“Now, what have you to say, my dear lady?”
Anne glanced at Elizabeth and took a deep breath. “I am afraid, my lord, that I cannot marry you.”
Lord Sennex blinked. “I do not understand.”
“I cannot marry you. I believe that a marriage between us, particularly one entered into in such a hasty manner, can only lead to unhappiness. I beg your forgiveness…”
“But—” He looked like a confused child. “We have an agreement. I saw you sign it yester eve — I am certain I did.”
“I did, my lord. And, again, I am deeply sorry. But I must break our engagement.”
Lord Sennex stared at her in befuddlement. “I must have misheard you.”
“No, my lord—”
“Yes, yes — that must be the case. For I have something, you see, something certain to change your mind—” He allowed his cane to fall to the ground so that he could reach into an inner fold of his greatcoat. “Ah, yes — here it is.” He withdrew his hand.
It held a pistol, which he cocked and aimed at Anne.
“Now, my dear… would you care to reconsider?”
“A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those elegant decorums which other people may observe.”
— Elizabeth, Pride and Prejudice
Darcy did not notice the approaching sunset as he rode into Mansfield. His mind was too preoccupied with the need to lay eyes on Elizabeth. Once he ascertained her whereabouts and safety, he would go to Mansfield Park to tell Sir Thomas that Lord Sennex was their man.
A gnawing fear had seized him the entire distance from London to Buckinghamshire. He had received her note, informing him of her travel plans, just before leaving town, and had prayed that the viscount’s murderous inclinations did not include ladies.
When he had arrived at Hawthorn Manor and been told that the viscount’s carriage had never appeared as expected, and when a stop at Riveton had also yielded no Elizabeth or Anne, the fear turned to dread. All the way to Mansfield village, he hoped that their travel plans had merely been delayed, that he would walk into the Ox and Bull to find Elizabeth and Anne at supper in the dining room. Instead, he discovered only Colonel Fitzwilliam.
“Please tell me that Elizabeth and Anne are still here.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam regarded Darcy with a mixture of surprise and alarm. “They are not — they went to Buckinghamshire this morning. Why do you appear here in such a state of apprehension?”
“I have just come from Hawthorn Manor. The viscount and his carriage never arrived. I rode straight there from London — after Mr. Mortimer told me that Lord Sennex owns a quad set of dueling pistols with rook engravings and French rifling.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam leapt to his feet. “They departed some ten hours ago. He could have taken them anywhere.”
Elizabeth studied Lord Sennex as the carriage jostled its way north, still stunned that she had so utterly underestimated the crafty old man. Upon drawing his pistol, he had rapidly proved himself in full possession of his faculties.
“Perhaps, Mrs. Crawford, you simply prefer your weddings over the anvil?” he had said. “Very well. Anything to accommodate my bride.”
Walking easily without the discarded cane, he had commanded the two shocked ladies into his carriage under threat of harm if they called attention to themselves. His manservant, a tall, dark, wiry fellow, waited within, his forbidding countenance an effective mute to any impulse they might have felt to cry out.
Once outside the village proper, he had informed the postilion of their new destination. Then he had handed his pistol to his servant and opened the chess case — or what Elizabeth had presumed to be the case for his chess set. It instead was a large gun case with molded compartments for four pistols — two large and two small — and various items Elizabeth took for loading equipment and other accessories. The two small pistol compartments were empty. One of those pistols was now in the servant’s hand.
The other was in Darcy’s — so far distant that he might as well be in Antigua.
Lord Sennex removed one of the larger pistols. Noting Elizabeth’s observation, he spoke. “Yes, it is loaded, if you are wondering. They all are — Mr. Lautus might have been an incompetent fool, but it was good of him to leave my second set of loading materials behind in his room at the inn. Else I would have had no bullets for the smaller pistol, and it is such a convenient size for carrying on one’s person.”
Elizabeth found his refined manner more menacing than would have been open threats.
“I suppose I should be equally grateful to that odious Mrs. Norris for discarding the pistol while I happened to be nearby,” he continued, “though how she came by it after Lautus managed to get himself killed, I still have not determined.”
