and went down to find her husband. The box first. Then London, or Scotland, or wherever the road led.

And heaven help George Wickham when they found him!

CHAPTER 2

Darcy sealed the express to Mr. Gardiner and rang for a servant. "I require the fastest rider in the stables," he ordered. "He must leave at once, and he will not stop until he reaches Gracechurch Street."

The man took the letter and went. Darcy unfolded the map of England across the blotter. He measured distances with the span of his hand, and every measurement made matters worse. If Wickham had left at seven or eight last evening, and if he had hired a post-chaise, he could have been in London by midnight. And if London was not the destination but only the waypoint?

Where did a man take a girl he had no intention of marrying?