Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (41 page)

Sitting in smut-stained faces around the informality of the big wooden kitchen table, they took assessment. It appeared just three horses were lost, one, the horse that Reed had beaten. Those three and Elizabeth’s horse had been deliberately tied in their stalls. Darcy had but time to untie Boots. Such were the circumstances, all were convinced the fire had been set intentionally. Moreover, no one doubted that it was at Reed’s hand. Elizabeth found it difficult to conceive of a heart so hard, even in a horse-beater. Could any man do such an inhuman thing? Certainly, someone had done it. She had to admit one thing to herself. In the face of the facts, although she might not be as naïve as was Jane, unquestionably, she would have to readjust her notion as to just what some individuals were capable of.

The certainty of Reed’s guilt could not be proved, for eventual interviews with the servants and grooms could not place him upon the estate after he was dismissed. Nevertheless, when the sheriff set out to question Reed that next day, he would find no trace of him. That would be further reason to believe him the arsonist. However, in the early hours after the fire, all could see that nothing could be accomplished just
then and returned upstairs to beg at least a few hours rest. Darcy and Elizabeth fell into the deep, black sleep of exhaustion.

If Darcy and Elizabeth found easy sleep, Fitzwilliam did not. He lay there for some time, tossing restlessly. Initially, he told himself his insomnia stemmed from extreme fatigue, the excitement of the fire, or a combination of the two.

Fitzwilliam had witnessed, although he knew Darcy did not, Reed’s look as he directed it upon Elizabeth. Fitzwilliam had taken a step forward in her defence at such an ominous provocation, but in light of the man’s banishment from Pemberley by Darcy, he had held his counterstroke to that single step. He did not then report to Darcy Reed’s perceived insult, if not outright threat, to Elizabeth. For at the time, his cousin was labouriously trying to reclaim his thoroughly ruptured temper. Nor did Fitzwilliam think it wise to bring up such a minor affront in the light of the contemptuous crime perpetuated upon the stables.

It was a vile end to what had begun as a delightful diversion.

Fitzwilliam had happily accompanied Darcy upon his search for the perfect horse for his wife. As it happened, he held no little conceit of the fact of how well he knew horseflesh. His own horses numbered twelve, and he was happy to lend his animals and advise those favoured among his fellow officers. It was the single judgement Fitzwilliam would not find modesty to disclaim. He knew horses. It was perhaps a family trait, for Darcy’s eye was thus discerning as well. Old Mr. Darcy did not have this virtue, for he thought if a horse had a high stepping gait and a nice coat it made him as much a horse as a man might want to draw his coach. Darcy’s mother was the horse fancier of that couple. She was a prodigious rider and could recite the bloodlines of any horse in their stable.

Hence, it was reasonable that her brother, Fitzwilliam’s father, had harboured the same love. Darcy inherited it from his mother, Fitzwilliam from his father. When Darcy went on a quest for a horse for Elizabeth, he trusted his own horse judgement, but did hesitate not at all to have Fitzwilliam’s opinion as well. Betwixt the two of them, it would be impossible not to obtain the finest horse with which to gift Darcy’s wife.

The dusky horse they chose was named Dulcinea. Fitzwilliam and Darcy thought that a coy enough name and in no need of changing. They asked Elizabeth’s opinion but as a courtesy. That she named her new horse Boots had seemed rather odd to Fitzwilliam, expecting, if not something more sophisticated, at least a little more…more…horsy. Initially, Darcy had seemed puzzled by her choice, thereupon simply embarrassed that his wife had named her exceedingly well-bred horse something so “precious.”

It was quite unlike her nature. That was one of the little quirks of Elizabeth’s that Fitzwilliam had found endearing. She was so compleatly acerbic, witty, and arch, then, in turn, could do something so unfathomable as name her horse after its fetlocks.

Thus, when he closed his eyes seeking sleep, Fitzwilliam did not think of the horses,
the fire, and the pandemonium, or even of Darcy nearly being killed. The single thing that unsettled him was more of a sensation than a conscious thought. And that wonderment was how it had felt when, clad but in her night-gown, he had held Elizabeth to him.

He dozed fitfully. In time, he awoke and sat upon the side of the bed, relinquishing any ambition to sleep. In his soldierly way, he endeavoured to embark upon the troubling employment of analysing the shades of his own mind.

Elizabeth was pretty and charming. What was there not to admire? Any man who possessed a heartbeat would look upon her with favour. Nor, he reasoned, was it improper to look upon Elizabeth with fondness, for she was Darcy’s wife. Fitzwilliam considered that his unsettled feeling perchance told him it had been too long since he had been favoured with the attentions of a woman. Perhaps, when he returned to London, he would rectify the situation. That decision made, he laid back and closed his eyes, thinking of that woman, any woman. Yet, when her image came to him, her face was not anonymous. It was Elizabeth’s.

