“Nice try, Mrs. Darcy,” he mocked as he pulled her into his body, Elizabeth’s back tight against his chest. “Before I set you free, you will pay for such impudence.” He purposely cupped her breast in intimidation and squeezed it possessively.
Elizabeth clenched her fists at her sides, but she did not fight him. Her thoughts remained on Darcy. If she left with Withey, the others could help her husband.That was her mission: saving Darcy’s life. “I will not fight you,” she declared.
“Order Darcy’s friends away.” Withey pulled her closer to him, expecting Stafford and Worth to attack.
Elizabeth nodded her agreement. Taking a deep breath, she called out, “Lord Stafford, please take Mr. Worth and move away. Mr.Withey has a gun to my head and will not hesitate to shoot.”
“Tell them to put their weapons down,” he ordered softly.
“Please lay down your guns,” she added.
Worth and Lawrence assessed the situation. “Where is Darcy?” Stafford asked as he bent to place his gun in a nearby snowdrift.
Elizabeth could not suppress the sobs waiting to escape. “Help him!” she managed to say before James pushed her toward Pandora.
Nigel Worth followed Stafford’s example and lowered his gun. “She does this for her husband,” he whispered to the viscount.
Withey gave her a leg up as Elizabeth rucked up her skirts to sit astride Pandora’s back. “Do not try anything adventurous, Mrs. Darcy,” he warned as he mounted Darcy’s favorite stallion.
Elizabeth, needing to maneuver Withey away from Pemberley so the others could tend to Darcy’s wounds, nodded her affirmation. Misery scraped at the back of her throat as she accepted her fate.
“Stand back!”Withey ordered as he kicked Demon’s flanks and took up the leading line on Pandora’s harness.Without further ado, he led Elizabeth toward the forest road.
Stafford and Worth stared in admiration as the blood-encrusted face of Elizabeth Darcy passed them. Sitting on Pandora’s back, she shot a pleading look and a nod of her head toward the open stable door.Withey kept her horse abreast of his and the gun pointed directly at her, but she told them what to do without words. As soon as she and her captor passed them, Stafford and Worth ran to the stable.They hit the door and skidded to a stop when they found a bloody Fitzwilliam Darcy trying to open a nearby stall.
“Darcy?” Stafford caught him under the arm and lifted his friend, supporting Darcy’s sagging weight. “Let me get you into the house.”
“No!” Darcy gritted his teeth. “Saddle the horse.” Pain sheared through him.
“You cannot—” Worth began, A contemptuous glare from Darcy stopped him midsentence.
Barely moving his lips, Darcy summarized the situation. “Elizabeth is my wife.”
Stafford nodded his agreement. “Saddle the horse, Worth. Let me see what I can do for Darcy.”
The solicitor agreed reluctantly, but he did what the viscount said. Meanwhile, Stafford wrestled Darcy free of his jacket. “Wickham
may have hit a lung,” Stafford whispered as he used rags he found in a nearby bucket to bind Darcy’s wound.
“And he may not have,” Darcy observed.
Lawrence leaned closer. “Mrs. Darcy struck Wickham with a blow that would have brought another man to his knees, but it barely stunned him. You cannot fight him, Darcy. You must kill him—without reservation—if you expect to stop him. If he gets a chance, he will rape your wife. He touched Mrs. Darcy quite inappropriately as a show of power.”
“He seeks revenge.” Darcy exhaled the words.
“I will follow you,” Stafford asserted. “I will finish it if you cannot.”
“Thank you, Stafford.”
Within five minutes, Darcy sat upon Vulcan’s back. It took all his determination to simply pull himself into the saddle. Stafford placed a horse blanket about Darcy’s shoulders—neither of them considering his return to the tight-fitting jacket. “I will bring your coat for Mrs. Darcy,” he said as he handed Darcy a gun.“Be careful, my friend.”
With a nod of his head, Darcy kicked Vulcan’s sides and sent the gelding in an easy gallop toward the forest road.
“They will follow,” Elizabeth said quietly as they turned toward the road leading to Kympton.The horses suffered with the frozen tundra and with having stood outside in the cold so long, but Withey took no note of the conditions. He simply pressed Demon a bit harder. After that, they rode in silence for nearly a half hour, keeping to the more treacherous back roads.
