A Touch of Night (19 page)

* * * *

Darcy felt his eyelids drop and he forced them up. A fire was glowing dimly in the smoky hearth. By the amber light he could just make out Wickham's form, lying at the base of the bed, his arms stretched above him, held in place by gleaming white silk. Bingley was lying across the bed, snoring slightly.

Two days and Wickham had not relented.

Darcy shifted in the hard, wooden chair and took a sip of tepid water from a tankard on the rickety table by his side.

"I will escape," whispered Wickham from out of the gloom. His sharp teeth gleamed. "I will take what you love the most and sully it beyond redemption. I will make your life unbearable, unlivable. I will have what is rightfully mine, in the end."

"What is rightfully yours is a cold, dank, darkened dungeon in the depths of the earth," said Darcy. "If that is what you truly want I will see what I can do to arrange it."

Wickham laughed softly. "You are so very predictable."

Darcy took another drink and stared back at him without answering.

"I will best you," came Wickham's snake-like hiss.

Darcy ignored him. His eyes never strayed from Wickham's recumbent figure, but his mind could not help but escape the bounds of the shabby room and travel through the air on dragon's wings toward the one person that Wickham had threatened the most with his malevolent words. Elizabeth.

How he had put her in danger by allowing himself to love her and for unwittingly making his feelings apparent! But then, no one could read him like Wickham. Perhaps because they had grown up together, he had an uncanny ability to know just what Darcy was thinking and feeling. As if to validate this thought, Wickham's sickly snicker came out of the semi-darkness.

The only way he could protect Elizabeth was by giving her up. Having her, holding her, marrying her, watching their children grow up at Pemberley: it had all been a fanciful dream. An impossibility. She deserved a whole man. Not someone crippled with the worst kind of deformity -- part beast -- not wholly human. But no matter what, he would always love her, always keep watch over her. When she married another, the pain would be excruciating, but he would feel happy for her, even through the pain. Happy that she could live a normal life, be a mother, raise a family, without taint and danger of exposure hanging over her head.

And yet, he hoped, sadly, that deep inside, she would remember the dragon and the man, remember them with some fondness. That she would, perhaps, not think too badly of him.

Raucous singing came from the tavern below and noise upon the stairs of heavy feet stumbling. Slurred words: endearments, oaths, bawdy suggestions.

The door burst open and a couple spilled in. A serving wench, her clothes all askew, bodice unlaced to reveal copious amounts of tempting flesh, was arm in arm with a large, oafish fellow with a grin from ear to ear and a bottle in his free hand.

"Ohh!" she giggled. "Company! A fine gennnelman to share our fun!" She fell upon Darcy's lap, threw her arms about his head, and drew it into the soft valley of her ample bosom. "Take your fill luv! I have plenty to go 'round."

The man stumbled in and knocked against Darcy's chair, sending them both sprawling. "Blast it lass, I seen you first, and paid my money too, so I get first dippings. He may be a gentleman but he will bloody wait his turn!" He reeled for a moment or two and then fell flat upon the two already tangled on the floor. The cheap brandy flew from his grasp, smashing against the hearth and causing the fire to spurt with sudden flame.

"Another one!" cried the wench upon spying Bingley still stretched out upon the bed. "And just as comely as the first! Oh bless you Lord! 'Tis my lucky night."

Darcy heaved the man from atop him, and extricated himself from the serving wench's frills and laces, and curving mounds of flesh. As he pushed himself up to his knees he was in time to see the form of a rodent escape in a lightning streak through the open doorway.

Before he had time to consider anything, he began to change, clothes ripping as scale and sinew surged. His dragon mouth opened and with a bone-shattering roar and sulphurous burst of steam he lunged for the unopened window, crashing through wood and glass as if it were kindling. His wings unfurled and he took to the sky, the moonlight bathing his dragon body in its luminous glow.

The serving wench's screams split the night.

Chapter Sixteen

"I sent for you," Lady Catherine said, glaring at her much smaller daughter, who was sitting on a chair looking up at her in utter confusion. "And you cannot be in doubt of what you have done to deserve it."

