A Touch of Night (21 page)

"Never," said Elizabeth. "But surely this will make it easier for you and Mr. Bingley to make your revelations to papa."

Jane smiled tremulously. "He loves me. He wants to marry me."

"Was there ever any doubt?"

"For me there was," said Jane timidly. "Mama was trying so hard to give him the opportunity to be alone with me so he could declare himself -- but he was so insistent that you always accompany us. I was so afraid he didn't want to marry me after all. But he told me that he knew there was danger from Mr. Wickham and that he'd discussed it with papa and papa had given him permission to protect the both of us, so he couldn't let you out of his sight, however much he wanted to be alone with me."

Elizabeth laughed and then drew her sister over to a stile. They sat in the sunshine and let the warmth seep through their bodies, dispelling the recent terror they had been subjected to. After a while the men came striding down the hill to join them.

"Now that is out of the way," said Mr. Bennet as he watched his eldest daughter and her swain meet up again, their happiness evident in the way smiles wreathed their faces, "did the two of you not have something of importance you wished to discuss?"

"Would you like Miss Elizabeth and me to walk ahead?" asked Darcy.

"Oh, no, no. I don't think there are any secrets we cannot all share. And I think you have as much to own up to as your friend Bingley, Mr. Darcy."

As far as Darcy could surmise, Mr. Bennet was not about to be told anything he did not already know, so he resigned himself to the fact. Besides, as Mr. Bennet had already exposed himself as a werewolf, there was hardly any danger in his knowing that they were shape shifters too. They were sure of mutual trust. The brotherhood of shape shifters was rarely broken, unless you were completely without honour, like Wickham.

"I know you want the best for your daughter, sir," blurted out Bingley. "But you will have to settle for me, because she loves me despite the fact that I change into a dog."

"I thought it might have been what attracted her to you," said Mr. Bennet with a wink.

Jane looked up at her father shyly. "You know about me?"

"Yes, Jane. I have known ever since the first change took place, but Elizabeth looked after you so well that I thought it best to keep my knowledge to myself. I did, however, put many things in place for your protection. I may be an indolent father, but I am not neglectful."

"And you don't mind about Mr. Bingley?"

"You are both of such compliant natures that you will never resolve upon anything, and so generous that every servant will cheat you. But I think having tempers so alike, and such a trait in common, your happiness will be assured - I envy you that openness in your marriage. You might have to be careful on how you raise your children, but with such devoted parents... how can they resent it?"

"Thank you, Papa!" said Jane, embracing him.

"You are a good girl," said her father, kissing the top of her head. He then shook hands with Bingley and told him that he had best look after Jane, as he had already witnessed what her father could be capable of if any of his girls were mistreated. Then he turned to Mr. Darcy. "Your situation is rather more precarious."

"You know, then, that I am a dragon."

"If I didn't know before today, young man, when you came swooping in at Wickham like an avenging angel, it was a dead giveaway. I also see no other reason for your present state of undress."

Darcy wrapped the borrowed greatcoat tighter around him. "How did I give myself away?" he asked. "I have taught myself to be very circumspect."

"What was circumspect about giving my daughter Lydia a ride home upon your back?"

"I had hoped for her silence."

Mr. Bennet chuckled. "Lydia's silence! You certainly don't know my Lydia very well at all if you imagined for one moment she could keep her mouth shut." His face suddenly became serious and he held his hand out to Darcy. "Thank you for all you did for her."

"I felt responsible. Wickham . . ."

Mr. Bennet shook his head. "No need to dredge that up again. It's over and done with now. Was there anything else you wanted to make me aware of?" He looked pointedly from Darcy to Elizabeth and back again.

Darcy looked at Elizabeth too. A look of longing flickered momentarily across his face to be replaced by a sharp wince of pain. He clutched his injured arm and rubbed it, regaining his composure till his face showed no sign of emotion at all. "No, sir," he said austerely. "I think everything we need to discuss has been covered. I have ... all I can hope for. Your daughter is safe."