Elizabeth shivered from the cold and from the panic gripping her heart. She worried for Darcy and for the colonel and for Lydia. Her family lay dead or dying, and she rode away with the man who had brought devastation to her home.“I cannot go on,” she said from the depths of her resolve.“I will let you take me no farther, M. Withey.”
“What will you do, Mrs. Darcy?” James Withey snarled. “Will you have me shoot you? Right here? Right now?”
Elizabeth did not look at him, but she answered just the same. “If that is my only choice.”
Her captor ignored her verbal challenge; instead,Withey turned the horses toward a nearby church.“Let us see what God has to offer us today. Maybe something left over from the collection plate.”
He slid from Demon’s back and reached up to help Elizabeth from the saddle. She let her eyes fall on the small whitewashed building, and an errant thought struck her.
“Mr. Withey, might I speak to Mr.Wickham?”
“Why?” Her request shocked him. “Why him and why now?”
“I wish to speak to Mr. Wickham,” she insisted.
He held her gaze for a heartbeat before a squeeze of his eyes brought the man she knew.“Miss Elizabeth, may I help you dismount?”
“Yes, Mr. Wickham, but it is Mrs. Darcy now. Remember.” She gently placed her hands on his shoulders and allowed him to lift her. “We are brother and sister,” she added quietly.
“So we are,” he noted as he placed her hand on his arm to lead Elizabeth toward the building. “Mr. Withey was most displeased with your asking for me,” he noted as they walked along.
“I had not seen you since you left for Newcastle. Of course, I was curious.” When they reached the church steps, Elizabeth purposely smiled at him, trying to continue her part in this charade. “Look where we are, Mr. Wickham.” She gestured with her free hand to the church steps upon which they stood. “It is the sanctuary at Kympton, the one you so coveted for years.”
Wickham looked around with an assessing eye. “It is, at that, Mrs. Darcy. It is a shame your husband denied me the living once promised by his father.”
Elizabeth forced evenness into her voice despite the fact that she stood in a frozen landscape, wearing a simple day dress, with blood caked about her eyes and in her hair and spoke to a madman. “It must be Providence which has brought us here today, Mr. Wickham. I am sure Mr. Darcy said the living was to come available in the late spring. Perhaps something could still be secured. Mr. Darcy will do anything to keep my regard.”
“The man is not likely to change his mind, Miss Elizabeth.”
She did not correct him this time. Instead, Elizabeth looked steadily at the church. “It is rather inviting. Might we take a look inside? I find it quite cold here in the open.”
“Of course. How callous of me.”Wickham reached for the door and opened it for her. “After you.”
Darcy knew he could be no more than ten minutes behind Wickham and Elizabeth. He slumped over Vulcan’s neck, clinging to the animal, making himself stay in the saddle—to find Elizabeth before Wickham violated her as revenge for past sins. He had witnessed the lunacy for himself and knew he had no choice, but it grieved him to have things come to this. Although he inherently knew he was not to blame for George Wickham’s descent into hell, part of him wondered what he might have done differently.When he had first taken the blame for Mr. Wickham’s transgressions, Darcy had done so out of friendship. Later, he had done it to protect the Pemberley name from scandal. Now, he realized that all he had managed to do was to give Wickham permission to continue his wayward ways—to reinforce all the wrongs the man perpetrated.
Then, as the late afternoon light began to fade, he, finally, saw them. Demon and Pandora stood before the Kympton village church. Somehow, Fate, probably with a bit of Elizabeth’s manipulations, had brought them all to this place at this time. Planning his attack as he approached, Darcy rode to the cemetery beside the church. He painfully slid from the saddle. Using Vulcan as a brace, Darcy pulled himself to stand straight. He took the gun from his waistband, cocked it, and started for the church’s side door.
“It is a most delightful place! Excellent parsonage house!”Wickham stared out the window.“It would have suited me in every respect.”
“How should you have liked making sermons?” Elizabeth asked, trying to keep him talking. She had decided if she could get away and hide long enough to make it to the nearby village, then she just possibly might find help for herself and her husband.