"Indeed, I am in great doubt, mama," Anne said. "I've been taking my droughts, and I've done everything that Miss Jenkinson has told me you wish me to do."

"Do not trifle with me, daughter," Lady Catherine said, getting up from behind her desk, supporting herself on her stick which was, most of the time, far more ornamental than necessary. "You will not find me slow to judgment if you should not tell me the truth."

"Mama? I have told you the truth."

"Nonsense, girl. I am not such an idiot that I don't see what is going on beneath my own gaze. You cannot expect me to be blind and stupid as well as mute... Of my muteness," she added, frowning, "You can have no doubt, certainly. I would never denounce my family to the Royal
Were
-Hunters."

"The.... the Royal
Were
-Hunters?"

The girl looked ready to faint and Lady Catherine thought it was no great wonder. Of course her guilty conscience would torment her and she would know what she deserved. On the other hand, even she could not be so stupid as to think her own mother would denounce her. Or could she? There could be no doubt that the DeBourgh blood was impure, not at all like the Fitzwilliam blood. "I said I would not denounce you, I said. Oh, I know my duty, but I cannot imagine why you should suffer because one your DeBourgh ancestresses committed some great impropriety with a cottager or a park keeper."

"One of my DeBourgh..." Anne said.

"Come, child. You might be what you are, but you have some wit. You must have guessed that your blight cannot possibly come from the Fitzwilliam side, so it must be some gross impropriety on your father's side. It grieves me to say it, but there is a reason he turned into... Well, never mind that." She shook her head. "What matters now is that I know your secret."

"This is a wondrous thing, mama," Anne said. "For I, myself, have no idea what that secret might be."

"Impudent, selfish girl! It is clear from your cousin Darcy's headlong flight from this house, without taking with him so much as a toothbrush, that he must have seen you change shapes and been so revolted as to wish to put as much distance between himself and you as possible. What animal do you change into? Is it a bear like-- I insist on knowing! You should have told me at once!"

"But I don't change shapes, mama."

One thing you had to give the gel was that she could have made her living on the stage, had she not been born to a noble family. She looked back at Lady Catherine with round innocent eyes. "I am always human."

"Absurd child. Don't believe me to be stupid. I know you change shapes. I just have not been privy to what shape you change into. Tell me at once. It must have been something particularly repulsive to so upset Darcy. Is it... is it a bear?"

"Mama, I have never even seen bears outside the illustrations in books."

"A fox, then?"

"Mama! I do not change shapes."

Her worst fears thus confirmed, Lady Catherine sat heavily upon her chair. "I knew it. It is a dragon, is it not."

She couldn't but be shocked when her daughter erupted in merry peals of laughter. "Mama, I can assure you my cousin Darcy would never be scared of a dragon."

"No, scared he would not be," Lady Catherine said. "But repelled, surely. For who would wish to contract a marriage with a creature that could change into a reptilian shape."

"Who indeed?" Anne asked, and there was impudent laughter in her eyes.

Lady Catherine repressed the wish to strike her across her smirking face. It would serve nothing. The rot was deeper than that. And Lady Catherine flattered herself that Anne having been born with tainted blood, her disposition had always been bad. Not all her efforts at upbringing could have made her into a proper lady.

Now all she had to do was make the best of a bad situation. "Your blood is not wholly bad," she started. "My side of the family is quite pure. This means that there is hope for you. There are these organizations that rehabilitate
weres
. They are located in India, of course, where being a
were
does not immediately bring about the penalty of death. Let me tell you about the Imutable Shape Curing Waters."

"Mama!"

* * * *

Bingley awoke to wildly careening shadows and piercing screams. He sat up suddenly upon the bed, wondering what type of unnatural dream had him in its grips, when a sudden breeze from the smashed window sent smoke billowing from the fireplace. The coughing fit he suffered from it proved that the havoc around him was no dream. The girl's screams changed to heaving sobs and the man simply stood staring out the fractured window with a glazed look upon his face.

