9

24 December, 1811

Darcy awoke to the resplendent sight of Elizabeth asleep in his arms on the sofa. The book they had read together was still in his lap, Elizabeth was nestled against his chest, and her cat was curled up at her feet, intently watching something out of the nearby window.

That was when Darcy noticed the tapping at the glass.

Elizabeth’s eyes flickered open and for a moment she gave him a slow, sleepy smile before blinking a few times. And then she jolted. Lord Whiskerton gave a grumbling hiss of protest and then leapt off the couch, sauntering away with a flick of his tail.

For a moment, Darcy and Elizabeth could only stare at each other in shock and mortification at having fallen asleep so entangled together. And yet, her hand lingered on his chest, and his fingers remained curled around her loose tresses. He stroked one of her dark curls, and might have even caressed the charming curve of her pink cheeks - but Darcy was afraid to move, afraid of breaking the tenuous spell that hung over them.

Elizabeth bit down on her lower lip, her gaze searching, almost curious. Darcy felt his face drifting toward hers; the corners of her mouth twitched upward as his forehead met hers. And then the sound of the tapping grew louder. They turned their heads in unison toward the nearby window; Richard waved at them before giving a deep, exaggerated bow. Darcy groaned.

Elizabeth’s first impulse was to go cling to Darcy in alarm; her second impulse was to leap off the couch upon realizing they had been discovered in such a compromising embrace. Her third was to run for the pistol once again.

Darcy was just irritated enough at his cousin for interrupting such a beautiful moment as he had only ever dreamt of, that he allowed Elizabeth to point the weapon at his cousin before intervening.

“Miss Bennet, do not distress yourself. That miscreant is my cousin the colonel. His idea of a joke is unpardonable, but he will assist us once I have throttled him soundly.”

Elizabeth handed the pistol to Darcy. “Perhaps you ought to keep this away from me unless it is absolutely necessary for me to use it.”

“I am relieved this will not remain your primary method of solving problems,”

he drawled. He retrieved his blanket from the sofa and offered it to her, and Elizabeth wrapped it around herself, though Richard was no longer peering into the window. “I will ask Hill to start breakfast; Richard can wait until we are all dressed and ready to greet him.”

Richard did not wait for an invitation into the house. Georgiana had passed Elizabeth on the stairs with a look of indiscreet surprise when the front door opened and booming Fitzwilliam laughter filled the foyer. She let out a squeal of delight and rushed down to throw herself into her cousin’s arms as Elizabeth fled out of sight. Darcy acknowledged Richard with a nod and a look that he hoped would remind his cousin they had serious matters to discuss - he had no wish to be teased about what Richard ought never to have seen.

After Darcy spoke to Mrs. Hill about breakfast, he found Wilson, who was flirting with Alice in the kitchen. The valet assisted him in dressing for the day, and Darcy returned downstairs to the drawing room. Another officer had joined his cousin, and they watched Georgiana perform the concerto she had practiced the night before. Mrs. Annesley sat nearby, knitting.

“There you are, Darcy,”

Richard drawled, winking shamelessly. “I trust your journey northward has been a great success! Though after receiving word of Longbourn’s troubles, I had not expected you to be carrying on so formally.”

“The situation I described to you in my missive is distressing enough for Miss Bennet. I hope you will not plague her with your raillery,”

Darcy replied. His gaze shifted to the young man in regimentals whose face looked vaguely familiar. Just then, Elizabeth entered the room and balked at the sight of the other officer.

“Oh!”

Elizabeth drifted closer to Darcy, and then abruptly moved away again, her face nearly as pink as the day dress she had donned. “Good morning,”

she said, her eyes darting about as if she knew not where to look; she finally fixed her gaze firmly on the floor.

Darcy introduced her to his cousin, who in turn presented Captain Denny, an agent of the Crown who had been sent to pose as a new recruit in Colonel Forster’s regiment over the summer. At Elizabeth’s expression of relief, Richard assured her, “I daresay you have little trust for any of the officers whom I understand have been welcomed into your family’s home, Miss Bennet, but Denny is our man on the inside - he is as eager as you are to see Forster and his band of reprobates brought to justice.”

“I had understood you to be a great friend of Mr. Wickham,”

Elizabeth said coldly. “He told me that you encouraged him to join the regiment.”

“I did,”

Denny replied, giving the slightest of bows. “I can easily understand that my association with such a dissolute devil may cause you to distrust me - this only proves my gambit a success. When I met Wickham in London, I comprehended his character at once, and knew he would be just the sort of villain who would fall in with Colonel Forster’s compatriots. I earned Wickham’s trust, which in turn granted me access to the colonel’s inner circle.”

“Denny is a tactical genius,”

Richard said, clapping him on the back. “A man on the rise, mark my words.”

Captain Denny gave a jaunty shrug of his shoulders, smiling through some little embarrassment. “My pleasure at making the acquaintance of your family, Miss Bennet, has been most sincere. The regiment has received a warm welcome here, even those amongst us who are wholly undeserving of such attention. It pains me that so many amongst them would repay that hospitality and kindness with avarice and criminal conspiracy, and that I have not been at liberty to warn the locals.”

