“How did you even know to look for her, then?” Darcy inquired, attempting to sort through it all. If Mr. Bennet had believed that the king and queen had sent Sir Reginald to escort Elizabeth, he ought not have been concerned for her safety. “You could not have received her letter in time.”
Mrs. Hobart looked away, and Darcy thought of the letters in her reticule—unsent, most likely. No matter now; it was fortunate he had pocketed Fitzwilliam’s letter and posted it himself.
Mr. Bennet sighed. “Sir Reginald came to Longbourn four years ago with a message from the King and Queen, and therefore when he returned,I did not doubt his veracity. But five days after they carried Elizabeth off, another Thurnian envoy arrived with a letter from the palace.” He looked at Elizabeth. “It was an invitation for you to join them in the spring, when travel is easier. It was this envoy who told me that Sir Reginald was no longer a member of the royal household.”
“Bennet was at my door promptly,” Sir William said proudly. “For he required a magistrate’s assurance of Miss Elizabeth’s identity and his own guardianship—an office which, I need not say, I am pleased to discharge.”
“I am clearly myself, Sir William,” Elizabeth said. “So your office is complete.”
“I had thought them already too far north to catch,” Mr. Bennet went on as Sir William beamed. “We rushed to London to inform the ambassador, only to learn he was away on the crown’s business. Since we were there, I fetched my brother Gardiner, who actually understands English roads, and we met you at Baldock.”
Darcy’s mind flashed back through everything with painful clarity. Adrian declaring with easy confidence that there were no princesses at court in Thurnia—only princes, a nursery forever expanding with boys. Mrs. Hobart’s proud, careful attentions that he had dismissed as mere social climbing. Elizabeth’s own insistence repeated more than once, which he had dismissed as either an outright deception or a stubborn desire to believe a pretty lie.
Shehadtold him who she was, multiple times, in different ways, and he had not believed her.
“Youdidtell me,” Darcy said, his voice rough with the realization. “You told me, and I—”
“Thought me either a liar or thoroughly deluded,” Elizabeth finished quietly, and there was a thread of something like gentle amusement beneath the words. “Or perhaps both.”
Fitzwilliam wiped at his eyes. “This may be the finest thing that has ever happened to me.”
“Is he always such a sceptic, Colonel Fitzwilliam?” Elizabeth asked.
“Always,” Fitzwilliam confirmed with delight. “It is his chief occupation.”
Darcy dragged a hand over his face and addressed Mr. Gardiner. “How long have you known?”
The man’s eyes twinkled. “Bennet told me when Elizabeth came to them as a babe. A man does not invent a royal infant merely for his amusement.”
Mr. Bennet huffed a laugh. “Untrue. I have invented far worse things for my amusement.”
Darcy looked at Elizabeth again, this woman who had charmed an entire inn, argued with him incessantly, tried to talk highwaymen out of their business, given a maid a handful of dried peas, had jumped from a window into a frozen night.
She was aprincess.
Sir Reginald watched with open bitterness. “Yes. A princess. Worth more than enough gold to buy our freedom.”
“Where were you taking her?” Darcy demanded, returning them all to Mr. Gardiner’s question.
Sir Reginald hesitated. “I leased a house in Edinburgh and meant to send word to the palace from there. Once we had the funds, we would book passage for the princess to Thurnia as we boarded another for the continent. But the storm turned us back. Once we were reunited and you showed such interest in what we were doing, I knew we would not make it north without being overtaken. This house was the only safe place I knew between here and London.”
“How did you know of this house?” Elizabeth’s eyes strayed to the window and then returned to Sir Reginald. “It is so out of the way.”
“I have lived many places over the past two years. This was one of them.”
“What of the highwaymen?” Darcy inquired.
Mr. Bennet’s head snapped toward Sir Reginald. “Highwaymen?”
Fitzwilliam and Mr. Gardiner frowned. Sir William’s head moved back and forth between those speaking as though watching a game of battledore and shuttlecock.
Sir Reginald flinched. “That was not my doing. My father’s creditors grew impatient. Clearly they meant to cut us out and take the entire ransom themselves. They would not listen, and then I was stranded—”
“Is that why you left us so early the day of the storm? Were you meeting with them?” Elizabeth had the same expression on her face that Georgiana did when solving a difficult problem on the pianoforte. “I did wonder.”
The former envoy said nothing, but his face told them all that Elizabeth was correct.
“You left my niece unprotected on the road with criminals pursuing her?” Mr. Gardiner’s voice was hard as flint.