Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife (36 page)

“We can’t stop, Tom! There’s no time!” Frank bewailed.

His brother told him to shut his hole.

“Aye think Missus Darcy needs herself a nice lie-down,” he leered at her, tweaking her cheek.

Elizabeth slapped his hand away. He clouted her in return. Tom drug her down from the lathered horse and by the time she landed upon the ground, she was swinging wildly at him. Undertaking the single handhold that would not pinch, kick, or bite, he grabbed her by the topknot and held her, flailing, at arms’ length.

“She’s a prime article, this one is. The ’orn-colic’s a’callin’ me loud.”

The taproom reeked of stale ale and the few people partaking therein quieted when they entered. Elizabeth looked about in vain for a sympathetic face. She endeavoured to call out that she had been abducted. However, before she managed a syllable, Tom Reed hit her again across the face. Was there any question (and unfortunately, there seemed not), the savagery of Tom Reed’s countenance was assurance that none of the basted patrons had an attack of pot-valour.

He demanded a room. Upon seeing their weapons, a man in an apron silently pointed to the back and stepped away. As Reed disappeared into a room with Elizabeth, the door slammed solidly behind him. Jack Lewis found a table, wrested a deck of cards from two groggers and motioned for Frank. Thereupon Lewis, whose personal philosophy demanded he never turn down a chance to drink or rut, proceeded to see who drew high card for being next on Elizabeth.

“A buttered bun is better than none,” opined poet Lewis.

In the low-ceilinged alcove to which Reed drug her, he tossed her atop the mattress of a low cot that was not just stained, but one that emitted the unmistakable stench of urine. From thence, she crouched warily, simultaneously trying not to take a breath, and plotting both escape and defence. Initially, Reed made no move toward her. He did, however, with great deliberation, draw out his dagger. Admiringly, he laid it upon the table next to the bed.

“Shut ye mouf if ye knows what’s good fer ye.”

At this provocation, Elizabeth screamed with obvious deliberation. That rebellion accomplished, she added the lone oath she could recall. Howbeit Reed had been cursed widely and with some creativity, he had not once been called a chuff-nutted son of a doggie’s wife, hence, he laughed uproariously. Then, he stopped laughing.

“That’s ’ow it is, eh? ’ow ’d ye think yer rich ’usband’ll like you tendin’ me like a French whore?”

He unbuttoned his breeches, thus exposing a disinclination toward inexpressibles as well as his pillicock. The latter being in her direct eye line, it was difficult to ignore, so she took the only retaliatory road by endeavouring to bite him. Regrettably, the meaty hands he clamped upon either side of her face were not indicative of a similarly proportioned manhood, therefore her effort was for naught.

He slapped her hard, and exclaimed, “Watch out fer me whennymegs!”

She endeavoured to bite him again. Reed reconsidered. He was having a bit of trouble maintaining an erection in light of her attempts at emasculation. Hence, he withdrew her delivering him fellatio from his mental list of possible outrages to inflict and tossed her upon her back. Elizabeth was both disappointed and relieved at this manoeuvre, in that however she would have liked to exact that particular agony (a few mishaps in affection with Darcy had made her understand this was a sensitive spot upon a man), she did not necessarily want to clamp her teeth upon Reed’s nasty “whennymegs.”

She had little time to contemplate missed opportunities to ruin him. He leapt then upon her in a savage search beneath her petticoats, which incited an unexpectedly fierce grapple. Wriggling away, she left him holding nothing but a pair of empty stockings. Reed looked incredulously at what he held in his grip, then at Elizabeth.

Instantaneously, and with fury, he cast them aside and set after her in a mad scramble across the bed. Well-nigh clear of him, he caught her by the ankle. Dragging her back across the bed by her feet rendered her splayed and skirt up. The perfect position for violation. She kicked at him with her bare feet, but he just elicited a strange lewd giggle as he held her down.

“When aye’m done w’ ye, d’ye think aye oughter ’ave mercy and kill ye with one cut or make it last longer?”

“Pig!” she spat at him.

He would make it last longer.

The roaring panic in Elizabeth’s head almost drowned out the sound of the door as it was kicked open and smashed against the wall. But it startled Reed, who looked thither from attempting to pintle Mrs. Darcy, to be greeted by the unthinkably harrowing sight of Mr. Darcy himself. And he did not appear to be in a forgiving mood.

Instinct told Reed that this was a situation demanding immediate offensive. Expertly, he flung his beloved knife at Mr. Darcy’s head. For a man unused to attack, Darcy parried the stroke quite adeptly. Hence, with a quivering thud, the dagger sank to its shank in the soft wood of the doorpost. As he rarely missed, Reed simultaneously reared and reached for his pistol, preparing to exact a coup de grace.

Instead, and to Reed’s obvious and decided horror, Darcy drew a sabre. The stinging jangle it made as it was pulled from its scabbard made Reed’s teeth hurt.

