“Aye, sir.”
“Come back in the dog cart, dress for watch duty, and bring my horse when you come. And Sam—”
“Aye, sir?”
“Feel free to beat the memory out of anyone who speaks of what took place here, will you?”
His scowl was replaced with a leery grin. “Aye, sir,” he said, stepping out the back door.
Once again, I was left to the silence of deep night in a strange kitchen. Elizabeth Bennet slept somewhere above my head, and I took stock of the situation.
There was nothing redeeming about the place. It was not a cheerful house, nor was it terribly comfortable. It stood alone at the edge of the village, broken gutters dripping into a poorly graveled yard of mud. There was no pianoforte, no library, and no decent place to walk and enjoy the rare but stunningly beautiful, sunlit days of winter in Derbyshire. Dismal.
I made a long list of plans. I would arrange to remove Mrs. Jennings and her great niece to Pemberley. Miss Bennet would then write to her uncle to make him aware of the circumstances in which the widow had been left, and he would arrange for her care. Meanwhile, they would be my sister’s guests. There was a neat little parlor on the second floor much preferred by my mother in winter, for when the rain stopped, sunlight poured in and cheered her. The room boasted a petite marble hearth that drew well and threw off a merry warmth when it burned. Even in the dead days of winter, the view was lovely on that side of the house. Mrs. Jennings would be happy there with Mrs. Annesley coming to sit with her, with the diversion of the pleasurable melodies that so often drifted down the hall from the music room, and with the overbearing nurturance Mrs. Reynolds would naturally apply. In short, she would be coddled, and by association, so would Miss Bennet. And at long last, I would be able to relax.
It was this last notion that made me realize the extent to which I had been anxious for the lady, inwardly for the most part, but with no less intensity. I continually worried for her, I wanted better for her than she had, and it was this obsession with her comfort that had kept her constantly in mind. That I cared for her was now beyond denying, but I still felt I could escape a lifelong commitment by…well, by caring for her, by making her comfortable, and by assuring her safety until she could be returned to her family and promptly forgotten.
Roughly an hour and a half later, Sam returned with a box and set it on the table. I found a tin candle holder near the stove, lit a taper, and was setting the cream on the cool shelf above the empty bread box, when I heard a thump. Sam heard it too, and with surprising swiftness for such a large man, he disappeared outside, returning almost immediately with an old man dangling from his grip.
Sam threatened to strangle him slowly if he made a fuss before setting him down, and seeing a toothless old man incapable of bending at the knee, I spoke sternly.
“Are you Mrs. Jennings’s backhouse man?”
“No no, yer honor. Ain’t me.”
“Who are you then?”
“The Missus Edmonton’s man. I returnt Smith’s barrow,” he said.
“At this time o’ night?” Sam demanded.
“I heard a commotion—”
“That there commotion happent hours ago, ya nosy bone.” Sam hissed. After a violent shake by the scruff, we ascertained him to be guilty of nothing more than idle curiosity, so I sent them both away—Mrs. Edmonton’s man to recuperate next door and Sam to set up a watch.
We had not been loud, but perhaps loud enough, for not even five minutes later, I heard a creak above my head. I went to the parlor and met Miss Bennet at the bottom of the stair.
She squeaked in surprise.
“Forgive me, I did not mean to startle you.”
She could not sleep, so we returned to the kitchen where I made her a cup of hot milk while I sipped another tot of my best brandy.
We talked in low, intimate voices, and even shared a joke about her experiences with strong drink. I enticed her to tell me exactly what had taken place, and I was inordinately relieved to hear no hint that she had been fondled or passed around in the way crude men have with barmaids—or worse.
The lightness of our conversation waned with her frank retelling, and the reality sank home. She raised her eyes to me, no less deep than they always were, but now shadowed with strain and glittering from fatigue.
“What would I have done had you not come?” she asked in a forlorn whisper.
My imagination balked to consider the likely answers to such a question, and I could not entertain the images that threatened to break through. What I knew for certain was that Elizabeth Bennet would have fought like a tigress. She would have thrown herself between anyone and Mrs. Jennings and likely even the maids. She was recklessly courageous and stupidly brave, and in a voice warm with my overwhelming admiration, I said, “Whatever might have transpired, you would have been equally brave.”
She confessed having come to the end of her courage, and after a tentative inquiry as to what happened to her assailants, she looked satisfied they would not be free to plague anyone else. It was then I decided to present my plan for her and Mrs. Jennings to go to Pemberley.
This provoked her to a most unexpected degree. Where I anticipated her relief, she only raised her voice in protest. In answer, I raised my own. Her resistance was silly and mulish, not to mention fairly insulting.
Unbeknownst to me, however, Miss Bennet’s furlough in Lambton had been a kind of test for her—the female equivalent of a boy’s tramp in the wilderness. My suggestion that she seek shelter at my estate as my sister’s guest smacked of surrender—failure—and she would not see reason.
Adding fuel to the fire of her independence was a terror for her reputation. In this, at least, she had cause, for the fact was that she had spent half the night alone with five men, myself among them. She made a bitter case for staying, asking hotly whether we would marry in haste if she became my dependent and, consequently, the subject of the worst kind of gossip.
