“Anyway, no, I’m not going to explain what this is about,” I said brightly. “How about that?”
“What is Miss Bennet doing here?” he said. “Why are the two of you together and alone and you without a shirt or waistcoat or jacket?”
“We’re married,” put in Elizabeth, giving me a soft smile.
Oh, that was lovely. I wanted to kiss her again. I just smiled at her instead, a particularly silly and affected smile.
“What do you mean, you’re married?” The colonel was horrified. “How could you have gotten married?Whencould you have gotten married? Anyway, you can’t marry her. She’s socially beneath you and entirely the wrong sort of wife for you.”
I laughed, twining my fingers with Elizabeth’s. “She is my perfect match, in fact. Strong in all the places I’m weak, excited in all the places I’m timid, steadfast when I am unsure, and I also think it’s really adorable that she’s frightened of horses.”
“I am not frightened of horses,” she informed the colonel. “He’s just making that up.”
I threw back my head and laughed.
She moved close as we walked, bumping her shoulder against mine. “Have I told you I loved you, Will Darcy?”
“I loveyou,” I said. “Most ardently.”
And perhaps we shouldn’t have been doing that, because we weren’t paying attention when Mr. Wickham popped out from behind a shrubbery. This meant that when he leaped on Colonel Fitzwilliam, we were making eyes at each other.
So, then, Richard and Wickham were grappling in the grass over the colonel’s gun.
I tried to get into the fray to assist, but Wickham threw me off and wrenched the gun away from the colonel. He staggered backwards, pointing the weapon at him, pulling back the hammer to cock it. “Don’t move, colonel.”
Richard raised his hands slowly. “You’ve got one shot there, Wickham. You could take me out but what will that—”
Bang.
Richard’s head jerked back.
I tackled Wickham.
He tossed the gun aside and then we went over and over in the grass.
I punched him in the face.
He kneed me in the side.
I was over him, squeezing his neck as Elizabeth told me that we must keep him alive or he would be away from us.
Then he was over me, digging his fingers into hollow soft parts of my flesh.
I punched him again.
She leaped on his back and wrapped an arm around his neck.
Together, we subdued him.
We used the colonel’s jacket to tie Wickham’s hands behind his back.
“You didn’t have to shoot Colonel Fitzwilliam,” Elizabeth said to him, furious.
“He’s not even really dead,” said Wickham. “Must we have this conversation again?”
“Shut up,” said Elizabeth. She rounded on me. “We need to keep him someplace secure, someplace he can’t get out of, someplace where we can be close by and keep an eye on him.”
I thought this through. “There’s the dowager house. No one lives there, and I daresay we could find somewhere to lock him up.”
