“If he cannot be trusted, then he must be punished. Kirby has seen things, Nan, and if he was loyal, then I would not be worried. But he has run off with the aid of your Mr Darcy.” He came near, pointing at her again with the blade. “He crossed me, and people who cross me are punished.”
Lady Catherine would be humiliated for her involvement with the smugglers, but that would not help Markle financially. He delayed meeting with Darcy just to distress him, but that would not satisfy Markle. Maybe he wanted money in return, the money he did not get from her ladyship.
“Then, you must want a ransom since you could get no money for Miss de Bourgh?” she asked hopefully. “Mr Darcy will pay for me. You need only name your price,” she pleaded.
Markle shook his head as though he was a tutor and she was a disappointing pupil. “What I care about is watching his heart break as the light goes out from your eyes.”
The dread was nearly overpowering. She was so afraid that she was unable to even be absolutely overset. She ought to burst into tears, sob aloud and scream. She was going to die here, but she still held an irrational hope that she could talk Markle out of what he intended to do to her.
She could not fall to pieces. It would only give him more satisfaction. She had not lost her composure when she was abducted before, and she had to believe that it was because of some mettle of her own, and not just because Darcy had been with her.
“You won’t exchange us?” she whispered, already knowing the answer and not wanting it to be true.
“Kirby cannot tell tales about me,” Markle said, looking at the blade. “Colton and Conway will get him from Mr Darcy when they come. But Mr Darcy wronged me by helping Kirby, just like his aunt did by reneging on our deal. I am operating a business, and loyalty and respect are at its core.”
He took another step and held the blade flat against her face. “Lady Catherine will be ruined in her social circle, but how to show that a man like Mr Darcy has no sway over me and my business? Mr Darcy and people like him have a lesson to learn.” He tapped the blade against her cheek, and she whimpered. “Maybe I will use this little knife to do it. Pretty eyes you have, Nan.”
The terror struck her that Markle intended to cut them out and make Darcy watch.
There was a noise from outside, from behind the building and not from the water. They both started, and Markle cursed and withdrew the knife. It sounded like muffled voices and then loud footsteps rapidly moving away. Elizabeth wonderedif, by some means, Darcy and the excise officers had found her already.
She and Markle held each other’s gaze for a long moment before Elizabeth opened her mouth to cry for help.
“Dar—”
Markle gave her another swift smack in the mouth. She tasted the blood just as Markle shoved her gag back into place, securing it tightly.
“Colton!” Markle yelled down the stairs. “Go see what that is.”
“Likely a dock worker,” Conway called back up as Colton went outside.
He held onto the knife for an excruciatingly terrifying moment before folding it. “Expecting someone to help you? How would anyone know where you are?” Markle looked at her, but of course, she could not answer. His dead-eyed stare was frightening, and he seemed to deliberate. Whatever he was considering, Elizabeth knew with horrifying certainty it would not be good for her. “Time to move you a little way, Nan, just in case. Conway, I have a task for you.”
He tugged her by her bound wrists to the stairs, and Elizabeth’s stomach sank. She and Darcy had got everything wrong. Markle did not want an exchange or money. He only cared about power and control. He wanted to punish the people who had defied him, and he did that by harming those they cared about. Kirby had run and Darcy had helped, and now Markle would see her and Kirby die for it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Darcy and the excise officers were at the end of the commercial road that led to the wood yard. He knew the Thames River Police had a few boats on the water to prevent Markle from escaping, but he still felt like they ought to have twice as many men as they did. Eight men with pistols, daggers, and an arrest warrant no longer felt like enough to get Elizabeth back. Mr Sullivan wanted to wait for it to get darker to make their attack, and the waiting was driving Darcy to distraction.
The dread of some calamity preventing them from preserving her from Markle weighed on him. He looked down the road toward the timber shed. Elizabeth was a quarter mile away. If anything happened to her, he would never forgive himself. They had formed this plan in a sense of desperate urgency, desperate to protect Georgiana and Kirby—and it had made sense at the time—but now he regretted every choice attending to it.
“Give me your pistols,” Fitzwilliam said, startling him.
“What?” he cried in a low voice. “Are you mad?”
His cousin beckoned with his hand. “You are shaking with some sort of nervous energy. A pistol in your hands is a bad idea.”
“I am a decent shot.” Markle would leave here in shackles or laid out in the back of a wagon. Any other option was unacceptable. If Markle walked away, that would mean that Elizabeth had put herself in danger for nothing.
“Could you truly aim and hit anything right now?” his cousin pressed.
“Of course I could.” He could hit Markle in the chest and then apologise to the excise men for denying them the privilege of a trial.
Fitzwilliam reached into Darcy’s coat and removed one of his pistols. Darcy let him, but withdrew the other and held a firm grip on it.
“You don’t need a pistol. Your only job is to talk to Markle, lure him out and distract him so these men can surround and arrest him.”
“If Elizabeth?—”
