Page 14 of I Have Faults Enough

"Well," Cobb said, crouching to bring himself level with them both, "here's a fine mess, and no mistake. You'll forgive me if I don't apologise for the manner of your invitation. Wasn't my first choice of evening's work either."

"Then let us make it a short one," Elizabeth said, before Darcy had drawn breath to answer. She felt a flutter of nerves fly through her stomach, but she tried to keep her voice calm. She told herself to be diplomatic, and to speak as she had a hundred times to talk her father out of a black mood or her mother down from a fit of nerves. "You have what you came for, or near enough. You have no quarrel with either of us beyond the accident of our having walked where we oughtn't. Let us go, and we will say nothing."

Cobb offered a smirk. "Very prettily put." He stared at her a moment, then said, "And if I believed you'd hold to it, miss, we might be having a shorter conversation than the one we're like to have. But I've been at this trade longer than you've been out of the schoolroom, and I never yet met the gentry that didn't sing a different tune once they'd a magistrate's ear to sing it into."

"Sir you have not met me. And, I assure you of our silence" she said, lifting her chin ever so slightly, attempting to hide her growing fear.

The heavier man, still pacing, made a sound that was not quite a laugh. "She's got nerve, I'll give her that. Won't do her much good, but she's got it."

"Bill," said Cobb, without turning, in a tone that ended whatever else Bill had meant to add.

It was Darcy's turn under that patient, assessing stare a moment later, and Elizabeth watched, with dread, as Cobb studied him with narrowed eyes.

"And you, sir. Not much to say for yourself. I reckon we might earn a small fortune from you, seeing as you are dressed in such a manner.” Cobb looked over Mr. Darcy, and had guessed correctly that he was indeed a man of fortune.

Darcy said nothing to Cobb’s remark.

"Cat got your tongue?" Bill said, coming nearer, raising his voice slightly, "or is it that you think yourself too fine to answer a plain question from the likes of us?"

Still Darcy said nothing, only looked at the man, level and unhurried, with an expression that gave away nothing. He knew well that the man Bill, had wanted some reaction and been denied it twice now, took the silence for contempt it did not intend, and closed the last few feet between them with his hand already drawing back.

"Wait!" Elizabeth said, too late, and the blow caught Darcy across the same cheekbone already darkening from the garden, snapping his head sideways, but he made no sound at all, which seemed, if anything, to enrage Bill further.

"He's tied and he's answering nothing, Cobb, what use is he to us at all? I say we're better shot of him entire and take our chances on the girl alone being manageable," Bill bellowed to his companion.

"Nobody is being shot of anybody," Cobb said, sharp now, "not till I've decided what's to be done, and I'll not have you deciding it for me with your fists, Bill, not when a dead gentleman's worth considerably more trouble hanging round our necks than a live one ever was."

Bill was not one to remain silent, and replied to Cobb in an argument. "He struck Tam in the garden. Cracked his head near open!"

"And I dare say Tam struck first, going by the way this whole business was managed." Cobb straightened, dragging a hand down his face. "I want them quiet and I want them whole, the both of them, until I've had a chance to think what's to be done with them, and I'll not have either notion spoiled because you can't abide a man who won't flinch for you. Outside! I'll set Ned to watch them."

Bill went, muttering, and the boy, Ned, evidently, remained, looking considerably less pleased with the arrangement than his elders, standing near the door with a pistol he held as though it might go off of its own accord.

The moment Cobb and Bill went outside, through the large opening behind them, Elizabeth turned what attention she could spare toward Darcy, whose jaw she could see already swelling darker where the blow had landed.

She said in a tight whisper, "You might have answered him, and save yourself another hit to your face. These men are serious, Mr. Darcy. We must negotiate with them, if we are to keep our heads.”

"I think not,” he exhaled. “It would have cost me the only advantage I have to give," he said, equally low, not looking at her but at the opening Cobb had gone through, his voice entirely steady despite the visible damage to his face. "A man who gives nothing away cannot be read, and a man who cannot be read is harder to threaten usefully. I do not intend to hand Cobb a map of who I am. One blow won’t hurt me.”

"That is very rational," she bit back, "and very nearly got you killed just now, or had you not noticed. Must you be this way?"

"A knock won’t kill me, Miss Bennet," he replied, with some flatness. "Cobb is the one deciding our fate, not Bill, and I take Cobb to be a calculating man, which means Cobb can be reasoned with in a way Bill cannot."

"And in the meantime you mean to let him strike you until Cobb arrives at whatever conclusion he is judging toward? That is unreasonable."

He ignored her last statement. "I aim to do as I see best, and ensure your safety."

Elizabeth had no ready answer to that, and did not attempt one, only sat with the cold of the stone floor coming up through her skirts and watched Ned, across the barn, shift his weight from foot to foot and check the door twice in as many minutes. He looked to be considerably more frightened of his own company than of the two he had been set to guard.

Seeing his uncertainty, Elizabeth turned her attention to Ned. As she watched him, she noticed that he was certainly the softest link in whatever chain bound the four of them together, and she was not, whatever Darcy's philosophy of withholding, disposed to let an advantage sit unused merely because it frightened her to reach for it.

"You do not much like this work," she said to Ned conversationally, as though they sat together at some ordinary evening party rather than a cold barn with a pistol between them. "What is your name?"

He did not answer at once, glancing toward the opening, as though Cobb might materialise through it at the first word. "I’s not meant to talk to ye," he said at last.

She offered him a kind smile. "I have not asked you to help us. I am only curious of your name, which can hardly be treason."

He shifted his eyes between the two captives, and then, after several moments of silence, he finally said, "Ned.” He looked, immediately after, as though he wished he had not.