Twenty-One

In Which Lizzie and Darcy Uncover Leticia Beaufort’s Final Secret

“YOU GAVE US DIRECTIONS,” Lizzie said.

“And you were at the club when I tracked down the magistrate!” Darcy added.

The man smiled and nodded, as though they were answering questions correctly. “Yes, and a few other places here and there, not that you—”

“The park, too,” Lizzie interrupted. “You were in the crowd of onlookers after Leticia’s body was discovered!”

“I’ve had the most peculiar feeling we’ve been watched,” Darcy added. “Like an itch you can’t quite scratch.”

“Yes, yes,” he said now, his genial expression never slipping. “I’ve been following you since you asked for directions to the Mullins Brothers storehouse.”

“But why?” Lizzie’s question came out sharper than she intended, but her long night of no sleep was catching up with her. “Who are you?”

“The name is Graves,” he said, purposely omitting any sort of rank or title. “Shall we sit?”

Lizzie glanced at Darcy, who tilted his head in a gesture that she read as, Let’s hear him out .

She plopped down in the hard pew, her muscles and limbs crying out in relief. Darcy sat next to her and took her hand in his. “All right,” he said, studying Graves with suspicion. “Explain.”

“Right, well—first of all, apologies about the tail. But I had to know whether or not you were in on the Mullins brothers’ smuggling ring. You understand, Miss Bennet—you are Mr. Mullins’s legal representation. Lesser men might have helped him avoid being charged in exchange for a share of the profit, or a few bolts of silks...”

Any other time, Lizzie might have been indignant to find her integrity questioned. But now she simply nodded. “But I am no man, sir. And you already knew about the smuggling ring. You were already watching the storehouse.”

“Yes,” Graves confirmed.

“And did you know that the woman at its head is none other than Lady Catherine de Bourgh?”

Graves winced. “Yes.”

“You were supposed to have her in custody!” Darcy shouted, jumping to his feet. “I spoke with the admiral a year ago, and he assured me that she would be arrested before the week was out!”

“Yes, well, it turns out she’s a wily one. Mr. Darcy, sit, please. I’ll answer your questions, but I don’t want to have to restrain you.”

Lizzie tugged on Darcy’s arm. Darcy exhaled, then sat. “All right. Tell us what happened.”

“Her ship was intercepted before your information could be shared with the fleet,” he said pleasantly, as if they were gossiping over tea. “And that woman—she’s a smart one. She convinced the captain that she’d been kidnapped by the crew! They didn’t even suspect her, and when they arrived at Portsmouth, she escaped.”

Lizzie was almost impressed by Lady Catherine’s gall. “And no one sought to inform us?”

“She tried to kill Lizzie!” Darcy added.

“Please don’t take offense, Miss Bennet, but we believed Lady Catherine to be engaged in more pressing matters than exacting revenge on you.”

“But she might come after me now!” Lizzie protested. “And Marianne and Elinor! They’re at the Mullins Brothers storehouse with Jack Mullins and Tomlinson—”

Graves waved a hand. “Not to worry, Miss Bennet. My men will have already secured the storehouse, and the Misses Dashwood and their gentlemen friends will not be implicated.”

“You followed us there this evening? And then followed Lizzie and me to this church?” Darcy asked.

“To be frank, there are very few movements of the past week that we haven’t been following,” Graves told them. “I was rather surprised to find that Mullins had hired you, of course, so I kept an eye out. If Lady Catherine had made a move, we would have stepped in. But she’s kept herself carefully hidden.”

“How dare you, sir?” Darcy exclaimed. “Leticia Cavendish was killed! Lizzie was beaten! Someone threatened her family! And all the while you’ve been skulking in the shadows, standing by as innocent people were hurt—”

“I know,” Graves said, his smile slipping for the first time since he’d entered the church. “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Darcy.”

Darcy was breathing heavily, and Lizzie knew he was trying to keep his temper in check. She needed a distraction. “Tell us why you didn’t intervene sooner. You knew about the smuggling ring, and you knew Hughes was involved. You knew Lady Catherine was at the head. Why let us waltz in?”

“Smuggling is a serious offense, Miss Bennet, but my men could spend all the hours in the day quashing smuggling rings and still the British people will find ways to enjoy their goods from the Continent. It is, to a certain extent, a futile fight. One we must fight nonetheless, but we must be strategic about these things.”

“But this one was different, because Mr. Hughes was selling his graphite to the French?” Lizzie asked.

“Precisely. And such operations needed to be stopped completely. The war depends upon it. If we had simply raided the Mullins Brothers storehouse, Mr. Hughes could have found a new route. We needed to stop Mr. Hughes, but more than that, we need to find Lady Catherine.”

“And now? Can you stop it? Can you find her?”

“Well... Mr. Hughes will be tried for treason, I imagine. And murder. And thanks to you, Miss Bennet, we have Mr. Tomlinson. That is good work—we figured Lady Catherine had probably recruited another London solicitor to do her bidding in the city but we hadn’t yet implicated him. As for her whereabouts...”

He held up both hands and tilted his head to the side.

“You have no idea where she is,” Lizzie said.

“I’m sorry, Miss Bennet.”

Lady Catherine was still at large. Now that Lizzie knew this, she felt a bit silly for assuming that the authorities would have simply taken care of her all those months ago. Lady Catherine had been free this entire time! But just as quickly as the shock came, so did the feeling of foolishness. Lizzie hadn’t heard even the faintest whisper of a lady being arrested for crimes against the Crown. If she’d been paying any attention whatsoever, she’d might have suspected that the authorities hadn’t caught her.