Fitzwilliam sorely wished he had not been at the fire at the stable, for he would then not have held her. Nor would he have had to face that he was very much in love.

J
ohn Christie fell into a deep and abiding sleep each night. The work, although tedious and steady, had a rewarding symmetry. He lugged about heavy feed buckets and filled the mangers so the horses could have their oats. Those same horses he turned out onto the pasture for their exercise, then scooped up their dung and flung it onto the manure wagon to be cast upon the new crop. Order and rule.

That such a peaceable world existed, and that he had managed to insinuate himself in it, was an unending astonishment. Edward Hardin chuckled at the zealous diligence with which he undertook each and every chore. But then, Edward Hardin had never once been to London, nor seen the lodgings they had once kept on Buck’s Row.

Hitherto, the horses John Christie had tended were tired and often ill-used, frightfully few offering any glimpse of past distinction. Inevitably, horses left overnight at an inn were either hired or recruited from a plough. They were nags, no denying that. Yet, the barmaid’s boy indulged these disreputable animals with furtive currying and purloined sugar. It fell to reason that if he managed to dispense kindness to the inglorious, the fine horses at Pemberley were in respectful hands.

That was reasonable, but not the whole truth. The simple fact was that he had always taken affection, and bestowed it, where it was found.

As beauty of temperament and confirmation were not an impediment to fondness, the horses at Pemberley were not slighted. On the contrary, horses at the inn were not
there long enough for John to build a true attachment. At Pemberley, he came to know them each by name. And if they did not know his name, they knew his presence. A gratifying orchestration of nickering began whenever he entered the barn. This was most pleasing, for it was a family of sorts. Something that he missed.

Was he called upon to name it, his Family Equus would have to include Edward Hardin who had taken to calling him, not John nor Christie, but “Johnny, me lad.” The man was a little deaf, hence he always sounded a bit rankled when he doled out orders.

Yet he began every one, “Johnny, me lad…”

John Christie did understand there was a hierarchy at Pemberley—not hereditary, yet an oligarchy, nevertheless. The line of rule was rarely transgressed. John knew he answered to Edward Hardin, who answered to Mr. Rhymes. Mr. Rhymes answered to Mr. Darcy, and evidently, Mr. Darcy answered but to God.

It was fitting. John’s life had been subjected to little but the bedlam and discord of Whitechapel, but also to the general chaos of his mother’s love life. It was reassuring to know exactly where one stood. That one stood at the end of the line was not pertinent. At least there was a line in which to subsist. Order and rule.

He had even managed to elude Tom Reed.

Edward Hardin despised the man (no greater obligation of regard could be asked) and had complained to Mr. Rhymes about Reed abusing the horses. Why Reed was even at Pemberley, no one seemed to know. Reed was hired in London; his single recommendation had come from his brother, Frank. All the other footmen and grooms disliked him, even though, as do most men who are bullies, Reed seldom confronted other men. He turned his roughest hand toward the weaker: animals, women, and boys.

The single blight upon his tenure had come at Reed’s hands, but John knew, ultimately, that it was his own fault. For he had the poor judgement to honour one of Reed’s orders. That day of the hunt, Reed had told John to bring the shortest horse in the barn for that sweating, pear-shaped gourd of a vicar. And he had done it. He had delivered that innocent little chestnut pony unto the hands of that buffle-headed meacocke, Collins.

Of course, the vicar did end up the worse for wear.

Reed laughed uproariously at each retelling. John was convinced that the pony mistook his part in the whole debacle, for thenceforward, he looked at John maliciously every time he passed his stall. It was just another in the long line of Reed’s wicked deeds.

The confrontation with Mr. Darcy was unexpected. It was not, however, unwarranted or unwelcome. Hitherto, Reed had been clever enough to hide his malevolence from those of higher rank behind a somewhat smirking amiability. Almost everyone who witnessed the public disclosure of his cruelty savoured it. (Frank Reed may have savoured it, too, one can but conjecture.) Regardless, John loathed that the horse that he beat had to suffer to expose him.

John liked that horse in particular. He was an Irish Draught called Farley, a bit long in the tooth, yet still spry. He was the horse of choice for the housekeeper upon her infrequent trips to Lambton. She liked him, not in spite of, but because he was plodding and slow. The old woman likened herself to that horse. When Mr. Hardin claimed he was getting too stiff, she reproached him.

“No, we are both old, yet we can get on with the work.”