He reached for her hand but stopped when he saw the injury. “Oh, darling — you’ve been hurt!” He looked to Elizabeth, his expression seeking an explanation she could not supply.
“Mr. Jones has just finished treating her hand,” she reassured him.
Parrish sat down beside his wife, put his arm around her shoulders, and drew her to his side. “You’re safe now, darling.” Caroline rested her head on his shoulder.
At the tender display, envy touched Elizabeth’s heart. The Parrishes were safe; she could only pray that Darcy was, too, and that at the end of this awful ordeal she would know the solace of her own husband’s embrace. As if reading her thoughts, Lucy departed again with the stated intention of learning more about Darcy’s progress against the fire.
Parrish watched Elizabeth finish dressing the burn. “Thank you, Mrs. Darcy, for taking care of my wife. You are a good friend to her.”
Elizabeth shrugged, disconcerted by Parrish’s gratitude. Despite having been thrown into Caroline’s company more often in the past fortnight than she’d ever thought herself capable of enduring, she’d developed no further attachment to Jane’s new sister-in-law than she’d harbored previously. The solicitude she’d shown Mrs. Parrish was simply the concern she’d feel for any fellow human being in similar circumstances. “I’m sure she derives more comfort from your presence than anything I could do.”
Indeed, the patient soon dozed off in her husband’s arms, a fitful slumber that paralleled Elizabeth’s own agitation. Mr. Parrish pulled her against him more securely and whispered something indiscernible in her ear. Her troubled features smoothed and she relaxed into his side.
Parrish’s face, however, became graver as he studied his wife. He opened his mouth several times as if to say something, but shut it again with his thoughts unuttered. Finally, he spoke. “Mrs. Darcy, have you any idea how my wife burned her hand?”
Elizabeth confessed ignorance.
He glanced about the carriage house, at Mr. Jones resting just outside the coach occupied by Jane and Bingley, at the other carriages with their silent inmates. “I have been contemplating the question as I sit here,” he continued in low tones. “I have also been wondering what caused tonight’s fire. I–I do not like the direction my thoughts are taking.”
A chill traveled down her spine. Mr. Parrish hinted at an idea that had grazed the edges of her consciousness, suspicions so unpleasant she’d dared not articulate them even in the privacy of her own thoughts. The location and nature of Caroline’s injury, her reluctance to tell Mr. Jones how she’d burned herself, her unknown whereabouts at the time the fire broke, her wandering earlier that night and other strange behavior…
“Do you grasp my meaning, Mrs. Darcy? Pray tell me I needn’t say more.”
She understood. But could so distasteful a thought be true? Had Caroline started the fire? Inconceivable notion! “Perhaps you draw conclusions from mere coincidence,” she tried to reassure him.
“I want more than anything to believe that. But your sister and her husband — indeed, the whole household — could have died in this blaze. I—” His voice broke. “I no longer fear for only my wife’s safety.”
Parrish’s speculation provoked disquiet within her, the same uneasiness she’d experienced upon waking from her repeated dreams of the carriage accident. Never had Netherfield seemed such an ominous place as it did tonight, an abode of mishaps and misfortune. They had been here but two days and had known scarcely a moment’s peace of mind. Or did the howling storm and her own flagging reserves only make it seem such?
“Mr. Parrish, doubt feeds on exhaustion. When we have all had a chance to recover from tonight’s events—”
“While still more mysterious accidents occur? To turn a blind eye is irresponsible.” He smoothed Caroline’s hair, stroked her cheek. “I don’t want to believe my wife capable of the unthinkable. Yet I know my feelings for Caroline cannot help but cloud my judgment. I am in need of advice, Mrs. Darcy. You have a quick mind and a compassionate heart. What do you think I should do?”
Elizabeth studied Caroline in silence, the fatigue of a long, sleepless night settling upon her. She could think of little beyond crawling into a warm, dry bed with her husband and sleeping for two days straight. “We need not decide anything in this moment. Let us ponder the situation when our minds are clearer and we know more particulars of the fire.”
It was an evasive answer to a serious question, but she could spare no further energy on the Parrishes and their problems. Not until she beheld Darcy safe once more.
Surely the blaze was under control by now. Where was he?
Eighteen
“I have no idea of there being so much design in the world as some persons imagine.”
Jane to Elizabeth, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 24
Despite weariness that seeped down to his bones, Darcy strode to the carriage house with rapid steps. The flames were out, the house saved, the servants organized, the landlord summoned. He now sought a few precious minutes with Elizabeth before sending her and the others off to the sanctuary of Longbourn while he continued to oversee details of the fire’s aftermath. He wished he could have relocated the party sooner, but no one could be spared to drive them, and the weather and darkness had rendered the roads too hazardous to attempt travel anyway. Even now, in full but dreary daylight, the memory of yesterday’s carriage accident made him hesitant to let Elizabeth undertake even the short distance without him.
“The landlord will be furious, I suppose?” Randolph kept pace with Darcy’s long strides. Once Caroline Parrish had been found, the professor had appeared at Darcy’s side, offering to help in any way necessary and working ceaselessly until the last ember died.
