Page 78 of Mr Darcy Bets on Love

"She said it were a charity," said Samuel Hobb. His voice cracked. "She said Mr Wakefield were a poor gentleman as had been cruel wronged by a great family, and she were helping him get justice, secret, because the great family were powerful and would ruin him if they knew. She said it were a Christian act." He looked up at Darcy with his long frightened face. "And then I seen it in the Post, sir. That piece. About the young lady. Miss Darcy. And I knew. I knew what I'd been carrying. And I been sick every day since."

Darcy looked at him for a long moment.

"Why did you not leave?"

"Where'd I go, sir? Without a character?" Samuel Hobb spread his big hands. "My mother's in the almshouse at Stanway. My sisters is in service there. Her ladyship said if I ever spoke a word of it, she'd turn me off without a character, and my sisters too, and see my mother put out on the parish. She said it very sweet. She's always very sweet."

There was a silence in the little room. The candle guttered.

"Samuel," said Darcy. "Look at me."

The young man looked.

"If you will go with Mr Lavender this morning to a magistrate in Bow Street, and swear to what you have told me, and put your mark to it, I will give you a place at Pemberley. Today. At better wages than you have now. Your sisters too, if they want it. And I will see your mother taken out of the almshouse and put into a cottage of her own, on my land, with a garden, for as long as she lives. Nobody will turn any of you off without a character again. Nobody will touch any of you. You have my word."

Samuel Hobb stared at him. His mouth worked. Then, quite suddenly, he put his face in his big hands, and his thin shoulders heaved, and he wept like a child.

Richard looked away, at the shutters. Mr Lavender looked at the candle.

When the young man could speak again, he wiped his face on his sleeve, and nodded, and said, "I'll swear, sir. I'll swear to all of it." And then, as Mr Lavender was helping him to his feet, he stopped, and turned back.

"There's one more thing, sir. I don't know as it signifies."

"Tell me."

"Last Monday week. The twentieth. I took a purse to the Bell, same as always. Fifty pounds, it were. Heavier than usual. And her ladyship told me to tell Mr Wakefield it were for his journey. And that another gentleman would do the other thing, in town, the way they'd settled it. I didn't know what it meant." He hesitated. "And I seen Mr Wakefield take the northern mail from the Bull and Mouth that same night, sir. I'd gone round to see my cousin, who's an ostler there. I seen him get up on the roof."

The candle flame stood very still.

Darcy did not move. He found that he had stopped breathing.

The northern mail. Last Monday week. The twentieth. Four days before a fair gentleman who paid in gold took a room at the Green Man in Lambton.

And another gentleman to do the other thing, in town. In a blue coat, at a hazard table in Pickering Place, answering to the name of Wakefield, while Mr Lavender's man stood within six feet of him and looked at the back of his head.

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He was out of the chandler's shop and halfway down the mews before Richard caught him by the arm.

"Darcy. Darcy. Wait—"

"He has been in Derbyshire for a week." Darcy did not recognise his own voice. "A week. While I sat in my study and told myself it was nothing. While I wrote and told her to keep the doors locked, as if a door would stop him. She wrote to me. She told me. A fair gentleman who pays in gold. And I let a man in a blue coat at a hazard table persuade me it was nothing, because I wanted to believe it, because I did not want to break my promise to her and ride north at a rumour." He pulled his arm free. "She told me, Richard. No secrets. She kept her side of it. And I did not listen."

"You did listen. You wrote to Mrs Reynolds. And the magistrate at Lambton. I saw the letters." Richard took hold of him again, by both shoulders this time, and held him hard. "Listen to me. You cannot go this minute. You have to go properly, or you will kill a horse at Barnet and yourself at Hatfield. Give me one hour. I will have your mare saddled and a relay sent ahead as far as Leicester. You will do it in a day and a night if you change horses every stage. I have done it myself, from Plymouth to Horse Guards."

"And the rest of it? Hobb? The magistrate? My aunt?"

"Leave it to me. And Lavender. And Lady Catherine, God help us all." Richard shook him, once, not gently. "This is what you have been doing it all for, Cousin. So that you would have it in your hand when you needed it. And you have it now. Hobb will swear this morning. Miss Bingley's papers are in your strongbox. Pettigrew will swear to the bank. It is done. The case is made. I can carry it the last hundred yards to my mother's drawing room without you." His face twisted. "Go and fetch your wife home."

Darcy looked at his cousin for one long moment. Then he nodded.

He left Grosvenor Square at a quarter to nine, on his own bay mare, in a riding coat and boots, with nothing but a purse, a pistol in his saddle holster (the only one Grey had not hidden, a small travelling piece of his own), and Elizabeth's two letters buttoned inside his coat against his chest.

Lady Catherine came out onto the steps in her dressing gown to see him go. She did not say anything. She only stood very upright at the top of the steps with her hand on the railing, and as he wheeled the mare round in the square, she lifted the other hand and made him a small fierce gesture, like a general sending a cavalry charge: go.

He went.

It was the longest day of his life. He did not remember most of it afterwards. Only pieces: the long straight road north from Barnet with the dust blowing, the change at Hatfield where the ostler said his horse was not ready and he saddled it himself, the slow dreadful climb up to Stevenage in a sudden spring shower that soaked him to the skin, the mare foundering at Baldock and a hired hack that shied at every gate. Baldock. He remembered standing in that inn yard, by that gate, while they changed the horses, and thinking of Elizabeth standing in the same place a fortnight before, reading his letter.