The man with the club spat into the snow. “She looks common enough,” he said grudgingly. “No crown on ‘er head.”
“Crown or no crown, there is talk of royal blood,” the leader replied, as if arguing with himself as much as with them. “Her people would pay for her.”
“If my ‘people’ are my father and mother,” Miss Bennet said, with a composure that astonished Darcy, “they have more children than guineas, and willnotpay you, except with constables and gallows.”
There was a small, unwilling chuckle from the man behind the leader. Even the man at the horses’ heads relaxed a touch, his pistol dipping by an inch.
Darcy could almost see the crack in their certainty. He again moved his weight, very slightly, to stand even more squarely between Miss Bennet and the nearest gun.
“You are making this worse,” Darcy said to her between his teeth, low enough that the men could not catch the words.
“After you announced yourself as a magistrate and they laughed?” she murmured without looking at him. “I do not believe that is possible.”
“Their indifference to my office is telling,” he said. “Men who hear that a magistrate stands before them and yet persist are either desperate or greedy, and far less likely to listen to reason. You ought not to have exposed yourself to them.”
“You are quite right. Your eloquence had very nearly persuaded one of those men to fire into the coach,” she returned in a whisper. “I thought it better to assist you here than wait for that moment.”
“It is why I told you to lay on the floor,” he said, gritting his teeth while the leader tossed back orders to his men.
“And you do not think he understands that is precisely where we would be?”
“This is no better,” Darcy insisted under his breath. “You have given them exactly what they asked for.”
“I have given them something they didnotask for,” she hissed. “They expected a princess, and they find only aMissBennet. If they look at me and still choose to believe I will command a great price, they are fools.”
“You are too stubborn for your own good,” he said.
“You are too arrogant for yours,” she answered at once. Then, after a pause, she added, “And stupidly brave.”
The words startled him. He felt them as keenly as the cold air upon his face.
“What else would you have had me do, Mr. Darcy?”
He had no answer to that which would not be an admission that he preferred any risk to her being in their sight.
“Enough of this,” the leader said, impatient now. He shifted his grip upon the pistol. “I did not come out to be instructed in my business by a fine gentleman and his lady. We waste time. Whether she is a princess or a farmer’s brat, she will serve. Bring her forward.”
Darcy felt her stiffen beside him, a small intake of breath. Before she could step around him, he let his arms drop as if weariness had at last overcome them. The movement was unhurried. His left arm swept Miss Bennet behind him at the same time his greatcoat swung aside. For one instant the polished butt of his pistol showed against the dark wool; in the next it lay in his right hand.
The men saw it. They could not fail.
The leader swore and flung up his own pistol in haste. The man at the horses’ heads cried out and turned, dragging his weapon round. There was no discipline in the movement, only panic. Darcy had time to think, with a curious clarity, that he must not fire first. To do so would set all of them to shooting at once.
He did not move. His finger rested on the trigger. The slightest pressure would be enough.
“Steady,” he warned, and his own voice sounded distant to his ears.
The leader’s finger tightened. The other man’s pistol went off first, a ragged blast that tore the air. The crack made the leader startle, and he fired too.
The shots sounded one just after the other. Snow and frozen earth burst from the side of the hollow a yard above Darcy’s head and the frost-bitten bark of a tree exploded. Something hard sliced his upper arm like the tip of a foil and the impact made him stumble.
The horses plunged. Anders swore; he and Johnson fought for control.
The smoke was sharp in Darcy’s nose. His arm burned, but the pain was distant, as if it belonged to someone else.
He did not lower his pistol.
“Are you well?” he asked, his heart hammering with urgency. He wished he could see her, but he did not dare take his eyes off the men before him.