It was thus that the breadth betwixt them was cut in half.

With not a moment of contemplation, and in the space of two long steps, Darcy ran Reed through. With such force did he render the puncture, his sword by-passed Reed’s backbone and pinned his body to the wall. His hand on the hilt, and the hilt at Reed’s gut, Darcy looked directly in Reed’s gaping eyes as he ground the blade deeper. The stabee opened his mouth as if to speak, but he produced nothing more than a trickle of frothy blood and a gagging sound.

Putting his boot against Reed’s body, it took both hands for him to retrieve his sabre. He did not watch Reed’s body fall to the floor, nor see it twitch in the spasms of death.

He saw not, for he had turned to Elizabeth.

Neither spoke. She did not by reason of dumbfounded astonishment. His silence came by way of yet unadulterated, heaving rage. But betwixt them passed a moment of satisfied concurrence.

At last, he reached out and clasped her to him. To do so, he used but one hand. The other yet encased the bloodied sword in an icy grip.

“Lizzy, Lizzy,” he said, crushing his face to hers, “Thanks be to God.”

She knew she was almost blubbering, but could not stop herself, “Darcy oh Darcy oh Darcy oh Darcy.”

“Can you stand?”

She nodded her head, but when he lifted her from the filthy bed, her legs buckled. Hence, with him having not relinquished the sword, she wrapped her arms about his neck and he half carried her back into the tavern room. He surveyed the occupants surrounding Frank Reed (who had divested himself of his wig, but stood, in obvious ignominy, still wearing the Darcy livery).

“Who else was it, Lizzy?”

With a wavering hand, she pointed to Lewis. If Darcy recognised Lewis as the contemptible poltroon who de-toothed Bingley’s boxer, it was not evident. The single reaction he had upon this introduction was outwardly benign. But for a man of Lewis’ recent vocation, when Darcy lowered his chin, the gesture was not misunderstood.

A reckoning was to occur.

Both bandits stood taut, eyeing Darcy’s blade. Abruptly, and with considerable ferocity, Darcy flung his bloodied sabre down. It hit with a clank, then rolled against the wall, leaving a splattering crimson trail across the floor. The discarding of that gruesome weapon, even in so violent a fashion, led Lewis and Frank Reed to hold the hope their fate would not be so immediate as Tom’s. They clung to that faith even when Darcy recognised the gold encrusted handle of his father’s Catalonian over-and-under pistol in Lewis’ waistband.

But Lewis did take a little half-step backward when he yanked it out.

Retribution was not to wait. Hesitating just long enough to check the load, Darcy drew Elizabeth’s face to his chest. He thereupon shot Lewis and then Frank Reed squarely in the head. So rapidly did he fire, neither man elected a reaction, save for the resultant mist of blood.

Without another word, followed resolutely by a postilion whose loyalty would evermore be incontrovertible, Darcy and Elizabeth quitted the tavern.

The people in the room stood in stunned silence for full half a minute. No one dared move until the horses pounded away. Then, one man alone walked over to the sword lying by the baseboard. He picked it up. The others in the room stood still as stones, their gapes not wrested from the two corpses at their feet. When the man raised the sword and drew his gaze the length of it, the other patrons in the room then did as well. Thereupon, they all, as if by pre-decision, turned to the room from whence Darcy and Elizabeth had come. However, it would be a few more minutes before any would venture a look.

Mrs. Annesley was nearly beside herself when the hack delivered her back from Bexley at half-past eleven when she knew the appointed time of departure for Pemberley was nine. The woman was horrified to be the perpetrator of any disruption of the Darcy plans and had readied a profusion of apologies, explanations, and excuses. However, she saw she had not to invoke any to the Darcys, for their coach had not waited. It was unnecessary for her even to enter the house, because Goodwin was sitting impatiently in the coach, thus emphasising her tardiness.

Gratefully he did not denounce her lack of punctuality, but his pursed lips announced his displeasure as surely as had he carped.

Goodwin was unhappy to have to wait for the old woman. He would have much preferred to travel with Mr. Darcy. However, Mrs. Annesley was an agreeable enough woman (she did not have much to say). Thus he harboured no extreme regret in the assignment of escorting her, save for the peculiarly mouldy odour she emitted. That scent abused the most easily offended of his five, finely-honed senses.

When bound for London, Mr. Darcy, Mrs. Darcy, Miss Darcy, and Mrs. Annesley had ridden in the first coach. Hannah Moorhouse, Anne Wright, and he rode in the second directly behind them. Mr. Darcy was thereupon a married man and Goodwin knew he had to accustom himself to their new mode of travel. But riding with mere maids sullied his also pronounced amour propre. (Goodwin had few subtle sensibilities.)

