The Matters at Mansfield: (Or, the Crawford Affair) (Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mysteries) (10 page)

How even Mr. Archer could meliorate the crisis at hand, however, Darcy could not imagine. As if voicing his thoughts, Elizabeth asked whether the situation could possibly end well for Anne.

They both knew the answer. “Once word of this circulates—and I do not see how exposure can be avoided—Anne is ruined,” he said. “Even should her marriage be ruled valid, the scandal of bigamy, compounded by the elopement, will forever taint it. And if she is in fact not married at all—”

“She never will be, to anybody,” Elizabeth finished. “Her virtue has been compromised. Though it happened through no fault of her own, no respectable gentleman will have her.” It was a sad statement of fact.

“While my allegiance of course rests with Anne,” Elizabeth continued, “I cannot help but also pity Mrs. Garrick. She, too, is an innocent victim of Mr. Crawford’s duplicity. What an awful discovery, to learn that not only might she have been living in a conjugal state with a man to whom she is not truly wed, but that the man himself is entirely a fiction. Even should the court determine that they
are
indeed married, she is married to a stranger. She does not know her own husband.”

“The more I learn about him, the more I believe no one knows the real Mr. Crawford. He is another George Wickham, only with the financial wherewithal to indulge his vanity’s every whim. He is a player of roles, a chameleon, cold-blooded and able to present himself as anything necessary to protect his interests.”

“I wonder whether Mr. Crawford himself knows the real Henry Crawford.”

The coach upon which Meg had arrived prepared to leave. Passengers who had been waiting inside the inn now came out and boarded. It sped away, its team’s hooves thundering.

Darcy and Elizabeth returned to the inn. Darcy had expected to find Mr. Crawford still quenching his thirst, but he was not in the dining room. Mrs. Gower said that he had taken a new chamber for himself and retreated.

As the dining room was nearly empty, they decided to take their own meal while they could enjoy it in relative peace. Afterward, they stopped by Anne’s room.

Colonel Fitzwilliam opened the door. “She is sleeping,” he said quietly. “Though not well.”

“Is there aught we can do for her?” Darcy enquired.

He stepped to one side and reappeared with a valise. “Return this to Mr. Crawford, if you will. I do not want the sight of it to further distress Anne when she wakens.”

They took the bag and knocked at Mr. Crawford’s chamber. After a minute elapsed with no response, Darcy and Elizabeth exchanged uneasy glances.

“Perhaps your aunt summoned him?”

He did not reply, but knocked again more forcefully. There was no sound of movement within. He tested the door and found it locked.

They enlisted the aid of Mrs. Gower and her key ring, but they hardly need have. By the time she opened the door, Darcy knew what he would find.

An empty room.

Fourteen

Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman’s affections . . . there would have been every probability of success and happiness for him
.

—Mansfield Park

A
search of the inn turned up no Henry Crawford. Or John Garrick. Or a gentleman by any name who resembled the master of Everingham. The pleasure of his company had not yet been requested by Lady Catherine and Mr. Archer, nor had he attempted to see either of his wives.

The hunt led to the livery, where a young stable hand reported that Mr. Crawford had ridden off about the same time the coach departed.

“Thought for a second I saddled the wrong horse for him, in all the hubbub,” the boy said.

“Was there some crisis?” Darcy asked.

“Oh, no, sir—nothin’ dire. Just a busy few minutes, what with puttin’ the fresh team on the coach, and Mr. Lautus wanting his horse right away, too, and both of ’em being bays, and Mr. Crawford wantin’ his mount brought round the back of the stable for some reason. Plus, Mr. Crawford’s horse weren’t his usual one—the chestnut he used to stable here when he stayed with Dr. Grant—so I had to ask the ostler which horse was his. When it shied from Mr. Crawford I thought maybe I’d got it wrong and the scarred bay belonged to the other man. But Mr. Crawford said no, the animal was his, and it was time he tested it.”

“In other words, he fled,” said Elizabeth when Darcy repeated the conversation to her and the rest of the party that had gathered in the dining room. Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Archer had joined her as soon as she and Darcy enquired whether they knew Mr. Crawford’s whereabouts. By the time they rapped on Meg’s door, they had formed a determined corps. Meg, upon hearing that Mr. Crawford was missing, waited as impatiently as they for news.

“Of course he fled,” said Meg. “He cannot stay in any one place for long.”

“I should never have allowed him to leave my sight.” Darcy’s whole bearing evinced self-reproach.

“No, you should not have,” Lady Catherine declared.

Elizabeth wished Darcy would not assume the entire blame for Mr. Crawford’s disappearance. The man himself bore responsibility. “Darcy is too honorable a gentleman to have predicted that another would so degrade himself as to flee rather than face the consequences of his actions.”

“Mr. Crawford is a despicable coward,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam.

“A coward,” said Mr. Archer, “and an accused felon who faces hanging if convicted.”

The colonel made a sound of disgust. “Let him face me on a field of honor, and I will save the courts their trouble.”