Mrs. Hill entered the parlor to announce that breakfast was ready. Looking visibly shaken, Elizabeth led them across the hall to the dining room, where a buffet had been laid out for them. Darcy took a seat beside Elizabeth, and as their companions served themselves, he found the chance to lean close and softly ask her, “Are you well, Miss Bennet?”

He feared she still suffered some mortification at how they had awoken - that they had fallen asleep together - that being discovered by someone she had no prior acquaintance with might be too much, even for such a tenacious creature as Elizabeth. Of course, Darcy would be more than happy to offer for her, if she felt herself compromised. He would have preferred to court her properly and then enter into a betrothal free from any whiff of scandal, but when her reputation was at stake, he would act honorably - and hastily.

To Darcy’s surprise, Elizabeth did not mention their shared slumber. Instead she said, “I find it disheartening to think of how many of these treacherous monsters were welcomed into my home, were permitted to dine with us and dance with us, and who blended so seamlessly into our midst that we placed every faith in them. My sisters - and I - we flirted with them, laughed with them - to think how near to danger and deceit we were all along, and never knew it! I have long prided myself on my discernment, on my judgement of character, and I am heartily ashamed of myself.”

The rest of their companions had begun to listen to Elizabeth as they all ate their breakfast. “Miss Bennet,”

Richard said gently. “It is discouraging indeed that such miserable wretches would dishonor His Majesty’s army. They have deceived more than just yourself. They have fooled the entire neighborhood, and several others in the past year, as well as their fellow officers and even their superiors. Only a very few privileged and high-ranking agents besides myself are aware of Colonel Forster’s criminal operations. Had you detected the truth, I should be recruiting you to come work for the Office of Intelligence.”

Elizabeth put on a brave smile. “I fear I am too easily won over by flattery to be of much use as a spy.”

Her eyes darted toward Darcy, and he could have sworn she winked at him.

Richard laughed appreciatively, and turned to address Georgiana, who was seated quietly beside Mrs. Annesley. “What about you, my dear one? Should you not enjoy a life of espionage? You and your inscrutable companion might make quite a dynamic duo.”

Mrs. Annesley raised her eyebrows with a wry smile and a little shake of her head. “We prefer a quiet life in the country, though I am sure you are aware, sir, that Miss Darcy shares her cousin’s robust spirit.”

“For revenge,”

Georgiana added, sharing a wicked smile with Richard. Mrs. Annesley regarded her charge with quiet pride, Elizabeth’s eyes sparkled with mirth, and even Denny seemed to regard Georgiana with indulgent appreciation.

Darcy looked nervously at the captain. “I suppose you are aware that my family has some previous dealings with Mr. Wickham, in which he has styled himself a blameless victim?”

Denny made a droll face. “It has been his favorite complaint for months. Wickham has no talent for discretion. Of course, we are taught the prudence of silence, that so much talking is the surest sign of guilt. But I cannot repine that Wickham’s lack of subtlety has worked to our benefit - I could hardly be so sure of our success without his unwitting assistance.”

“It is the only kind of good he has ever done anybody,”

Richard drawled.

“Harrington and Marveston have been instrumentally indiscreet as well,”

Elizabeth said.

“Those dolts are meant to be the sacrificial lambs, I fear,”

Richard said. “We have been gathering information and evidence on Colonel Forster’s little syndicate for a year now - the Red Bandits, we call them, for he only works with officers. In order to maintain the innocence of his men, he will always kill one or two of the weakest at the scene of the robbery, then make a great show of charging to the rescue, claiming to have taken out a couple of the robbers while the rest got away - along with the items of greatest value. His men look like heroes, nobody ever suspects their schemes, and they still get away with the majority of their ill-gotten gains, recovering just enough from the bodies left behind to convince their victims that they have exerted themselves in pursuing justice.”

“If we do not act,”

Denny added, “Harry and Marv will meet their end on the lawn of Longbourn and be found with pockets full of your cheapest trinkets, while Forster sends your finest jewels off to the seedier pawnbrokers of London.”

“But surely they will not actually attempt the burglary,”

Elizabeth cried. “I have convinced them that my family returned to Longbourn the night before last.”

Richard gave a slight shake of his head and Denny offered them all an apologetic smile. “It was a clever ruse, to be sure, but I fear at least one of your tenants could not resist the urge to praise your generosity to the rest of the neighborhood.”

Elizabeth’s countenance was crestfallen. “They know my family is not here with me?”

Darcy felt a surge of protective anger. Elizabeth’s family still had not returned, and the tenants whom she had shown such kindness had repaid her by unwittingly endangering her.

“Worse than that, Wickham knows the Darcys are here,”

Denny said to Richard. “He plans to kill you, Mr. Darcy, and to….”

He did not finish his sentence, but his eyes drifted to Georgiana.

