“Coast is clear. Go out the back way, though. Don’t want things stirred up again.” He remained in the door, waiting for them to leave. Darcy looked at Elizabeth; she had both hands to her brow, shielding her eyes, and would not look at him.
“I think it best if you forego your plans for today and leave,” he said gently.
She glanced at him fleetingly, her mortification unmistakable, then nodded and walked past him out of the door with her head still bowed. He followed her out and along the passage. Both came up short when a familiar face rounded the corner, almost colliding with them.
“Mrs Randall! What are you doing here?” Elizabeth cried.
Mrs Randall groaned. “You again? What do you want this time?”
“The same as always—to speak to my mother.”
“She is not here.”
“Your maid said she was,” Elizabeth insisted.
Mrs Randall raised an eyebrow. “I told Maggie not to talk to you under any circumstances. Shove your way into my home again, did you?”
Elizabeth cast another quick, blushing look at Darcy, clearly yet more embarrassed. “No, I did not, and neither was I let in. Maggie merely informed me that my mother was meeting a friend here and shut the door—oh!” Her shoulders slumped. “She said ‘she’ is meeting a friend. She was talking about you.”
“It looks that way, does it not?” Mrs Randall replied in a condescending tone. With a self-important sniff, she stepped around them and walked towards the taproom.
Elizabeth closed her eyes, her countenance suffused with misery. Darcy hated to see her thus but did not wish to miss the opportunity.
“Wait here for one moment,” he said to her before striding after Mrs Randall, who was seriously displeased to be waylaid again.
“Whom are you here with?” he demanded, certain he already knew the answer.
“I do not see what business it is of yours,” Mrs Randall replied. With a sneer, she added, “Most of us like to keep our personal affairs private, not broadcast them in the newspapers.”
“That is well,” he replied, not deigning to acknowledge her barb. “Perhaps I shall ask Mr Redbridge whom you keep company with when you are not with him.”
Her lips puckered with displeasure. “Have it your way. I have heard you usually do. I was meeting Mr Bingley. Now if it is all the same to you, I have somewhere else to be. Good day.”
Darcy shook his head in disbelief at the trail of carnage Bingley was leaving in his wake. He walked back to where he had left Elizabeth, only to discover that she had gone.
“Devil take it!” He hastened to the end of the passage. It opened onto the courtyard, which was overrun with people, horses, carriages, luggage, and hay bales—but no sign of Elizabeth. He had taken but two steps into the yard when a voice off to his left stopped him in his tracks. There, at the booking office counter, stood Bingley, settling his account in readiness to leave. Keeping an eye out for Elizabeth, Darcy strode to his side.
Bingley cast him an irritated look, evidently mistaking him for someone too impatient to wait his turn; then he jumped and looked again, shamefaced and wide-eyed.
“Darcy!” Blotches of red flared up on his cheeks and neck as he fumbled a handful of coins onto the counter and stepped to the side. “Why are you here?”
“Strange, I was about to ask you that.”
Bingley blustered for a moment, then blurted, “Damn it, Darcy, I will not keep explaining myself to you—you are my friend, not my father! I do not require your approval.”
“That is fortunate, for you certainly do not have it. Tell me this much—has it been Mrs Randall with whom you have been dallying this whole time?”
“What do you mean?”
“As opposed to her house guest.”
Bingley recoiled. “For heaven’s sake, man, I am not a monster! That happened once. It was an egregious mistake, which I have not and would not repeat.” He bristled, his tone growing sharper. “Frankly, I am growing tired of your sanctimony. By all accounts, you have enough problems of your own to contend with. I suggest you deal with those before berating me!” He squared his shoulders and strode away.
Darcy let him go. He would rather look for Elizabeth than waste his time on an obviously defunct friendship, and he was too angry to treat the man rationally. After a furious search, he spotted Elizabeth climbing into a yellow bounder on the street.
“Miss Bennet, wait!”
She looked over her shoulder, dismay writ plainly across her features. “Mr Darcy, I am not without courage, but even I can only endure so much humiliation in one day. Please let me go.”