This was a side of the colonel unfamiliar to Elizabeth. “You would duel with Anne’s husband?”

“No one knows whose husband he is at present, not that he is a prize any woman should covet. A pistol shot would decide the matter cleanly. Both his wives would be free of him.”

“I would rather win that satisfaction myself,” muttered Meg.

Despite Mr. Crawford’s head start, the men resolved to ride out in search of him. With only a few hours’ daylight remaining, they left directly and took separate paths.

Meg was agitated as she watched them depart. As they crested the hill out of the village, she headed toward the stable. “I’m going, too.”

Lady Catherine snorted in derision. “I hardly believe that necessary.”

“I think it is,” she said.

“Can you even ride?”

“If someone will hire me a horse. It seems I can no longer rely on my husband to assume my debts.”

Elizabeth attempted to dissuade her. No woman ought ride about unfamiliar countryside on a strange horse unaccompanied, particularly as dusk approached. She could meet rough terrain, or even rougher highwaymen. What if she encountered a wild animal, or a band of gypsies?

“I can take care of myself,” Meg assured her. “With my husband gone for months at a time, I have had to learn. What I cannot do, is sit idle.”

As Elizabeth silently debated the wisdom of hiring a mount for Meg, Lady Catherine declared she would do so. The offer stunned Elizabeth.

“Thank you, ma’am!” Meg exclaimed. She patted Lady Catherine’s arm. “I will be quite safe. Don’t you worry.”

“I am not at all concerned for your safety.”

As Meg rode off, Elizabeth turned to Darcy’s aunt. “You have been surprisingly generous toward Anne’s rival.”

“It is not generosity; it is an investment.”

Elizabeth raised a brow.

“Should Mrs. Garrick actually find Mr. Crawford, she does me a service.” Lady Catherine produced a handkerchief and wiped her arm where Meg had touched it.

“And if misfortune finds her first,
that
does me a service.”

Meg was the first to make her way back to the inn, entering the courtyard at dusk. Elizabeth observed her arrival from the window of her chamber and met her as she reached the top of the stairs. “Did you find any sign of him?”

Meg shook her head. The wind and exercise had loosened her hair, and a large red lock hung down one side of her face. “I expect he is halfway to wherever he’s going by now.”

“Have you any notion where that might be?”

“A day ago I would have said the sea. Now I wish him at the bottom of it.” She pushed the hair behind her ear, revealing a long, fresh gash on the back of her hand.

“Mrs. Garrick, are you all right?”

“I cannot answer to that name anymore. Call me Meg. As for my hand, it’s merely scratched. I passed a stray hedge branch too closely.”

“Surely it hurts. The apothecary is presently with Mrs. Crawford. Perhaps he can provide a salve to ease the sting.”

“Don’t trouble him. I can manage.”

“It is no trouble.” Elizabeth moved to rap on Anne’s door, but Meg stayed her hand.

“Please don’t.” Anxiety creased her expression. “I haven’t any money to pay for such things. I spent all I had just getting here in hopes of finding John, and he is not coming back.”

“The men have not yet returned. They may find him.”

“Even if they do, a scratch is the least of my troubles.”

She withdrew to her own room. Elizabeth stood staring at her closed door for several minutes, debating whether to make a gift of the salve or let the matter drop. Meg was right: Her difficulties far exceeded anything an ointment could heal. Deceived by the person she should most have been able to trust, she now found herself alone in a strange village with no friends and no funds—precarious circumstances indeed.

Precarious enough to make a person desperate.

Darcy returned after the grey light of dusk had faded to black.

The moment he entered their chamber, Elizabeth knew that his hunt had proven futile. His countenance—nay, his entire demeanor—declared the news more loudly than could any town crier. He sagged into a chair, rested his head against its back, and closed his eyes.

“You are slumping,” she said.

“I am.”

“You must be my other husband, then. Fitzwilliam Darcy never slumps.”

“He does today.” He remained thus another minute, looking worn out from the day’s events in a way that went beyond physical. Just as Elizabeth began to wonder if he were going to speak again or fall asleep in that position, he sighed and opened his eyes. “If this ‘other husband’ of yours is Mr. Crawford, I entreat you to produce him, as I had no luck locating him myself.”

“Mr. Crawford has not leisure to slump. His trips to the altar consume all his time.”

“I begin to think they must. It would not surprise me if that is where he is now—in another village, with another woman.”

“For a man who only pretended to be a sailor, he does seem to have a girl in every port. I believe, however, that he will not be mooring again in this particular harbor. Anne has not asked for him, and Meg is so angry that she set off in pursuit of him after you departed.”

“On horseback?”

“She rides fairly well, actually—not that I am the most discriminating judge of horsemanship. I believe Lady Catherine was unpleasantly surprised by her competence, as she furnished the mount in partial hope that Meg would meet with some accident.”

“That is a severe indictment of my aunt.”

