There was nothing possessive in Mr. Darcy’s manner, and Elizabeth could not discern why he would be so reluctant to relinquish her care. Neither could she understand why his reluctance pleased her.
“Be that as it may,” the gentleman replied, “I have already undertaken to see Miss Bennet to London. I should be sorry if any mischance occurred because I had yielded that duty prematurely.”
Elizabeth’s lips twitched. It was the politest way of saying that Mr. Darcy found himself a more capable escort than a Thurnian envoy.
But then, if he did not believe her a Thurnian princess, he must believe Sir Reginald an outright fraudster. It was no wonder that Sir Reginald’s shoulders stiffened.
Mrs. Hobart’s eyes darted between them.
Elizabeth lifted her cup and sipped her tepid tea. The conversation flowed above her head, brisk and masculine and full of references to distances and carriages. She wondered, with a certain dryness, whether either gentleman recalled that she was present.
“If I may speak,” she said, setting down her cup, “I am sensible of what I owe to Mr. Darcy and his men. If it is possible to arrange that Sir Reginald’scarriage follow his, or that we travel together in some fashion, that might answer every purpose.”
Both men turned their attention to her at last. She felt it as one feels the sudden warmth of a fire that has flared.
“Mr. Darcy’s carriage is larger than Sir Reginald’s, I believe,” she added, striving for perfect composure. “There is room enough for us all and Sir Reginald, you will not require a carriage.”
It was, she thought, a sensible compromise.
Mr. Darcy did not look comforted. His brows pinched together, as though her suggestion had resolved one difficulty only to present him with another. Sir Reginald did not appear any better pleased.
This was a ridiculous business.
Elizabeth stood and bid them goodnight, leaving them there to continue their argument. Surely they would come to see that her recommendation was the most reasonable course of action, though they would undoubtedly decide that they had negotiated the compromise themselves.
She climbed the stairs to her room and for a little while it was busy there, maids hurrying by with coal scuttles, a child whimpering as it was coaxed along to bed, a man’s laugh breaking out and then softened at a sharp word from below. By degrees, however, the footsteps grew fewer, the voices hushed, and the inn sank into that uneasy half-quiet that belongs to inns at night.
She trimmed the candle with unsteady hands and tried to behave as if she meant to sleep. She unpinned her hair, folded her gown over a chair, smoothed out her gloves and laid them side by side. The small, orderly tasks brought her no peace.
The day had been long. She felt it in the ache of her shoulders and in the faint tremor that had not yet left her at the thought of the ambush—the shout, the shots, Mr Darcy’s unnatural movement ashe was struck. She could not rest, so Elizabeth dressed, took up her candle, and stepped out alone. She knew she ought not, yet she felt she could not remain shut up in her room a moment longer. Perhaps a short walk up and down the stairs, or to see whether there were any books or newspapers to be had. Something, anything to occupy her until her eyes would close.
The sound of a footstep on the stair below made her heart skip. She paused on the little landing where the passage turned, the feeble light of her candle slipping over the banister and falling upon the top of a dark head as its owner stepped upward. He looked up at once, and the light caught the planes of his face, casting the hollows under his cheekbones into shadow.
It was Mr. Darcy.
Chapter Seventeen
Darcy quitted the parlour before any civil man ought, but there was a limit to what he could bear. Mrs. Hobart had just embarked upon her fourth account of Sir Reginald’s hardships upon the road while Sir Reginald sat by the fire with a look of practised virtue that set Darcy’s teeth on edge.
Darcy had bowed, made his excuses, and stepped out into the cooler passage.
The moment the door closed, the cloying air of the room fell from him. He drew a breath that did not smell of Mrs. Hobart’s perfume and tried to reduce his thoughts to some kind of order as he mounted the stairs.
Even if he presumed, for argument’s sake, that Miss Bennet trulywasbeing summoned to Thurnia, the story he was being told did not make sense.
Sir Reginald had implied their winter travel had been commanded by the king, but no man in his senses would choose January for such a journey. The roads were a mire half the time and a sheet of ice the other. He could not presume to know the mind of the Thurnian king, but to risk agranddaughter when the weather was so poor? Adrian respected his grandfather, thought him a great man. No, Darcy could not believe it.
Then there was Mrs. Hobart. She had said that she had been in London these two years with her daughters. Why would Sir Reginald choose a woman who had not been in Thurnia in two years for a mission as important as carrying a princess back to her royal family?
That question led to the next. What sort of royal envoy travelled without a single Thurnian servant, relying on everyone’s silence about a princess’s true rank and on whatever fellows he could hire at the posting houses? It was frugal but unwise. Sir Reginald rode alone, and he had even travelled ahead of the ladies, leaving them entirely unguarded.
He thought of Miss Bennet as she had stood by the fire when Sir Reginald entered, her shoulders relaxing but her gaze moving to him, not the envoy. There had been relief that her proper escort had at last appeared, and yet reluctance to part from the man who had been escorting her. It was a sign that she trusted him and he would not betray that trust now.
Darcy reminded himself that this was not about Miss Bennet in particular. It was a matter of principle. He would not leaveanywoman in hands that he did not trust, and he trusted Sir Reginald and Mrs. Hobart no further than the candle he carried. That he was more conscious of this woman than of any other whom he had ever encountered was a misfortune, but it had no bearing on his duty.
She was lovely, though. Witty. Compassionate. Kind. And when they argued, her dark, intelligent eyes flashed with a fire that kindled one in him.
The stairs were uneven and there was one tread that always announced a climber with a loud complaint. He had stayed here many times; he knew where it lay and stepped over it without thought. A draught crept under the door to the little landing above. But it was not the winter chill that made him uncomfortable.