“I must speak with Mr. Briggs about the road and the horses,” he said. “Ladies, I entreat you to warm yourselves. You will be served directly. If you have any orders for the kitchen, leave them with Mrs. Briggs.”
He smiled, collected his gloves, and left the room. Elizabeth had the odd sensation that he took a little of the air with him.
Mrs. Hobart sank into the nearest chair and stretched her hands towards the fire. “To think of being here, upon a lonely road, in the care of such a gentleman. Would you ring the bell, dear? I should like some hot tea and a little something to eat. Travel is so exhausting to those who are no longer young.”
Elizabeth obeyed. When Mrs. Briggs answered, Elizabeth stepped a little forward.
“If you please, Mrs. Briggs,” she said in a composed tone once she had asked for tea and whatever food the kitchen might send, “might you also procure for me a small quantity of paper, a pen and ink? I have a letter which I am most anxious to write.”
Mrs. Briggs’s round face drew itself into an expression of distress. “Paper, Miss? Oh dear, we are quite out. We have a little for Mr. Briggs’s accounts, but it is not fit for a lady to write upon. As for ink, the last we had turned thick as treacle, and there is no stationer in the village.”
“Is there not a parsonage near, where such things might be borrowed?” Elizabeth asked. “Or a magistrate? I should be much obliged.”
Mrs. Briggs shook her head. “The parson lives three miles off, and the road that way is shocking. Mr. Briggs is churchwarden, and he will not send a horse there till the thaw. My apologies miss, but there is none to be had.”
As the woman turned to go, the door stood open long enough for Elizabeth to see the bar: a large account book upon it, spread wide, and upon its page a dark, glistening stroke that looked like fresh ink. She saidnothing. To call attention to it would be to accuse Mrs. Briggs of falsehood. If the woman lied, Elizabeth thought it might not be on her own account.
“Then I must wait,” Elizabeth said. “I thank you for your trouble.”
She slid her hand into her cloak pocket in search of a handkerchief. Instead of linen, her fingers met something hard and smooth.
For a moment she did not understand. Then the scene rose before her mind as sharply as if she were again yanking down that ridiculous pile of mattresses, dried peas bouncing in every direction.
The peas. They were still in her pelisse; she had decided to keep them and see whether they would grow. And Mr. Darcy knew she had them.
Not that Mr. Darcywould ever see her message, she chided herself. He was on his way to London.
An idea struck her, hard and sudden—hadthatbeen a lie as well? Had they somehow delayed Mr. Darcy to keep him from accompanying them? Her heart beat fast enough to hurt, and for a moment it was difficult to breathe.
The dried peas were rough against her palm.
As they waited in the passage for the coach to be brought round, Mrs. Hobart busy scolding the post-boy for the draught and Sir Reginald speaking low with Mrs. Briggs, Elizabeth caught the maid’s eye and beckoned her a little aside.
“If a gentleman comes asking for me,” she whispered, keeping her back towards the others, “you are to tell him that I am Miss Bennet of Longbourn in Hertfordshire. He will be Mr. Darcy of Pemberley,”
She dipped her hand into her pocket and poured most of the dried peas into the girl’s palm. The girl stared at them, then at Elizabeth.
“If he questions you,” Elizabeth said, closing the maid’s fingers gently over them, “you may show him these. He will understand.”
Before the maid could speak, Mrs. Hobart bustled over and urged her to the door. Sir Reginald offered his arm. Elizabeth allowed herself to be handed into the coach once more and took her place upon the worn squabs.
She was heartily sick of carriages.
Chapter Twenty-One
The tollbar at Biggleswade dropped behind them and the coach moved on. Darcy sat forward, eyes on the glass. The laudanum had robbed him of the first miles; he meant to lose no more.
It was not only time the drug had stolen, but his ability to command his own thoughts, and his mind was flooded with memories he usually kept under strict regulation: Elizabeth’s voice appealing to him as a gentleman, Elizabeth’s eyes as she had turned from him, Elizabeth’s gentle touch as she tended his wound.
She did not put on airs. She did not soften her opinions when honesty was required. She was not impressed by titles; she had treated her own supposed consequence as an inconvenience. There was a nobility in her that required no embellishment and would be in no way improved by the title ofprincess.
So why should she, of all women, be persuaded that shewasone?
Darcy could not reconcile it. He did not believe she was a princess; he did not believe it for a moment. The story was absurd on its face, and yet it had been made plausible enough to bind her to Sir Reginald’s party withthe fetters she would never recognise as fetters: duty, obligation, the idea of doing good for those she loved.
That was the only explanation that did not insult her intelligence. Not vanity. Not ambition. Not a foolish hunger for finery. Something sharper and more dangerous. Sir Reginald had turned her virtues against her. They had spoken to her of family, of responsibility, of sacrifice, until she could not tell where kindness ended and coercion began.
Love was a word he did not use readily, and he could not admit to it—not now, not even to himself—until she was safe. Until he had her, living and breathing, in his arms and could hear her say some sharp, practical thing that proved she had not been broken by fear or by falsehood. Until then, it must be action.