“You do not think Mr Collins wrote to Longbourn to say that we ran off together? I know the truth will come out in the end, but I hate the idea of my father’s anger and my mother’s enthusiasm.”
Mrs Bennet would talk to all and sundry of the jewels and pin money Mrs Darcy would have when she returned fromGretna Green. “I doubt that Lady Catherine would be eager for that rumour to get abroad. She likely ordered Mr Collins to stay silent for the present. He seems the sort of man to follow such a directive.”
“True,” she said with a sigh. “And Mr Collins is not the sort to pursue us.”
“My cousin might,” Darcy mused. “Lady Catherine might demand that he speak to every tollkeeper on the road north and try to find us.”
“Colonel Fitzwilliam must wonder at the idea of any woman eloping with you.” Darcy narrowed his eyes, but she shook her head. “No, I mean you are the sort of man no father would refuse. Why would you need to elope? You could ask any?—”
She broke off, of course remembering that he could not askanywoman and be accepted. “So, now I am an eligible man?” he said as lightly as he could and trying to smile.
Elizabeth’s cheeks were pink, but although she avoided his eye, she did playfully push her shoulder into his. He smiled. It was a friendly gesture, something she would not have done two days ago.
Were they friends?He might have thought they were before Hunsford, but she had only thought of them as acquaintances, and with no fondness between them. But now they had a connexion, a closeness, a companionship through this experience that he felt certain nothing could break.
“How distressed will your family be if they think you eloped?” she asked while stroking his fingers with her other hand. He wondered if she realised what she was doing. “Lady Catherine would be enraged, of course. What about Colonel Fitzwilliam? Would he be afraid you had been taken in by a poor woman?”
Darcy thought that before what happened last summer at Ramsgate, Fitzwilliam would have laughed until he turned blueat the idea of him eloping, and from Lady Catherine’s house, no less. Eloping could not be as amusing a prospect now, but this was not the time to tell Elizabeth what had happened to his sister and Wickham.
“Fitzwilliam would be astonished,” he finally said, “but like your friend Mrs Collins, I think he suspected my partiality, so only the act of fleeing to Scotland would shock him, not my choice.”
They heard people moving around the house, and the general noise and conversation below them grew louder. He and Elizabeth exchanged a worried look. She squeezed his hand, and he gripped hers tightly and held it in his lap.
“Would Miss de Bourgh be disappointed if you married elsewhere?” she asked, as though their conversation had not just been interrupted by the realisation—and fear—that they would soon face their violent captors.
“Only in the way a child is disappointed when another child takes their toy that they were not even using.” She laughed at his wry reply. “Anne must accept that I won’t marry her. I have told her, and my behaviour toward her should also speak to that, but until I leave the registry with a bride on my arm, she assumes she can have me because her mother said so.”
Despite the tread on the stairs, Darcy hoped it was not impossible that someday that bride could be the woman next to him.
The door was unlocked, and once again a maid came in to clean and Kirby stood to the side. He shifted his feet and avoided meeting their eye. “My uncle is here,” he said, gesturing with his shoulder toward the door. “He says you are both to come down, and to not give him a reason to send Steamer up to make you.”
They both rose, and Darcy gave her hand a firm squeeze, reluctant to let it go.
“Ready, Anne?” he asked as steadily as he could.
“Ready, Darcy.”
Chapter Six
Elizabeth went down the stairs, with Darcy and the boy Kirby directly behind her. She had hazy memories of entering the house, and it took her a moment to orient herself. One entered the house almost directly into a parlour, but that room was just as cluttered as the upstairs was. To her right was a dining room, and in there were all the men involved in the crime.
She noticed Darcy take a long look at the front door, but Kirby came up behind him and herded both of them into the dining room before sidling off to sit in the corner. The men with the carriage from yesterday, Colton and Conway, were standing on either side of the door. Steamer, still with a clay pipe clenched between his teeth, leant against the far wall with his arms crossed over his chest.
An unknown person sat at the head of the table, elbows on it and chin resting on his hands.
Markle seemed about thirty-five with a hardened look. He was blue-eyed like his nephew, and not tall, and when he looked up, he gave the appearance that a brutal life had cut up his youth. He did not rise when they entered, only stared at her with a gaze that passed a chill down her spine.
“Miss de Bourgh, I trust you slept well?”
The rest of the men laughed, and she supposed they had all taken amusement in forcing her and Darcy to share a bed. Elizabeth curtly nodded. One of the men by the door pushed Darcy into a chair, and Elizabeth reached for one next to him before they forced her into it.
“No, you come here,” Markle said. His voice was as cold as his look. She wanted to sit by Darcy, as far away from this man as possible. But that would only lead to Steamer drawing his knife. Compliance was the key to their survival. She came around the table and stood before Markle.
“You are rather young-looking. I thought you were near to thirty.”
She had not expected anyone to disbelieve that she was Anne de Bourgh before she opened her mouth. Elizabeth looked at Markle steadily and said, “I am near to the same age as my cousin Darcy.”
Markle turned his frigid gaze to Darcy before snapping it back to her. “I understood you to be a sickly opium eater approaching the years of danger. You are heartier and more good-looking than reported.”