Elizabeth's heart clutched within her. Her safety was all he wanted. He had never wanted her love.

* * * *

Anne de Bourgh was beside herself. She had not been able to speak to Fitzwilliam alone all this time, and she must. She simply must. And now he must be packing to leave early in the morning. And then she would be alone with her mother, who was convinced Anne must be a
were
. And Anne would end up in a rehabilitation camp for
weres
. Something she would never wish for, even if she were one.

Taking the scrap of a lace handkerchief into which she'd spent the morning crying, she slipped out of her room and, knitting herself with the wall, along the shadows all the way to the wing of the house in which Colonel Fitzwilliam lodged.

For a moment she feared she would walk in on him while he was asleep. Not that she would scruple to do it, in this case. Often enough, she had breached propriety to be with her beloved Quentin. As Darcy had gently reminded her once or twice, kissing a gentleman in the shrubbery was not something such a gently reared female should do. However, what else could Anne could contrive when her mama was so obstinate as to insist she must marry Darcy and Darcy only?

But as she approached Quentin's room, all thought that he might be asleep and that she might disturb him was forgotten. He was awake and speaking to Darcy's valet -- had to be Darcy's valet since Quentin, a military man, did not normally travel with a valet of his own. "No, please do not fold my ties like that. You must know that during my time in the peninsula I got very used to an exact positioning for my clothes. Leave it alone, Marks, I shall pack it for myself."

She heard the valet mumble something in reply, then the door to Fitzwilliam's room opened and Anne knit herself with the wall, as Marks came out and went into his own quarters, next to the gentlemen's rooms. Only after the door to those was firmly shut did Anne dare creep forward.

She scratched, hesitantly, at Fitzwilliam's door, only to have a hearty "Come in," called out.

She opened the door a little. Quentin was by the bed arranging his clothes in a capacious valise. He turned around and seeing her his eyes went wide. "Anne!"

Never before had she come into his room.

Immediately on the heels of his surprise though, he seemed to notice her reddened eyes, her expression of woe. He closed the space between them in three steps, shut the door behind her, and pulled her into the room. "What is wrong, my sweet? Are you repining because I must be gone for a year? You know we'll meet in the village in between. We must arrange it. And I shall, as usual, send you letters with Mrs. Jenkins' cooperation."

"No," Anne said, feeling nerveless. She allowed herself to be pushed into a chair. "No. It is not that. Though the deprivation of your company is bad enough, it is not enough to prompt me to meet you in your room. You know I would not do that. It is news of much more terrible..." She was interrupted by tears.

"Anne!" He knelt at her feet and took her hands into his, massaging them as though with this caress he could do away with her paroxisms of grief.

"My mother thinks that I am a
were-dragon
," Anne said, and now her tears came mixed with laughter. "I beg your pardon. The situation is so ridiculous."

"No, no," Fitzwilliam said. "I agree with you. It would be laughable were it not so serious. Pray tell, how did your esteemed mama reach this conclusion?"

"It is all predicated on Darcy's having left so suddenly and having sent her an express. I do not know what he told her in the express, but it can't possibly be that I am a dragon or that he is afraid of such."

"No." Quentin shook his head. "I got a letter by the same express. He told me that there was trouble with Whickam and the Bennets and he felt it necessary to intervene. He told me he would regale me with the whole story when we met again. To my aunt I believe he said something less. Only that he'd been called away in an unavoidable way and would not be able to renew his visit until next year. At least, that's what he avowed having told her, and also that I should not deviate from this information."

"Well," Anne said, wiping her flowing tears with her dainty handkerchief. "Mama thinks I am a dragon and that I scared Darcy -- Darcy! -- away by changing shapes."

Fitzwilliam stood up, his body taut. "She's not going to call the Royal
Were
-Hunters, is she?"

Anne shook her head. "No, she says since the Fitzwilliam blood is pure--" she ignored a snort from her beloved. "I am redeemable. She wants to send me to the One Shape water cure treatment in... in India."

