“Mother! Oh God, Mother is dead!” Caroline’s voice carried clearly across the now-silent ballroom.
Darcy pushed his way through the tumult of shrieking ladies and sputtering gentlemen. Servants dropped trays, and glasses shattered on the polished floor.
“Stand aside!” Darcy commanded as he gripped Georgiana’s arm protectively.
Mrs. Amelia Bingley lay crumpled beside the refreshment table. A shattered glass littered the floor next to her, and her Roman matron costume was spread over the spilled punch. Caroline knelt beside her, sobbing hysterically as she clutched her mother’s limp hand. “She’s gone! She was perfectly well just moments ago!”
Charles Bingley stumbled drunkenly forward. “Mother. It can’t be.”
Darcy dropped to his knees opposite Caroline, pressing his fingers to Mrs. Bingley’s throat while leaning his ear close to her parted lips. For a terrifying moment, he detected nothing—then, almost imperceptible, the faintest stirring of breath against his cheek and the weakest thread of a pulse beneath his fingertips.
“She’s not dead,” he announced, straightening up. “But she has been poisoned. Someone fetch Dr. Wilson immediately.”
A footman dashed off as murmurs rippled through the assembled onlookers. Mrs. Bennet’s voice rose above the din. “Poisoned! At Pemberley! Oh, my poor nerves cannot bear such excitement!”
Charles caught Mrs. Hurst, who’d fainted, dropping to his knees beside his mother. His knightly armor clankedto the floor. “She… she had some punch. Martha Wickham brought it to her—no, to me. She asked me to bring it to Mother as a peace offering after some disagreement.”
“Martha Wickham,” Darcy repeated, ice forming in his veins as he scanned the room. “Where is she now?”
“I don’t see her,” Georgiana whispered, her eyes wide with fear. “Nor George Wickham. I heard her say Rose Cottage.”
“We have to go after her,” Darcy said, certainty growing with every moment. “This poisoning was meant to remove the last witness to her crime.”
A collective gasp arose from the assembled guests. Mrs. Bennet pushed through the crowd with surprising force, her feathered costume trembling with maternal fury.
“That woman has taken my Lizzy?” Her voice rose to near-shriek levels. “Where is Rose Cottage? We must go immediately!”
“Indeed.” He turned to a footman. “Have my horse saddled and torches prepared.”
“Count me in as well,” slurred Charles, swaying slightly but resolute. “Mother always said Martha was dangerous, but I never thought… poor Elizabeth, trapped with such a creature.”
“I shall charge in there with my bare hands,” Mrs. Bennet declared. “She will not harm my daughter.”
“And me!” Lydia pushed forward, her gypsy costume inappropriate for nighttime rescue operations. “Lizzy is my sister, and I won’t let that horrible woman hurt her.”
“You cannot stop me,” Georgiana argued with a determined tilt of her head. “Elizabeth is my friend and cousin. I shall walk if I have to.”
Darcy recognized the stubborn set of her jaw—a Darcy family trait that he knew from personal experience was impossible to overcome. “You will remain in the carriage at all times,” he capitulated. “And if I say retreat, you will obey without question.”
“Agreed.”
Darcy surveyed this unlikely assembly of volunteers—adistraught mother, a drunk gentleman, an overdressed gypsy, his teenage sister, and several officers whose military training might prove useful. Not the rescue party he would have chosen, but time was crucial.
“Very well,” he decided. “We shall require carriages for speed and lanterns for light. Those with military experience, bring whatever weapons you can manage. We depart immediately.”
He hoped they weren’t too late. Every moment of delay might cost Elizabeth her life—or her honor, which in society’s eyes amounted to the same thing. The thought of her trapped with a woman capable of murder, facing forced marriage to George Wickham, filled him with rage so pure it burned away every other consideration.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE ROSE COTTAGE TRAP
Elizabeth’s headthrobbed from where it had been struck, and her wrists were still bound when a man dressed as a skeletal ghoul removed the hood from her head. She blinked at the scene in front of her, not at all surprised. So, this was the endgame.
She had been brought to the very place where her parents had died—where her life had changed course before she was old enough to remember it. Seated on a settee in Rose Cottage’s main room, she was surrounded by a collection of masked refugees from Caroline’s All Hallows’ Eve Assembly.
Martha Wickham loomed before her in the black robes and white face paint of a grieving widow—an ironic choice, Elizabeth reflected, considering the woman had likely created more widows than she had ever been one herself. George Wickham lurked in the shadows, his pirate costume now seeming less dashing than menacing in the flickering candlelight. Most disturbing was Thomas Rumsey, garbed as Death incarnate with skeletal face paint and a hooded black cloak that made him appear to have stepped directly from a medieval morality play. Madame Evro, the fortune teller, stood near the fireplace, warmingher hands.
Across from her sat none other than her father’s cousin, Mr. Collins. He was tied to a chair and looking as though he might expire from sheer terror.