He closed the case and set it on the seat between him and the servant. “It is a long journey to Scotland, so we might as well all be acquainted.” He gestured toward the servant. “This is Antonio. He will help me keep an eye on you. Antonio, this is Mrs. Darcy and my fiancée, Mrs. Crawford. Or, I suppose I should call you Miss de Bourgh, should I not, since your marriage to Mr. Crawford was of questionable status?”
“I did not realize your lordship was aware of that fact. I thought my mother managed to keep the particulars from you.”
“One has only to listen to the right conversations to learn all manner of interesting information. And nobody pays attention to senile old men.”
“Is that why you perpetrated the charade?” Elizabeth asked. “To spy upon people?”
“Not at all, my dear lady. The pretense began for Neville’s benefit. He did not, however, appreciate it.” The viscount’s expression hardened. “My son did not appreciate much.”
Elizabeth could hear the barely restrained hostility beneath his words. “You appeared to be mourning him deeply these two days past.”
“I have been mourning the man he could have been. Ought to have been.” He regarded the pistol in his hand. “Neville was the greatest disappointment of my life. Dying was the most honorable thing he ever did.”
Elizabeth had not been particularly impressed by Mr. Sennex, but the depth of the viscount’s acrimony surprised her. “That is a harsh thing to say about your only son.”
“He was not my son.”
Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam questioned everyone, searched everywhere. Those who had witnessed Elizabeth and Anne depart saw only that they had climbed into the carriage willingly. Lady Catherine had been vexed that Anne went without taking proper leave of her mother, but had attributed the neglect to pique over her engagement to the viscount. The note Elizabeth had left for Darcy offered no clues.
Darcy’s heart pressed against his rib cage as he and Colonel Fitzwilliam entered the viscount’s chamber. He had begun to doubt their finding any indication of where Lord Sennex might have taken Elizabeth and Anne.
“What chafes my conscience the most is that I saw the deuced pistol case,” Darcy said. “Right there, in the wardrobe, while we questioned him. I saw the rook — the chessman — on its lid and took it for a game case.”
“Why would you have thought anything else? Quad sets are so rare that we certainly were not seeking a gun case of that size — perhaps two smaller ones, if anything — and he had a chessboard set up on this table. I am certain the double entendre of the ‘rook’ was intentional. The viscount has always preferred the challenge of intellectual games to the sports his son favored.” He frowned and ran his hand over the table upon which the chessboard had rested. Fine black particles clung to his fingers.
“Priming powder. He loaded the pistols in here.”
At Elizabeth’s startled reaction, Lord Sennex clarified. “Do not mistake my meaning — Neville was of my blood. I do not cast aspersions upon my late wife. But he had no understanding of the legacy he inherited along with his name, and the responsibility that comes along with it. He did not take care to protect his reputation or our fortune. He squandered both through gaming and intemperate living, and never considered the consequences. Nor did he develop a gentleman’s control over his temper.
“For years I followed behind him, tidying his messes as best I could, trying to salvage our family’s dignity and prevent him from spending us into bankruptcy or humiliating us out of good society. But my efforts had the opposite effect — he came to take me for granted along with everything else, and assumed that whatever scrape he got himself into, his father the viscount would repair the damage. I wondered if by my own actions I had inadvertently encouraged his irresponsibility.
“And so my ruse began. I pretended to fail, both in mind and body, in hopes that my perceived decline would bring about greater consciousness of duty on his part. But it only worsened his conduct. In his mind, my frailty removed me as an obstacle to his selfish pursuits. Any words I spoke about honoring one’s birthright he dismissed as the ramblings of an old man.”
“And this is the man I would have wed?” Anne said. “He sounds no better than Mr. Crawford. I cannot believe my mother initiated the match.”
The viscount chuckled, a hollow sound, devoid of mirth. “Your mother only thinks she initiated the match. By the time she arrived at Riveton, anxious to preserve her daughter from spinsterhood, Neville had depleted our estate. We needed a rapid infusion of funds, and marriage to an heiress was the ideal solution. When she began calling upon every family in the neighborhood with an unattached son, I was ready. She thought she was taking advantage of my weakness, but without even realizing it, she advanced my scheme. We both would have emerged from the church doors satisfied, were it not for Mr. Crawford’s interference.”
The venom in his voice as he pronounced the name “Crawford” was potent. He gripped his pistol so tightly that Elizabeth thought he would bruise his leg with the butt cap.