Page 75 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

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The letter reached Pemberley on the Monday evening, with the London mail. Elizabeth read it on the window seat in her blue room, in the last of the long April light, with the lake going silver below and the rooks settling in the beeches, and his mother's Cowper beside her with its crumpled violet.

She read it three times. After the third time, she could not see it any more.

She did not cry, this time. She sat very still with the letter pressed flat against her chest, and looked out over the water, and felt something settle in her that had been restless since the corner of North Audley Street. As if a door, somewhere very deep inside her, had swung open, and she had found that there was no lock on it either.

She went to bed early. She left the door into his dark room open, as she did every night, and lay on her side facing it, with his letter under her pillow.

She woke some time after midnight, and did not know why.

The house was silent. The candle had burned out. The moon was up, high and bright, and the room was full of cold silver light from the window. She lay still and listened, and heard nothing but the wind in the beeches and the far-off murmur of the water going over the weir.

Then she got up, without quite knowing why, and went to the window seat, and knelt on it, and looked out.

The lake lay below her like a sheet of pewter. Beyond it the park rolled away in silver and black to the dark line of the wood, and the road that came up through the trees, and the turn at the top of the rise where she had made the coachman stop.

And on the far side of the water, at the edge of the wood, where nobody had any business to be at one o'clock in the morning, there was a light.

It was very small. A lantern, shaded. It stood quite still for a long moment, as if whoever held it were looking across the water at the house. At the dark windows. At hers.

Then it went out.

Elizabeth knelt on the window seat in her nightgown, in the moonlight, and did not move for a long time. She thought of a fair gentleman at the Green Man in Lambton, who paid in gold and asked a great many questions about where the ladies walked. She thought, very clearly, of the letter she had written on Thursday, with its postscript. I dare say it is nothing.

Then she got down from the window seat, and took her wrapper from the chair, and went quickly through the open door into her husband's dark, dust-sheeted room, and out of it into the passage beyond, where Georgiana slept, and Anne beyond her. She opened each door an inch and listened. Two sets of soft, even breathing. Two fair heads on two pillows in the moonlight.

She stood in the passage between them for a long moment with her hand pressed flat against her husband's letter, which she had taken from under her pillow without knowing it. He was a hundred and fifty miles away. These two were in her charge. There was nobody else.

She rang for Hannah. And when Hannah came, yawning and alarmed with a candle, Elizabeth said, very calmly, "Wake Mrs Reynolds. And James. And the head groom. Quietly. I want every door on the ground floor locked and barred tonight, and a man awake in the hall until morning. And at first light, I want a rider on the fastest horse in the stables, to London."

Chapter 21: The Handwriting

Darcy House. Saturday, 25th April 1812

Her second letter came on Saturday afternoon, and Darcy read it standing up in the hall, because he could not wait to go into the study, and Pearce stood by with the salver and pretended to be interested in the barometer.

He read about the weather, and smiled. He read about Anne on the top of the ridge with her shawls flying, laughing until she had to sit down on a rock, and found that his eyes had blurred. He read about Georgiana and the lake and the bent pin, about the Hollins boy and the beanstalk and Mrs Master, about Mrs Reynolds standing by the window seat with the linen saying the master has done well. He read the part where she told him she was falling in love with him all over again, a hundred and fifty miles away, and had to put his free hand flat on the hall table for a moment.

Then he read the postscript.

A gentleman from London. Fair, and very pleasant, and paid in gold. Asked a great many questions about the family at the house, and whether the ladies walked out, and where.

The hall went cold around him.

"Pearce," he said. "My riding boots. And have them saddle—"

"Sir." It was Richard, coming in at the front door with his hat still on and the Bow Street man at his heels: a small, grey, patient person called Mr Lavender, who looked like a clerk and was said to have taken more highwaymen than any officer on the Bath Road. "Wait. Hear this first."

Darcy held out the letter, open at the postscript. Richard read it. His face changed. Then he looked at Mr Lavender.

"Tell him," he said.

Mr Lavender took off his hat and turned it round in his hands.

"Mr Wickham was seen last night, sir," he said. "In London. At a hell in Pickering Place, off St James's Street. One of my men was in the room. Fair gentleman, blue coat, very pleasant, losing heavy at hazard and paying in gold. Answered to Wakefield. My man stood within six feet of him from ten till two in the morning. He'd take his oath on it."