Now the tautness of Quentin Fitzwilliam's body was something more than mere alert watching. "Not to a water cure in India! Anne, those do not work." He turned around. "Not that it matters, since you are not in fact a shape changer, but all the same. Darcy's father investigated them all and it is not simply that they do not seem to work -- though some people pretend to be cured so they will not be sent back -- but some of them resemble the strictest prisons, and none of them is pleasant. And in such a climate as India! You'd never survive it, Anne."

"I know," she said, her crying renewed, and added with awful conviction. "I know I shall die and never... never see you again."

A muscle twitched on the side of Fitzwilliam's mouth. "Is your mama quite determined?"

"Oh yes. There will be no arguing with her."

Like that, Fitzwilliam was at her feet again. "Anne, that is... will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife? I know I'm only the second son of an earl, but I have a small competency which will support us in comfort if not in luxury. Say you will marry me, and I shall whisk you out of here this very night. We shall marry across the anvil at Gretna Green, then hurry to France for an extended stay. I know how to live very cheaply indeed."

"We do not ... that is, the house and lands come to me on my marriage. Mama gets only her jointure and the house in town."

"Well! I'm doing very well indeed then." Quentin said, an irrepressible smile on his lips. "That is... if you'll marry me."

"Oh, Quentin, of course I'll marry you!" She flung both arms around his neck.

The rest of it was of little import. She flung her essential clothes into a valise, commanded Miss Jenkins to tell her mother that Anne had flown off in the shape of a dragon, explaining that such an awful idea would keep mama from telling anyone of her disappearance.

Miss Jenkins, in sympathy with the young lovers, swore to do as told.

Darcy's coachman was quite overpowered and told that he must drive north quickly, by the light of the not quite waning moon.

And, before much time had passed they were jostling and bobbing in the great Darcy carriage, on the way to Gretna Green.

Chapter Eighteen

Darcy did not go back to Longbourn with the others, but stayed out in the woods till darkness fell. He found a secluded place in the depths of a stand of old oaks, and lay back against a sturdy trunk, drawing in deep breaths of air with ever increasing difficulty. The pain from his arm was like a living thing, writing through his nerves and clouding his brain.

When the long shadows grew, purple, across the open lands, he did not change into a dragon and fly home to London but made his way across country to Netherfield stumbling like a drunken man -- or a severely ill one.

He was relieved to find a stash of clothes in an upside-down pot by the rhubarb frames, still there from his visit to Netherfield the past autumn. He much preferred wearing his own clothing to Bingley's, which was a trifle tight in the shoulder and short in the leg for him. Though the way he was feeling at the moment, even Mr. Hurst's clothes would have done. He needed to get into the house and into his bed. The pain in his arm was excruciating, and a fever had kindled in his body, growing till it felt like an out of control conflagration. He was surprised he hadn't burned to cinders.

Somehow his presence could be explained in the morning; how he had arrived without luggage, a carriage, or even a horse. He'd think of something. Or Bingley would. It didn't signify.

Once in bed, he found no sleep. He sank into unconsciousness only to rouse himself again in fitful tossings and turnings. Delirium possessed him, painting horrific faces and monstrous events before his very eyes. For a moment he thought himself dragged out, to be executed in public. In the next, it was Georgiana dragged out to be executed for hiding a
were
. And then it was Elizabeth. Always Elizabeth, inhabiting his dreams like an endangered angel. An angel he'd endangered. "Elizabeth!" He called, hoarsely. "Oh, my love."

That is how Bingley found him upon his return from Longbourn. He called for laudanum, a basin of cold water, and a cloth. Then he set about nursing Darcy himself. Of course, he'd never nursed anyone before. And he had no idea how to counteract the poisonous magic from the RWH pistol, but he'd do whatever was in his power to alleviate Darcy's discomfort and hope Darcy was strong enough to survive it. Watching his best friend's face crumple under the pain, he recalled how it was said that strong men begged for death when thus affected.

"Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" cried Darcy urgently, then his voice sank down to indecipherable mumbling again.