“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he said. “But Anderssen and me thought you ought to know. There’s some shady coves been hanging around all day, town-bred by the looks of ’em. One of’em was in the Eagle asking about the young lady.” He hitched his head towards the bedrooms upstairs. “And one of ’em ’as been hanging around in the lane out back.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Elizabeth sat down heavily. “We just walked back from the rectory in the dark,” she said weakly.
“Never you mind about that, ma’am. We knew the vicar’d send his man with you with a light, and me and Anderssen have been walking up and down the lane with a dark lantern, making out we thought someone was after the ’ens. ’Oo ever were out there hooked it sharpish.” He saw her looking at him and added, “Ran away.”
Elizabeth did her best to cudgel her brains into life. “And they were asking for Miss Darcy by name?”
“Yes’m and they described her to a T. They’ve ordered a chaise to be ready as soon as they call for it. The captain, well, ’e warned Anderssen there might be trouble from ’is brother from up North. We reckon—Anderssen and me—that they’re mebbe sent by him to take her back.
“Do you know how many of them there are?”
“We think there’s only two,” he replied, “a bandy-legged cove with a catskin waistcoat and a big, nasty-looking piece o’ work in corduroy breeches—prize-fighting sort. O’ course there’s mebbe more we ’aven’t seen.”
“Do you think they will try to get into the house?” She looked around, suddenly conscious of the quiet and the nearby door to the street.
He was reassuring. “Nah, me and Anderssen put them shutters up and the locks on the door, like the captain told us, and they couldn’t get in without making a fu…a lot of noise. We was thinking, Anderssen and me, that if you was to bunk in with one of the other ladies, he could keep watch from the kitchen and I’d keep a watch from your room, and if they did try anything in the night, we’d wake the ’ole town up.”
She sat in silence for a while, thinking hard. It was not as though these mysterious newcomers had done anything yet, and even if they did, who was to stop them? She looked up at Puttnam. “Who is the town constable?” she said.
“Bless you, ma’am,” he replied. “Poor old Jenkins? I reckon you could take him in a fight, begging your pardon. We did wonder about the lobsters in Meryton, but they’re not even marines. I don’t suppose the captain left a pistol in the house?”
She shook her head, beyond being shocked at the suggestion. “Perhaps Lieutenant Grace?” she suggested. She got to her feet in sudden decision. “I shall sleep with Miss Darcy tonight,” she said. “Please fetch me a large knife from the kitchen, just in case, and if you and Anderssen would keep watch tonight, we can decide what to do in the morning.”
Georgiana was sleepily surprised to see her but seemed to accept the idea that Elizabeth had had a bad dream and soon went back to sleep. She never noticed the boning knife Elizabeth hid under her pillow.
It was raining heavily the next day with a cold, gusting wind that sent leaves and rubbish swirling. Hardly anyone was voluntarily about in the streets, which made it easier to spot bandy-legs and prize-fighter. A third man joined them during the day, swathed to the eyebrows in an old-fashioned, capeddriving coat, although he spent most of his time drinking in the King’s Head.
About half past ten in the morning, three ladies accompanied by a manservant came out of the house and hurried up the street to another house, some fifty yards away. The ladies were almost hidden in their bonnets and overcoats and could only be distinguished by the colours of their coats, brown, green, and blue. Halfway there, the lady in the dark blue surtout lost her bonnet to a gust of wind which released a mass of dark golden hair. She turned to chase after it, and green coat called out to ‘Georgiana’ to be careful. Once the bonnet was retrieved, all three ladies linked arms and approached the other house. They knocked and were admitted by a maid.
Several hours later, red coat and green coat and the manservant went back to their own house. It had come on to rain even harder, and the ladies were huddled under an umbrella that threatened to escape their grasp at any time. Once they made their front door, two men came out and secured all the shutters.
Time passed. It started to grow dark, and the few passers-by there had been disappeared. Thunder rolled.
Suddenly, the door to the second house was flung open and blue surtout came out. A voice from inside called, “Oh, do come back, Miss Darcy! My husband will be here to take you home in a few minutes,” before the wind blew the door shut again. The coat headed off down the road and looked up. The three strangers were converging on its wearer and were already alarmingly close. She gave a cry of alarm and turned back, but seeing the closed door she had just left, she darted up a small lane between two houses instead.
The three scoundrels pounded after her, their coat tails blowing in the wind. They were just in time to see their quarry turning to the right at the top of the lane, so they headed afterher, prize-fighter pulling an old sack from his pocket as they ran. They were halfway up when they were suddenly blinded by a wash of light.
Two men stood at the end of the lane, dark lanterns now opened and fully lit at their feet, holding stout cudgels that they smacked into their palms with looks not so much of menace as of satisfaction. Despite the fact that one of them had a false foot, they were both large and alarmingly calm. The three confederates looked to turn back, only to find that the other end was also blocked, this time by two large men in blacksmiths’ aprons with hammers in their hands.
There was a moment’s silence before prize-fighter and bandy-legs decided to make a fight of it. They rushed towards the first two men while driving coat tried to make a run for it.
Peeping round the end of the house, Elizabeth could see very little, especially when one of the lanterns was kicked over, but she heard sounds of a struggle, a lot of very bad language, and then silence. She tugged the blue coat closer to herself for comfort.
Lieutenant Grace came out of the shadows and uncocked the pistol Elizabeth had not even known he was carrying. Puttnam and Anderssen shook hands with the blacksmith and his son, and a small amount of money changed hands, despite protestations that it had been a pleasure. ‘To drink the captain and his lady’s health’ was the finally successful argument. The lieutenant hurried Elizabeth back indoors where his wife was waiting, pale with fright. They both plied Elizabeth with currant wine, which she secretly thought very unpleasant, and compliments on her bravery.
“I admire your strategy, m’dear,” he said, as he walked her back to her own front door. “The true Nelson touch.”
That night, in her journal-cum-letter to her husband, she mentioned the weather and tea with the lieutenant and hiswife, but nothing else. She had no desire to burden him with her thoughts and fears, for the day had been terrifying in the extreme. Georgiana was not nearly so discreet in her letter, admiration and gratitude spilling over the page.
Early the next day, Lieutenant Grace and Anderssen left Hatfield in the blacksmith’s cart, three large canvas-wrapped bundles in the back. They were, said the lieutenant’s wife to her particular friend Mrs Watcham, going to visit a friend of the lieutenant currently stationed on the Press tender in the Thames. There were some things he had found lying around the house he thought Lieutenant Miller might be able to make use of.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Life settled down after this incident into something more closely approaching a routine. Georgiana’s masters came to the house regularly, and after a few weeks, both the Mrs Darcys joined in the lessons—the elder having never learned French and the younger wishing to learn to draw so that she might send her husband the sort of delightful sketches he had sent to her. It turned out not to be nearly as easy as she had hoped.
Mary came to stay for a month, and at Georgiana’s request, her music master listened to her play. Elizabeth would probably have prevented this had she known in advance, for Mr Haskins was an irascible gentleman. However, while he shook his head and tutted, he also suggested some simple improvements in technique and posture, which made a tremendous difference to Mary’s playing. Elizabeth was touched to see how grateful Mary was for even a little attention and consideration, and since Georgiana and she soon became friends, she suggested that Mary share with Georgiana rather than herself. That night she could hear the two girls whispering and giggling together and wondered whether either of them had ever done that before. Marooned between Elizabeth and Jane on the one hand andKitty and Lydia on the other, Mary had often been left out and, as Elizabeth wrote to her husband,
