“Good evening, Fletcher.” He looked down at the trunk. “Packed to satisfaction?”
“Yes, sir. I believe so, sir.” His man moved toward the article in question. “Do you wish to —”
“No, I have every confidence that it is complete for our purposes. Send it down with my bag, if you please.” Fletcher bowed, reached for the bell rope, gave it a stout pull, and then bent to the task of strapping and locking the trunk.
When he finished, he turned back to his master, the solemnity of his manner unchanged. “If I may, sir?” Darcy nodded his assent to the curiosity he knew Fletcher had manfully controlled throughout the evening before turning him his back to begin disrobing. “May I know more about our mission?” He eased the coat from Darcy’s shoulders and placed it on a chair. “A lady in distress, I am to understand?”
“Yes, but wait!” A knock had sounded at the servants’ door, causing both men to tense. “Enter!” Darcy called out. “There.” He motioned the entering footman toward the trunk. “Take it below for tomorrow morning, if you please; and remind Morley that the coach is to be ready by first light. Thank you.”
“Yes, sir.” The footman hoisted the trunk to his shoulder and headed back down the servants’ stairs. Darcy waited until the sound of his footsteps had receded to silence before turning back to his valet.
“Yes.” He unbuttoned his waistcoat. “That is correct — or almost correct.” Fletcher’s eyebrow went up. “The lady may not yet realize that she is in distress, but she most certainly is. Of that there is no question!” Darcy leaned toward his man as he handed him his waistcoat. “Your discretion is of the utmost importance in this matter, you must realize, the utmost importance!”
“Yes, sir!” Fletcher’s eyes lit up even as Darcy fixed upon him an intense look.
“It involves the Bennet family.”
Fletcher’s excitement turned to horror. “No, sir…not Miss Eliz ——”
“No! Rest easy on that score.” Darcy began untying his cravat. “But it is one of her sisters, the youngest. She has run off in what she expects to be an elopement but what I am most certain is not. I know the character of the man,” he explained grimly. “It is George Wickham.”
“Wickham? One of Colonel Forster’s lieutenants?” Fletcher questioned. “ ‘A Plumper and too ripe by half’ was the word among the servants in Hertfordshire, sir. But I understood that the Colonel’s regiment was in Brighton.”
“You understand correctly, but the Colonel’s wife must have Miss Lydia Bennet as companion. So off she went to Brighton as well, without her parents or other relative as chaperone.”
“A bad business, sir.” The valet shook his head.
“As is now seen,” Darcy agreed, handing him the cravat. “I came upon Miss Elizabeth Bennet only moments after she received this news from home. She was understandably distraught and confided to me more than she might have otherwise, I am sure. You know what this means, Fletcher.”
“Yes, sir. ‘Disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,’ censure for all concerned unless the young people can be found and made to marry.” The valet’s features sank into lines as grim as those of his master, reminding Darcy that the widening effect of Wickham’s perfidy encompassed Fletcher’s nuptial hopes as well. Until Elizabeth was wed, Fletcher’s Annie would not entertain thoughts of leaving her mistress for her own matrimonial desires.
“There you have it.” Darcy nodded and passed his shirt to the valet. “It must be accomplished, or the parties must be bought off and sent into a sort of semiexile. I can conceive of no other acceptable solution that will provide the family — the young ladies — protection from the ‘outcast state’ of your sonnet. As it is, even should we succeed, the seemliness of the affair will be as thin as a veil.” He paused before his mirror, ready to avail himself of the hot water from the washstand in front of it. “So thin, so very thin, Elizabeth!” he whispered before bringing the water to his face. He then turned back to Fletcher. “But perhaps that is all that will be needed. Society has certainly entertained greater scandals with less concern. Let us hope that this may be one of them.”
“I devoutly pray it be so, sir.” Fletcher’s chin hardened as he held up Darcy’s dressing gown and pushed it over his shoulders. “And how shall I assist you, sir? I am even more at your command.”
“I have no conception as yet, save for the conviction that I shall stand in need of your powers of observation and your uncanny ability to come upon information when needed, which you displayed so well at Norwycke Castle last winter.” A slight smile creased Fletcher’s face. “Not to mention that I expect to be keeping very irregular hours, which must not be allowed to alarm the rest of the staff. It will be a dicey bit of work, Fletcher.”
“Yes, sir.” The valet gathered up Darcy’s discarded clothes. “But allow me to observe that the lieutenant, as despicable as he is, is in nowise the same class of fiend as was Lady Sayre or her daughter. I would not lay any odds in favor of him eluding you, sir.”
“Let us hope that will prove true. Now, get some rest.” Darcy waved him off. “We leave at six; I shall expect you at five-thirty.”
Fletcher bowed at the servants’ door. “I have no doubt of your success, sir,” he replied as he rose and, for a rare moment, looked Darcy full in the face. “No doubt at all. Good night, sir.” Inclining his head once more, he closed the door.
Two evenings later found Darcy encamped at Erewile House with only a skeleton staff to do the small amount of cooking and cleaning that were required in the extraordinary circumstance in which he had chosen to put himself. As an added precaution, he had directed that whoever answered the door admit only those on a select list, claiming that the family was not home to any others. Mr. Witcher’s bushy white eyebrows went up for a moment at such instructions, but trust and affection for his young master carried all questions before them, and the old butler merely nodded his head at the strange orders.
The first thing was to locate Wickham in the interminable warrens of London. When Darcy had given his final instructions to the staff and sent Fletcher on an errand, he sat back wearily at his desk, stretching his limbs and rubbing at his eyes. There were any number of mean districts in Town that might harbor a couple bent upon anonymity, and he was familiar with none of them. Even if he should go and make a search, he would immediately be noted as an outsider and mouths would close. A bribe would, undoubtedly, serve as an adequate wedge, but word of his presence would have gotten out, and the birds would have flown before he located the nest.
There were only two avenues into the underworld of London, he had determined, that held any promise — Dy’s contact at St. Dunstan’s church and the network developed by the Society for Returning Young Women to Their Friends in the Country, to which Georgiana had introduced him. First, a note to the head of the Society must be sent off at once. Then, since he had had no word from Dy since the day of the assassination, he would need to meet personally with the sexton at St. Dunstan’s and, if at all possible, tonight. Pulling a sheet toward him, Darcy flipped open the inkwell and drew out a pen.
“Dear Sir,” he wrote. “I have come upon an instance of the deception of a young woman from a respectable family and ask for the Society’s assistance.”
An hour later the common cab Darcy had hired to carry him and Fletcher pulled to a stop at the back of a darkened church. St. Dunstan’s was not a large building, but it was the most solid-appearing structure in a neighborhood that looked to be held together only by the grime and misery long resident there. The heat of summer had accentuated the smells that wound through the fetid streets and alleys, which even as late as it was, still undulated with the wary comings and goings of their wretched inhabitants.