“I have met Mr. Morris only once, but he seems a reasonable man. Accidents happen.” So did intentionally set blazes, but Darcy was keeping those suspicions to himself. When Bingley’s chamber had at last been cleared of both smoke and people, he had sifted through the ashes and found no evidence of arson. Yet he could not overlook Lawrence Kendall’s earlier threat against Bingley, or Elizabeth witnessing him riffling through Bingley’s records. How far would he go to destroy proof of his larceny?
They reached the carriage house. Elizabeth, who had been standing outside watching the mansion, came to him quickly the moment her eyes lighted upon him. Her sweet face held an expression of relief that surely matched his own. Professor Randolph tactfully continued into the building, granting them a relatively private reunion.
He indulged in the overwhelming urge to pull her close. The touch of her temple against his cheek, her body pressed to his, chased away the shadows of anxiety still hovering from the long night. “I know you are all right, but tell me anyway.”
“I am perfectly well now that you are here. What about you?”
“The same.” Conscious of the myriad details still demanding his attention, he reluctantly released her. “I have just spoken to our driver. He will conduct you, Jane, and Bingley to your parents’ house as soon as Mr. Jones considers them fit to travel. How are they?”
“Sleeping now in our coach. Not very peacefully — coughing a lot. But on the whole unharmed by the fire, thank goodness. And thanks to you.”
“It is you they have to thank. You discovered the fire in time.” A few minutes more and the couple certainly would have perished — the blaze had already spread from the hearth to the foot of their bed when he’d entered their chamber.
“How bad is the damage?”
“The master suite and the room adjacent — the Parrishes’ chamber — are lost. Furniture, clothing, everything. The floor joists are holding at present but need replacement as soon as possible. The flames burned through the ceiling and into Mr. Kendall’s room above. They did not, however, reach his trunk, which appears to have never been unpacked. Our chamber and the rest of the rooms on the first and second floors of that wing suffered extensive smoke damage. Everything needs cleaning and airing.”
Though much work lay ahead to repair and restore Netherfield, they had been very fortunate. Fire constituted a great house’s worst enemy; it all too often consumed entire mansions. Darcy lived in constant dread of one overtaking Pemberley. He chased the horrible thought from his mind by attempting to wipe a smudge from Elizabeth’s brow, but wound up adding more soot from his fingers. His own appearance must be frightful. “Are the Hursts and Mr. Kendall here as well?”
“Resting in their respective carriages.”
“I imagine Kendall is eager to depart for his own home. If you do not think it too great an imposition on your family, the Hursts and Parrishes should accompany you to your parents’ house. I realize your mother and Bingley’s sisters hardly seek out each other’s company, but under the circumstances I think they will be more comfortable at Longbourn until Netherfield is set back in order.”
“You mean they will be out of the way. I don’t know whom I pity more — them or my mother. I, however, won’t be there to observe the sport, because I intend to stay right here with you.”
She could not be dissuaded, and he had to confess that his efforts to sway her resolve were halfhearted at best.
The family party departed for Longbourn in time to arrive for a late breakfast. Bingley accompanied them only to see Jane safely delivered into her mother’s care and the papers Darcy had rescued last night consigned to Mr. Bennet for safekeeping. He then returned to Netherfield. Though he trusted Darcy to handle matters, he said he did not want to impose on their friendship by letting him shoulder the full burden of overseeing all the work involved in cleaning up the mansion and restoring household operations. His health, he asserted, was much improved over the day before.
Professor Randolph accompanied the Parrishes to Longbourn. Since Caroline’s apparent suicide attempt, he had been meeting with her daily. He recorded his observations and had already posted two letters to his colleague in America, but given the distance, no one expected a response from Dr. Lancaster anytime soon.
Mr. Kendall remained at Netherfield, claiming that the sky continued too threatening to trust the roads all the way to London. Though it did appear that the storm had only suspended, not ended, Darcy suspected Kendall’s true purpose was to perform further snooping while the household was in an advantageous state of chaos.
He caught the businessman twice loitering outside Bingley’s former chamber. The first time Kendall scurried away without comment in an unconvincing pretense that he’d just been passing by, but on the second occasion Darcy’s sudden emergence from the chamber took him by surprise. Kendall stood so close to the door that Darcy wondered if he’d had his ear pressed against it. “Might I assist you in some matter?”
“I would like to examine the extent of damage within.”
“Why?”
“My chamber sits directly above. I wish to assure myself that the floor won’t collapse beneath me when I go up there to retrieve my things.”
Darcy’s first impulse was to deny the request, but he quickly reconsidered. Perhaps Kendall’s conduct inside would betray a familiarity with the room that he should not possess. He pushed the door fully open. “By all means.”
Kendall shouldered his way past Darcy and headed straight toward the hearth. Flames had weakened the thick oak floor beams around it, but to Darcy’s disappointment, they held under Kendall’s weight.
“Have you learned the fire’s cause?” Kendall scanned the room, taking in each piece of furniture. His gaze rested longest on the scorched splinters of a Chippendale chair and what appeared to be the ashy remains of a dress.