Darcy stiffened, and his sister did the same, but her countenance betrayed none of the alarm he expected, and even felt himself. Across the table, she took Elizabeth’s hand, and the two women shared a look of fiery resolve.

“I am so sorry for drawing you into this,”

Elizabeth said, glancing from Georgiana to Darcy.

“I am glad that you will not face it alone,”

Georgiana replied. Darcy at once wished to leap from his chair and cheer for his sister, and to embrace her and Elizabeth - and to spirit them both away to safety.

“We will apprehend these criminals,”

Richard said firmly. “I have a team making ready in London, and we shall be here at ten o’clock, when they mean to commence their activities.”

“They mean to strike at seven,”

Denny sighed. “The colonel has grown cautious, and changed the time at the last moment.”

Richard’s nostrils flared as he turned to Denny, grimacing. “Can you not stall them?”

“Not for three hours,”

Denny said. “Can you not bring your men earlier?”

“That is most impossible! I must return to London and contact my superiors as well as a dozen other soldiers, and then ride back here under cover of dark. We might arrive by nine, at the earliest.”

“At the risk of sounding bloodthirsty, can we not just shoot them?”

Elizabeth asked.

Richard grinned for a moment before he resumed a serious demeanor. “While I admire your courage, Miss Bennet, I must advise against it. This has been the work of more than a year at the Office of Intelligence, and not only do we wish to bring these men to justice through trial, we hope they may be coaxed into divulging information on their co-conspirators. We have reason to believe them merely a small part of a larger conspiracy within the militia.”

“Well, we could… shoot them in the legs,”

Georgiana suggested delicately.

Denny looked at Georgiana as if she were the Queen, while Darcy could only stare aghast, and Mrs. Annesley gently chided her charge. Richard threw back his head and guffawed, covering Georgiana’s hand with his own. “That’s my girl! But as much as I should celebrate you putting a bullet or ten in George Wickham, I must discourage any attempt to do so. Civilians shooting wildly in the night is a recipe for disaster.”

“We will defend ourselves, if you cannot,”

Darcy cried, surprising even himself with the vehemence of his speech. “If Wickham wishes us such harm, I will do everything in my power to bring him down.”

Across the table, Mrs. Annesley sat with one arm still around Georgiana’s shoulders; she brought her free hand daintily to her mouth and gave a soft, deliberate cough as her eyes landed on Darcy. He inclined his head toward her. “Madam? Have you something to say?”

“You are as much a part of this as anyone else,”

Richard added encouragingly.

“Thank you,”

Mrs. Annesley said with a deferential nod. “It occurred to me that Mrs. Hill told me of her son Johnny - he sprained his ankle after slipping on some ice and falling down the stairs at the servants entrance, at the back of the house.”

Everyone at the table looked quizzically at the serene older woman. Everyone except Elizabeth, who was grinning wolfishly as she motioned for Mrs. Annesley to elaborate.

“Well, though I shall not condone any haphazard shooting, perhaps there is merit in Miss Darcy’s notion of incapacitating these brutes. Mrs. Hill said that she salted away the ice after Johnny took his fall, but there is snow enough on the ground that there might easily be ice on the stairs once more by nightfall.”

Richard mirrored Elizabeth’s wicked smile. “I say, Darcy, this one is a vast improvement over the last woman to hold her position. If Mrs. Annesley is not running your entire household in the next few years, I am poaching her to come work for me.”

Denny nodded as he considered the suggestion. “It may take more than ice at the entrances, but there is indeed merit in the notion of detaining them in such a way. I can stall our arrival for perhaps an hour, and if your men can hasten here an hour early, Colonel Fitzwilliam, that leaves only an hour - from eight o’clock until nine - for you to distract and disarm them here at Longbourn.”

“Even with Denny turning on them at the last minute, there will be nine armed soldiers besieging this house,”

Richard said, steepling his fingers on the table in front of him as his countenance turned serious. “They have every entrance to this house mapped out - you are going to need a lot more than ice to hinder them.”

Elizabeth smirked. “Perhaps the trellis beneath my bedroom window might come loose? Or the intruders might step across a floor polished with grease and then strewn with rusty nails? I cannot account for why there is a pail of them in the shed, but for just such a moment.”

“I take it back - apologies, Mrs. Annesley,”

Richard said, gesturing to Elizabeth. “Darcy, put her in charge of Pemberley.”

Though she shook her head as she laughed, Darcy could see Elizabeth glow under such praise, and her eyes locked on his. He longed to declare that he fully intended to take his cousin’s teasing advice, and if they could manage a few minutes of privacy, Darcy meant to throw himself at Elizabeth’s feet and beg her to make him the happiest of men. In the short but significant time they had spent together at Longbourn, Darcy had lost all ability to envision any life for himself that did not include her.

But there was much to be done, and their plan of defense was only in its infancy. Before Darcy could win Elizabeth’s hand, he first must protect her - no, he must help her protect herself from what was to come. He spent the next hour at her side, marveling at her every idea for wicked mischief, and devoted the rest of the day to bringing her devious visions to life. His proposal would have to wait - tonight they were waging a war.