“I merely repeat her own admission. She resents Meg’s existence almost as much as she does Mr. Crawford’s. Meg, however, had the effrontery to return unharmed.”

“And the others?”

“Neither Colonel Fitzwilliam nor Mr. Archer have yet come back.” A knock sounded on their door. “Though perhaps I spoke too soon.”

It was not one of the gentlemen, but Lady Catherine.

“Mr. Darcy, I knew I heard your voice.” She attempted to maneuver her way into the room without invitation, but Elizabeth prevented her from fully entering. Though Elizabeth’s tolerance for Lady Catherine’s arrogant behavior had by necessity increased during her ladyship’s residence at Pemberley, that tolerance fast approached its limit. Darcy’s aunt would have to settle for speaking to him from just within the doorway.

Darcy rose and came to stand behind his wife. “How is Anne?”

“Resting. She was so overwrought when she awakened that I asked the apothecary to administer more laudanum. How long did you intend to lounge in here before reporting to me?”

“Until I finished speaking with my wife.”

“What has she to do with the matter of Mr. Crawford’s disappearance? Any news you have is of far greater import to me. I should have been apprised of it first.”

“Had I found Mr. Crawford, I would have informed you directly I returned. As it happens, I did not.”

“Let us hope, then, that Colonel Fitzwilliam or Mr. Archer completed their mission with better results. You gave up prematurely, in my opinion. Apparently, I must rely upon my other nephew or my agent to protect our family’s interests.”

“It grew dark, and I saw little point in continuing my course when none of the occupants of any house I passed had observed a gentleman who met Mr. Crawford’s description. Obviously, he took a different route. I fervently hope my cousin or Mr. Archer did achieve more success, for I am as anxious as you are to see Mr. Crawford answer for his crimes.”

“Surely you comprehend the gravity of Anne’s circumstances. It is imperative that we act quickly to—”

Lady Catherine fell silent at the sound of the inn’s door opening below. A moment later, Mr. Archer mounted the stairs.

“Did you apprehend the scoundrel?” her ladyship asked.

“I did not. He is gone. But despite his absence, we may initiate some of the legal matters we discussed.”

“Then let us proceed posthaste.” She turned to Elizabeth and Darcy. “You will excuse us while we confer. Mrs. Darcy, I would consider it a favor if you would sit with Anne and administer more laudanum if she should wake. Do not allow her to cry or indulge in hysteria—as I have told her myself, such emotions are unnecessary, not to mention unbecoming.”

Elizabeth went to Anne’s room not in deference to Lady Catherine, but out of her own desire to comfort the unfortunate Mrs. Crawford. When Anne awakened, Elizabeth offered not laudanum but compassion. Anne did not need sedation, she needed a chance to grieve, whether by giving voice to her feelings or experiencing them in the privacy of her own heart. Her anguish was deep, but its expression hardly constituted hysteria. They conversed a little, Anne’s pain and humiliation still too raw to fully articulate. Afterward, she settled into a natural sleep that Elizabeth believed would do far more to restore her strength and spirits than drug-induced lethe.

By the time Elizabeth heard Colonel Fitzwilliam’s tread on the stair, the hour had grown late. He was already talking with Darcy in their chamber as Elizabeth emerged from Anne’s room to join them. The colonel immediately interrupted the conversation to enquire after Anne. His expression was grave, but eased slightly at her report.

“I am relieved that she has found peace for the moment,” he said. “It is that blackguard who deserves to suffer.”

“You did not overtake him, I presume?”

“No one has seen him. It is as if the devil passed invisible through the countryside on his journey back to hell. Pardon me for speaking so strongly, Mrs. Darcy. I wish I could aim more than words at Mr. Crawford.”

“You merely voice what we are all thinking.”

“Do you think it would be permissible if I stood watch in Anne’s chamber through the night? I doubt Mr. Crawford will dare show his face here again, but if he does, I do not trust him.”

Elizabeth admired Colonel Fitzwilliam’s protective instincts toward his cousin. “I think Anne needs the support of all her family right now.”

After bidding them good night, Colonel Fitzwilliam remained at Anne’s side until relieved by Lady Catherine herself, who chased him out of Anne’s room upon discovering him there. It was improper, her ladyship insisted, for any man to spend time unchaperoned with Anne in her bedchamber, let alone at such a late hour. She would superintend Anne’s comfort and safety herself.

The supervision had amounted to rousting Elizabeth from her own bed to pass the night beside Anne’s, where Elizabeth alternated between dozing lightly and reflecting on whether the solicitude of an honorable male cousin could truly cause Anne’s reputation any greater damage than it had already suffered. She determined that it could not, that Anne deserved consolation from whatever quarter and at whatever hour it was tendered, and that the chair in Anne’s room was the most uncomfortable piece of furniture ever fashioned.

As it turned out, the vigil proved unnecessary. Though Anne had wakened during part of the colonel’s watch, she slept through Elizabeth’s entirely, and Henry Crawford did not return.

But his horse did.

Riderless.