“Colonel Fitzwilliam. It’s the nursemaid, sir. Mr. Darcy is at the dressing-room door and says he must speak with you immediately. There are some people outside, sir.” She sounded anxious.
Fitzwilliam scrubbed his eyes with his hand to force the sleep from them. He heard Darcy in the distance bark an order down to someone on the first floor, sounding angrier and more urgent now. “I must see to him, Amanda. Darcy would never be pounding on our door like this if it wasn’t important.” She attempted to stop him, but he patted off her hand and was pulling on his smallclothes, breeches, and shirt before she could say anything more.
He walked quickly across their bedroom, pulling open their door.
“Excuse me, please, Colonel, for disturbing you like this, but Mr. Darcy is that insistent.”
“Yes, that’s quite all right. I understand. If you would, bring the child in here to his mother.” He turned toward Amanda to give her some instruction, but his breath caught at the sight of her. She stood in the corner of the room, looking small and petrified. He smiled faintly at her and then whispered to the nurse as he passed, “Please close the door to the bedroom after I leave.” She nodded in understanding.
“What has happened?” Richard watched as Darcy stormed past him into the sitting room. Plainly about to explode with anger, he turned around at the table before the fireplace, his hands on his hips. Richard raised his hand to stay him, giving a quick glance at the closed bedroom door. “And please keep your voice down. I don’t want Amanda unnecessarily alarmed.” It was a moment before Darcy could calm himself enough to speak.
“I’ll tell you what has happened.” Darcy moved closer. “The world has gone mad. That’s what has happened. There are at least a dozen hideous-looking Bow Street thugs out there—poor old Winters was nearly struck by one of them. They tried to force their way into the house, the bastards! Luckily, my hideous-looking thugs are bigger and so managed to keep the scoundrels out. But here’s the thing—I believe they are demanding the boy be brought out immediately. I overheard someone exclaiming loudly that the child had been kidnapped, if you can imagine a mother being accused of that! And a crowd is quickly gathering. Evidently, the entire area has suddenly decided to use a good woman’s personal tragedy as diverting entertainment.”
“Damn it! I am so sorry to have brought this to your doorstep. I should have known. Blast, we should have left yesterday.”
“The point is that we must shield Amanda and the boy. I cannot permit a child to be taken from his mother, most especially a member of my own family, and they are both part of this family now.” Darcy was storming back and forth before the fireplace, pounding his fist into his hand.
“You know you’re beautiful when you’re angry.”
“Oh shut up. Now, how do you want to handle this?” He sat down on the edge of the desk, his arms folded before him. “I was informed that there is a clerk of the court present with some sort of legal document to deliver, probably a court order. I say we present a type of combined front of bullshit, intimidate the man enough to buy some time, perhaps even turn the crowd against him until we locate someone who can return to override any immediate custody order he may have.”
“Well, we outfoxed footballers four years our senior at Harrow, we should be able to bluff our way through this.” Fitzwilliam began rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Bloody hell, this is entirely my fault! Amanda tried to warn me about the woman’s vindictiveness, but I thought she was overreacting. Never imagined the old witch would take this to the courts! I’ve been expecting her footmen to come first with her demands. Damn, I suppose I should have listened, taken this more seriously. If only we had more time!”
“Have you heard anything from the lawyers? Surely, now that you are her husband, she’ll have more standing in the courts.”
“As a matter of fact, I have Drake and Poole working on something very promising.” He placed a bare foot on the seat of one of the chairs, resting his forearm across his knee. “But they must request a review by parliament. You know how it is, with all the lawyers involved and then the mind-boggling slowness of the House of Lords—this could drag on for some time. Shit! Well, if he does have a court order, we have little choice in the matter. The boy shall have to be returned. Oh God, this will break Amanda’s heart. She obsesses over that child, is terrified of being separated from him for even the smallest moment.”
“How could someone be heartless enough to separate a mother and small child permanently? Do you think the old woman is only bluffing?”
“I have no idea. Bah! The whole thing is out of our hands, for the moment anyway. I know the child would not be in any physical danger left alone with his grandmother. From what Amanda has said, the woman adores the boy, dotes on him. I have no doubt he would be well cared for. We will eventually obtain custody, of that I am certain.”
Darcy studied his cousin intently. “Frankly, I don’t foresee Amanda taking a separation from her son that lightly, Richard. She seems a most devoted mother.” Darcy’s memory went back to his own exhausted and half-dead wife begging him to take her life to spare her child’s, and then further astonishing him by clawing her way across her bed to reach her baby. He felt the unease of impending disaster. “I don’t believe mothers are easy in their minds over any separation from their children, no matter how slight a duration.”
“Well, naturally I understand that. I am not totally insensitive. I’ll explain my reasoning to her. She’s a good, loving wife, Darcy, as well as a good mother. She understands that in a proper marriage the husband must sometimes make hard decisions and the woman must follow. She’s a truly wonderful person.”
Darcy shifted nervously, alarm bells clanging away loudly in his head. After all, he had been married longer than his cousin. He gave an involuntary shudder.
“What is it now, Darcy?” An exasperated Fitzwilliam was getting heartily tired of being contradicted.
“Well, a wonderful wife she may be, Fitzwilliam, but… she is a woman, too, and an American woman at that. She may not be as obedient as you wish.”
Chapter 10
By the time Fitzwilliam threw on his coat and boots and he and Darcy had descended to the foyer, the small group of curious onlookers had grown, scattered now both up and down the street and beginning to drift across the square. Carriages on the avenue occasionally needed to maneuver around the milling crowd, and two had even stopped to fight over right of way. The sight that had attracted everyone’s interest was the gang of rough-looking Bow Street Runners assembled before Pemberley House, the undisputed jewel of the avenue. All of those said runners were large, hideously ugly, and disgraceful-looking.
It was great fun.
To further pique the crowd’s delight, the runners were facing equally distasteful-looking footmen, coachmen, and gardeners, brutes all, attired in the exquisite Pemberley livery of scarlet and grey. They stood guard on either side of the doorway where poor old Winters was under intense verbal attack.
“What is the meaning of this?” Darcy’s sudden appearance at the door hushed the crowd—the show had begun. He scanned the onlookers, measuring their mood, then confronted the official-looking gentleman who was apparently the occasion’s spokesperson.
“Might I come in, sir?”
“No, you may not.” The crowd shuffled uneasily.
Dramatically, a document was withdrawn from the gentleman’s inside pocket. He nervously cleared his throat. Ahem. “Charges have been filed with the local magistrate demanding immediate resumption of custody of the child of the late Sir Augustus Penrod to Lady Marguerite Penrod, his mother. We have reason to believe that the child in question was kidnapped”—the crowd gasped—“two evenings past and was brought here.” Smatterings of appreciation emboldened the man. He turned a dignified and self-righteous face to the crowd.