Still at large, and still at her criminal schemes! From piracy to smuggling in less than a year—she clearly didn’t waste any time. And the whole time that Lizzie and Darcy had been investigating, Graves had been watching with the answers. While they were snooping around the storehouse and making calls to Cavendish House...

“Leticia,” she said suddenly. “She had information. She was going to meet us. Why... Oh.”

Graves watched her, and there was a spark in his eye that told her she was right.

“What?” Darcy asked.

“Leticia was a spy,” Lizzie said.

It was the only thing that made sense—Lizzie couldn’t quite believe that Leticia would be content to allow her cousin to marry a man she must have suspected of being foul. And the cousins had seemed close enough that Leticia would have warned Josette of Mr. Hughes’s duplicitous nature... unless she had a very good reason not to.

“Yes,” Graves said, and a shadow seemed to pass over his face. “She was a brilliant young lady. Her death never should have happened. I should have...”

He looked away, and Lizzie realized he was trying to collect himself.

“Hughes killed her,” Lizzie said. “He realized that if Jack was accusing her, it wouldn’t be long before someone connected them.”

“She knew that was a risk, of course,” Graves said. “We approached her months ago, before Mrs. Cavendish’s death. My men had been surveilling Mr. Hughes for some time, suspicious of his claims that his graphite production was failing. We knew that he was hunting for a wealthy wife—and we knew that he was seeing Leticia quietly. We suspected he was hoping that her French connections would prove advantageous, and we figured we’d try to convince her to see things our way. Leticia had no wish to get caught up in international affairs.”

“You blackmailed her,” Lizzie said.

“She was quite happy to help us.”

“Because she wanted to stay in London, with her cousin.”

“She was quite happy to help us, Miss Bennet, because she has no love for the war that took away her home and her family. It was her choice. But to your point... no, we could not pass up recruiting her—it’s not often that one comes across a French-born British citizen who has access to the upper class.”

“You took advantage of her, sir!” Lizzie accused.

“Of course I did, Miss Bennet. We are at war.”

Lizzie bit her tongue. She supposed she couldn’t argue that, although she felt in her heart that it was still wrong. Unbidden, Lady Catherine came to mind. What was it that she had said once? A lady’s only choice is in her refusal. Well, Leticia hadn’t even had that, if refusing Graves meant, at best, being deported and, at worst, being implicated as a French spy.

“Does Josette know?” Darcy asked.

“No,” he said. “That was Leticia’s choice. When Hughes discovered that she didn’t have nearly as much money as he assumed and he broke things off with her, Leticia realized he could slither away, and she’d have no influence over him. She encouraged Josette to consider him, so she could keep an eye on him and discover where he was funneling goods. She gave us the Mullins brothers. She did very good work. She didn’t deserve what she got.”

He cleared his throat, and Lizzie caught a flash of emotion that Graves was trying to bury. Lizzie sighed. “And the day of the fire? What was she doing there?”

“That was just supposed to be a reconnaissance mission,” Graves said. “But... I regret letting her go. I had just told her we didn’t have enough evidence yet, and she needed to keep looking. She was growing desperate. She and Josette were drawing near to the end of their mourning period, and Hughes was pushing for the marriage. She didn’t want to compromise her position, but she didn’t want her cousin to marry a traitor to the Crown.”

And so she had gone looking for proof and gotten caught. Lizzie could imagine the scene that Jack had described, but now from Leticia’s perspective. Backed in the corner, running out of time, furiously flinging bottles of brandy as she looked for escape.

And now she was dead.

“You must tell Josette,” Darcy insisted. “She thinks that her cousin betrayed her. She deserves to know the truth.”

“I can’t do that,” Graves said, shaking his head. “Official Crown business—”

“She deserves to know that her cousin didn’t betray her,” Lizzie insisted. “It’s the least you owe Josette, considering your meddling cost Leticia her life.”

Graves narrowed his eyes. It appeared he did not appreciate Lizzie reducing his clandestine operations to meddling, but he at least considered it.

“Tell her the truth or I will,” Darcy threatened.

“If you do, I will have to arrest you.” Graves delivered this threat in a matter-of-fact tone.

“How dare—”

Lizzie rested her hand on Darcy’s shoulder and stood. “And if you arrest him, you’ll be seeing me in court. I’m told I can be quite vexing.”

“It would not be a fight you could win,” he told her.

“But even so, wouldn’t it be better if we settled this matter here? Amongst ourselves? It would save us all a bit of trouble, and after all the trouble we went through in the last week, it’s only fair.” Lizzie sweetened her words with a smile and watched with pleasure as Graves sighed. She had him.

“Fine. I’ll tell her just enough so she understands that her cousin was loyal to her. But if whispers of our conversation make their way back to me, you’ll both be hearing from me. And then court cases will be the least of your troubles, understand?”

“Perfectly,” Lizzie told him with a genuine smile.

“Very well,” Graves said, looking beyond them to the entrance of the church. “I’ll go speak with Miss Beaufort now, and then I’ll take my leave. I trust we shan’t see any more of each other.”

“Wait!” Lizzie said. “Lady Catherine.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Bennet—she’s hidden herself very well. I’m not concealing her location from you.”

That was what she had feared. “You didn’t tell us that you hadn’t caught her. But you didn’t believe that she would simply leave me alone, did you?”

Graves smiled enigmatically. “We’ve been watching, Miss Bennet. We have eyes everywhere.”

“But you think she’s a threat to Lizzie?” Darcy said, anger making his words come out clipped. “You think that there’s a chance she’ll come after her again?”

“More than a chance, I’m afraid,” Graves said. “In fact, I think you can count on it.”