Pounding on the door rivaled the noise of the girl, and cries of, "This is the landlord! Open up!" spurred Bingley forward from the bed to the floor, strewn with glass and splintered wood.

"I'm coming!" he yelled, rubbing his eyes. Had it been his imagination, or had he seen the sinuous tail of a dragon receding from the shattered window? And where was Darcy or even Wickham for that matter? The mangled remains of Darcy's neck cloth dangled loosely from the bedpost and fluttered in the breeze. He opened the door and a portly fellow in a greasy topcoat barreled through, followed by two gangly, wide-eyed lads.

"What is the meaning of this noise? I run a respectable establi . . . the window! You shall pay for it and don't be thinking otherwise!"

The serving wench took one look at her employer and began shrieking. "A dragon! A dragon! The gentry cove turned into a dragon before my very eyes!"

The landlord whipped around and surged toward Bingley. "A
were
? You were harbouring a
were
here? I'll have the RWH upon you!"

"No!" yelled Bingley, startling even himself at the vehemence in his voice. "There was no
were
!"

"How can you say so?" shouted the drunk, finally finding his voice. "First there was that overgrown rat that scurried out of here and then the ferocious beast blazing fire."

"I do not doubt you saw a rat!" countered Bingley. "For this place is so squalid it is crawling with vermin, but a dragon -- that's preposterous. Dragons exist only in myth and legend."

The landlord bristled at Bingley's accusation. "This is a respectable establishment," he repeated. "I'll have no truck with shape shifting abominations, gentry or not!"

The serving wench was weeping openly, insisting that she knew what she saw, and the drunk was swaying as he stood, glaring menacingly at Bingley.

"I will not stand for this. Respectable establishment my foot! A man cannot get a decent night's sleep without drunken riff-raff barging into his room and destroying the place. How can you listen to the baseless accusations of two such? Rather, explain what they are doing in my room in the first place. Is this some outrageous swindle? Accusing guests of being
weres
so that you can profit by blackmail?" Bingley stabbed the air between himself and the landlord with his hand, emphasizing his points. "Well, these measures will not work with me. I know people! I can have this place closed and your licence revoked in a heartbeat, and the RWH on your neck!"

Bingley made to leave the room, but the landlord grabbed his arm, forestalling him. "These are not your friends?"

"I associate with such coarse rabble?" asked Bingley, assuming a look of disdain that would have been more at home on Darcy's face than his own. He shook off the detaining hand and strode towards the door.

"But your bill! The damages!" cried the landlord.

Bingley reached into his pocket and threw a handful of notes at the landlord. "That should cover any costs, though little you deserve it!" He had to push through a crowd that had gathered about the doorway and down the hall. He kept up his expression of outrage until he was on the street, then he walked swiftly away towards an area of town where he would most likely be able to flag down a hackney, all the time keeping his ears open for sounds of pursuit.

Once back at his townhouse he quickly packed a case and called for his coach to be readied. There was only one place he imagined Wickham would be bound. That weasel's threat to Darcy about causing him pain which Bingley remembered as a dream, could not be misunderstood. It was not Georgiana he was after this time.

* * * *

"I have it from Hill," Mrs. Bennet cried upon entering her husband's study, "who has had it from the scullery maid, who had it from the butcher's boy, that Mr. Bingley has come to Netherfield once again! What a good thing for our Jane."

"How so?" asked Mr. Bennet, glancing towards his wife. "You said before something would come from his renting Netherfield, and it did not."

"His friend dissuaded him the last time, to be sure, but I have never seen a man more in love than Mr. Bingley was with dearest Jane."

"And why should he search her out now, with our family in disgrace?" asked Mr. Bennet, not bothering to look up again from the letter he was perusing.

"Why to save her, of course!"

"He had best hunt for that Wickham fellow then," said Mr. Bennet. "Making sheep's eyes at our daughter will not do the trick."

"Mr. Wickham! How I hate the sound of that vile fellow's name. I said from the outset that he was far too handsome to be trusted."