“Exceedingly well.” He turned back to face her. “I should have considered it as part of my duty, and the exertions would soon have been nothing. One ought not to repine; but, to be sure, it would have been such a thing for me! The quiet, the retirement of such a life would have answered all my ideas of happiness. But it was not to be.”
While he spoke dreamily, Elizabeth slowly edged toward the side door of the church. “I have heard from authority that the living was left you conditionally only, and at the will of the present patron—at my husband’s will.” Elizabeth realized she provoked him, but it was a calculated risk. She leaned away from him; breathing heavily, the weight of her dilemma dawned fully. For the sake of the distraction, she needed to keep Wickham talking.
“You have? Yes, there was something in that; I told you so from the first, you may remember.” Having been caught in the lie he so often repeated, Wickham became more agitated, pacing the length of the vestibule.
Elizabeth eased closer to her goal. She prayed that, as with the front door, the side one would be unlocked. “I did hear, too, that there was a time when sermon-making was not so palatable to you as it seems to be at present; that you actually declared your resolution of never taking orders, and that the business had been compromised accordingly—and that Mr. Darcy provided you with three thousand pounds as compensation.”
Wickham’s eyes flickered, and she saw James Withey for a split second, but Wickham remained in control. “You did? And it was not wholly without foundation. You may remember what I told you on that point when first we talked.”
Elizabeth cautiously reached behind her and felt for the door handle. Finding it, she breathed easier. It was now or never. “Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister, you know. Do not let us quarrel about the past. In the future, I hope we shall always be of one mind.” She saw the flicker again, and James Withey’s rage take over.
His mouth twisted in contempt. “You had to mention that bitch and the marriage!” He stormed across the church at her, knocking over benches set for the parishioners, but Elizabeth did not wait to hear the
end of his rant. She ran through the opened door to the cemetery—from a living nightmare—and into the waiting arms of her husband.
Withey stormed across the church trying to reach the woman. Wickham had not been aware of Elizabeth Darcy’s scheming mind, and now James would have to find her and silence her before she sent up a general alarm in the neighborhood. “Damn!” He raced after her, out the church’s side door, but a specter he had thought he left behind stood solidly among the tombstones, and James found himself on the short end of a gun.
“Step behind me, Elizabeth.” Darcy moved her to relative safety as he kept his gaze on their interloper. She stilled against him, terror tightening her fingers on his arm.
“I thought you dead,”Withey snarled.
A sarcastic smile graced Darcy’s face.“As usual, you were in error.”
“Well, Darcy, we are at an impasse. Our battle is to end this day, with only one claiming victory.” Falsely, James took a small step backward. “It is my belief that you are too honorable to kill a man in cold blood, and you are in too much pain to come for me,” he added brashly. With that, James dived through the open doorway, gunfire chasing him into the dusky shadows.
The gunshot surprised her, but Elizabeth did not scream. Instead, she prayed that Darcy had not killed Wickham. The man was correct; it would haunt her husband terribly, so despite what he had put them through, she wished Wickham to live.The sound of the front door banging open told her that God had answered that prayer.
“Help me,” Darcy ordered as he lurched toward the noise.
She clung to her husband.“Let him go, Fitzwilliam,” she begged. “I will not have you labeled a murderer.”
Darcy pulled up. Looking down at her bruised and bloody face, he said, “He did this to you.” He reached to caress her cheek.
“And to you.” She braced his shoulder with her hands.“Let this be the worst of it.”
The sound of hoof beats said Withey had made his escape, and for a moment, they thought it finished, but suddenly Demon bore down on them; and James Withey wielded a sword, slicing the frozen air.
Darcy pulled Elizabeth behind a burial crypt at the last second, but Withey circled the horse and came at them again. Everything moved in shadows: the crazed face of George Wickham yelling a curse filled with years of hate and a proud and a principled Fitzwilliam Darcy standing tall to rebuke the attack. And then Darcy reacted by instinct: He whistled to the horse—his horse—to Demon, and the stallion reared up, pawing the air with violent strikes.
James Withey barely held the reins as he charged Darcy for the second time, concentrating purely on making contact with his enemy, so when Darcy emitted a shrill whistle, at first he did not understand the man’s intentions; but then the horse rose on its back legs to defend itself from an unknown attack, and James felt himself sliding from the saddle. And then a grim silence.