Though his supercilious demeanour intimidated Anne, Hannah was another matter. Since becoming lady-maid to Mrs. Darcy, she had become somewhat of a bother to him. She was far too garrulous and inquisitive. She inquired of his health. She inquired if he favoured the weather. The dinner. The…whatever. That his reply was seldom more than a grunt did nothing to deter her. Her loquacity, however, did not extend beyond mundane matters. She revealed not one iota of Mrs. Darcy’s privacy.

This was a trial to Goodwin, for nothing would have given him greater pleasure than to report such a transgression to Mrs. Reynolds. Had that come to pass, Hannah Moorhouse would be gone from service within an hour. But that was her saving grace. Her discretion was compleat about the Darcys and their doings. He had never learned of a single utterance that betrayed their privacy. Hence, he had forgiven her need of conversation and continued to grunt disapproval and murmur his agreement to her endless inquiries.

Goodwin was a terse, solitary soul by inclination as well as occupation. As a manservant, he knew to keep his position he could never expect to marry. That had never presented any sort of disadvantage of employment for him. He had never had much interest in women. True, he loved his mother unequivocally. He admired his aunt’s (Mrs. Reynolds) strength of mind. But the chambermaids were flighty and sometimes crude. He despised coarseness in women. He despised coarseness in men as well. He supposed he simply despised coarseness.

If he held her lady-maid as somewhat a nuisance, one might have fancied Goodwin had held additional resentment upon the intrusion of Mrs. Darcy into Mr. Darcy’s life. On the contrary, he believed Mrs. Darcy to be quite beautiful and refined. Refined, but not exactly sedate. He admired sedateness, but not nearly as much as he despised coarseness. In his mind, sedateness could be disregarded altogether when it was replaced by such unaffected charm. Moreover, she never failed to speak to him. As he was used to being regarded by women as part of the wallpaper, it was not surprising he found himself somewhat besotted with her.

This esteem had unequivocally and absolutely nothing whatever to do with the glimpse he caught of her in a soaking night-dress. Indeed, the entire matter of that little incident in Mr. Darcy’s dressing room was exceedingly unfortunate. Goodwin had been so mortified at his unpropitious entry to the bath that his heart did not return to a normal beat for days.

He and Mr. Darcy had acted alone and in concert for so long, he had quite instinctively responded to the sound of disorder. So far as Goodwin knew (and he should know better than anyone save Mr. Darcy himself), there had never, ever, been a lady in his master’s bath. Clearly, what constituted Mr. Darcy’s privacy had altered irrevocably.

They had been more than two hours leaving London behind the Darcy coach. A small, if bitter, pill to swallow was their lapse meant their coach’s trip across the West End avenues was travelled singularly. Nothing was quite so satisfying to Goodwin as the looks of awe that identical coaches in tandem incited amongst the spectating minions. It was possible their driver had similar pretensions, for he urged the horses forward more vigorously than usual, as if to overtake the first coach upon the road.

Overtake them they did.

Not halfway to Pemberley, they came upon the disabled Darcy carriage. It was immediately clear there was very serious trouble.

Until that day, the one time Goodwin had met with undue adversity was at the hands of some particularly unruly boys. They had knocked off his hat with a rock. He had actually called them “ruffians.” He had never used such a common term before, but he had been so affronted it had slipped out. Thus, the level of the affront the coachman related as had come to pass then was shocking to the point of exciting Goodwin into a fit of breathlessness. He sat in the same horrified frozen state as the elderly Mrs. Annesley. Both gaped out the window, neither daring to step upon the same ground as the perpetrators of such a barbarous act.

Goodwin was so outraged, in time he bested his breath and actually considered -following Mr. Darcy in pursuit of those…those…ruffians. Those thieving, --woman--stealing ruffians. However, that embarkation demanded he mount a horse (he -disliked large animals, Troilus and Cressida alone were frightening) and ride it.

Was he ever to do such a thing, then would have been the occasion. It was unfortunate there was no other saddle, for there were four women (including that young Hannah woman) there to witness his heroics—his leaping upon a steed and galloping off to assist Mr. Darcy. Had there been a saddle, he would have done it. Indisputably.

The opportunity to aid Mr. Darcy in saving Mrs. Darcy was dearer than any other duty he could imagine.

Goodwin never doubted that Mr. Darcy would find success. Mr. Darcy would never allow anything to happen to Mrs. Darcy. Mr. Darcy would overtake those men and demand they unhand her. They would do so immediately and with apology. (This notion revealed that Goodwin kept in a locked box under his bed several well-read books that some might disparage as banal.) Mr. Darcy would return with Mrs. Darcy sitting in front of him upon his saddle, her hair, perchance, in slight disarray.

However, it was not to be. Their aborted party sat upon the road for hours awaiting the valorous return.

Mr. Darcy, of course, did return with Mrs. Darcy. There was no question of him ever returning without her. However, it was not the glorious and romantic return Goodwin had envisioned. She was injured. Clearly, she had been wounded egregiously. Very egregiously. This was not how things should be, Goodwin thought to himself as they made haste for Pemberley.

This was not how things should be.