“Mr. Bennet has attempted to bind her to his heir. A sanctimonious little toad of a man who speaks of her as though she were already his possession. She believed herself trapped there with no protection except secrecy and flight, and every moment she remains in that house I am afraid for her.”
Lord Matlock rose immediately.
"Then we are going at once. If Elizabeth believed flight her only protection, we cannot delay."
Henry looked from his wife to Darcy, and whatever argument remained left him altogether.
Darcy rang for a servant and ordered his carriage prepared at once, observing that his uncle’s horses must naturally be exhausted after such a journey.
As the servant withdrew, they found Miss Bingley still lingering in the hall with an appearance of perfect indifference that deceived nobody.
Lady Matlock addressed her at once.
“Miss Bingley, we are greatly obliged to you for permitting us to speak privately with my nephew, but I fear we must trespass upon your hospitality a little further.”
“Of course, Lady Matlock. Whatever you require.”
“It is too late for us to return to London tonight.”
“I have already ordered your room prepared.”
“You are very good. But another chamber will be needed as well.”
Miss Bingley blinked.
“Another?”
“Yes. We are going to fetch my goddaughter.”
“At this hour?” said Miss Bingley. “I did not know you had family in Hertfordshire.”
“Nor did we,” Lady Matlock said quietly.
Before Miss Bingley could pursue this alarming statement further, the footman returned to announce that the carriage was ready.
The three miles to Longbourn passed with very little conversation. The sight of the Ashcombe carriage standing before Longbourn brought Henry up short.
Then voices carried clearly from the garden.
“You refuse, then, to oblige me. You refuse the claims of duty, honour, gratitude, and family expectation.”
“Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude have any claim upon me in the present instance. Contracts made without my knowledge by guardians I have never met shall not determine the rest of my life.”
“Then,” said Ambrose, “I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet. You deserve no such civility.”
Lord Matlock did not wait for the step to be properly lowered. Darcy was out immediately behind her. Henry descended rather more slowly, with the measured pace of a man very much hoping that, if Ambrose spoke, Darcy would possess the sense to let him handle it.
Ambrose turned and found his uncle standing at the garden gate. He had barely opened his mouth to address him when his aunt swept past without so much as a glance in his direction andcrossed the garden to Elizabeth with the purposeful speed of a woman who has somewhere far more important to be.
Elizabeth was still standing where Ambrose had left her, the garden quiet around her, her mind already turning to ten o'clock and whether any of it was still possible, when arms came around her without warning.
"Oh, if I had only known. It has been twenty years since I held you."
Chapter Thirty-Five
Lord Matlock drew Ambrose a little apart from the garden with the quiet authority of a man long accustomed to difficult conversations and entirely unused to raising his voice.
"I understood you could not get away for another fortnight," he said.