"It is unfortunate we were not all blessed with your foresight," said Mr. Bennet dryly. "Colonel Forster has had no reports of him. I have written to him demanding the scoundrel be caught and transported. And from this letter," he waved the missive he had been reading when his wife had stormed his citadel, "it appears we are not the only family with grievances against him. Widespread debts! Cheating at cards! Philandering! There was nothing he was above doing. A fine fellow indeed! Lucky we are not to have to call him son."

"Ah, but how sweet it would have been for Lydia to have married, and before her sisters too." A dreamy look overspread Mrs. Bennet's face.

At that moment there was a knock upon the door. Hill stood in the doorway, and upon Mr. Bennet asking her business, announced that Mr. Bingley had asked to see him.

"What did I tell you?" Mrs. Bennet demanded, triumphantly as she backed out of the room. "Send him in, Hill, send him in! Mr. Bennet is quite at his leisure."

Mr. Bennet nodded at Hill. "I will see him," he sighed, shaking his head at the foolishness of young lovers. In his opinion there were more important things to be done at the moment than making declarations.

But Mr. Bennet was soon to discover that he had misjudged Bingley.

"The man would not dare come to these parts again after his last escapade," said Mr. Bennet, when apprised of Bingley's fears.

"I would put nothing past him," said Bingley.

Mr. Bennet stared at Bingley appraisingly over steepled fingers. "Why is it that you think my daughters are not yet safe from Mr. Wickham's machinations? And why Elizabeth most particularly?"

Bingley coloured and stammered incoherently. "He hates . . . Wickham threatened . . . I am not at liberty . . . please do not ask, I cannot say."

"You were in Mr. Wickham's company recently?"

There was something about the steely look in Mr. Bennet's eyes that flustered Bingley even more. "Yes -- until he changed . . . that is he escaped . . . and Mr. Darcy . . . I mean . . ."

"Am I to understand that you and Mr. Darcy had him captured somewhere in London but he escaped after vowing revenge -- upon my Elizabeth?" asked Mr. Bennet in a voice that was as quiet as it was menacing.

Bingley nodded shamefacedly. "We did our best but . . . well . . . the situation became beyond our control. I mean to find him and I know Darcy has not stopped searching for him since he ran off. But I thought it imperative to warn you at once, before I began my search."

Mr. Bennet visibly softened and sighed. "You did right, young man. It is unfortunate he slipped through your grasp. When next he is found I will ensure he does not get the opportunity again."

Bingley privately wondered what an older gentleman such as Mr. Bennet could do that he and Darcy could not, but then reflected that Mr. Bennet had no idea what sort of villain he was dealing with. He had no cause to think that a
were
-hunter like Wickham was actually a shape shifter of the vilest sort.

Mr. Bennet leaned back in his chair and casually asked, "What about the reports of a dragon?"

Bingley blanched. "Dragon?" he squeaked.

Mr. Bennet enjoyed Bingley's discomfort for a few moments and then relented. "Lydia says that a dragon escorted her home. I wonder if she was simply suffering some strange ill effects of her ordeal that caused her imagination to take control of her mind?"

"Surely that would explain it!" said Bingley a little too eagerly.

"Indeed," said Mr. Bennet agreeably. "You have given me a great deal of food for thought. I suggest that you position yourself here at Longbourn to provide protection to my girls in the event that Mr. Wickham should try to do something underhanded. I will put some of my men on the lookout for him too. But we must keep quiet about this -- for the young ladies' sakes. We would not want them frightened, would we?"

"Oh, no, sir!" cried Bingley, heaving a sigh of relief. "I will do everything in my power to keep them safe."

"And now, I think my wife has been on tenterhooks long enough. Shall we repair to the drawing room and relieve her suffering? If I tell her you have agreed to dine with us that might satisfy her for the time being."

Bingley nodded in confusion, not completely understanding the intent of Mr. Bennet's comment. He was pleased, though, to have an excuse to stay at Longbourn and not to go out on a wild goose chase after Wickham. And if being close to Jane was the greater part of his reason for thinking he was following the right course of action in setting himself up as the Bennet girls' protector, he could not be faulted for it.