The carriage stood ready. Johnson held the heads of the pair while Anders checked the traces. Both men looked up as Darcy appeared.
“Sir.” Johnson touched a hand to his cap.
“How long will it take us to reach the next posting inn?” Darcy asked.
“In these roads, sir, two hours, if they hold steady. Less, if we press them. The snow is not so deep upon the main road, but the ruts are likely to be bad.”
“They have had at least an hour’s start,” Darcy said. “I mean to make up that time. You will change horses at every stage. You will give them their heads where the road allows it. I am not easy about Miss Bennet’s companions.”
Anders’s eyes gleamed. “They will not get the better of us, sir.”
“Johnson, keep the gun handy.”
“Yes, sir.”
Darcy stepped up into the carriage and let his head drop back against the squabs. He had tried to warn her, but his temper had outrun his prudence. He had accused when he should have reasoned. He had attacked her judgement when he should have appealed to it. She had heard only thathe doubted her. That he thought her vain, or foolish, or both. What else could she have heard when those were the words he had given her?
To Mrs. Hobart and Sir Reginald, if that was truly who they were, the fact that there were no Thurnian princesses scarcely signified. It was the story that mattered. The story could be used.
He could not bear to think of Miss Bennet in their hands, far from her family, far from any friend, out upon the road with no one to stand between her and whatever purpose they might have.
A man who had nothing more at stake than common decency would have gone after her. A man who felt whathewas feeling—
He cut that thought off before it formed. He would not examine it. Not now. Not while there was work to be done.
“Sir?” Anders called from the box.
“Now,” he said, raising his voice to be heard. He rapped the coach roof with his knuckles.
The wheels found the frozen ruts, bumped, settled. The inn yard fell away behind them. They passed out into the narrow street that would take them back onto the main road.
Darcy’s gaze was drawn to the strip of pale winter sky above the roofs. He spoke to himself in a hoarse growl. “They cannot know the roads as Johnson knows them. If they think an hour’s start will serve them, they are mistaken.”
The carriage turned onto the Great North Road and the fields opened out to either side. A thin skin of snow lay upon the hedges and the ditches. Mud, frozen and refrozen, made ridges like iron. The horses leaned into the traces. Steam rose from their flanks.
The carriage rocked and jolted. Darcy braced his boots against the floor and his shoulders against the squabs, letting the familiar rhythm of wheelsand harness work upon his mind. The worst of the stupor had gone, but the remainder of heaviness yet clung to him.
Laudanum. He swallowed, the word as bitter in his mouth as the drug had been in his tea. His heart thudded, unpleasantly aware how a few more swallows would have had him waking not at nine but past noon, to find Miss Bennet already halfway to London under their protection—or their control.
The carriage wheel struck a ridge of frozen mud and came down with a jolt that jarred his teeth. Outside, Anders called out to the horses, steadying them with his voice as much as his hands. The horses settled into their pull again.
Darcy dragged off one glove and pressed thumb and forefinger hard against the bridge of his nose. Think. There must be some reason, some plan. People did not dose gentlemen and abscond with a young lady merely for the novelty of it.
Money was the simplest answer.
But why her? There were any number of foolish young women in England. Why fix upon her? Unless they also believed what she had been told. Unless they truly imagined Thurnian gold at the end of their plan.
Or, he thought, his head pounding, unless it was never about the Bennets at all. The carriage swayed; the leather straps creaked. He found his hand had clenched upon his knee. He forced the fingers to uncurl.
Despite her stubborn insistence on a royal birthright, Miss Bennet was not a fool. She did not follow blindly. She questioned, argued, resisted. He had felt the full force of that resistance more than once.
Darcy blinked. The edges of his vision blurred for a moment, then sharpened again. He cursed the laudanum silently and with all the fluency of a man who rarely cursed at all. Had his head been clear the previous night, he might have observed some sign, heard some careless phrase thatbetrayed their intention. Had he not allowed temper and irritation to govern him, he might have persuaded her, calmly, rationally, to put herself under his protection rather than theirs.
He could not recall when he had last felt so entirely unequal to his own feelings.
They carried on for an hour and a half before the carriage slowed. He became aware of a subtle change in its motion and then the sound of Johnson’s voice, calling back through the small sliding panel above the front window.
“Tollgate ahead, sir. The first on this road. There’s a bit of a queue.”