provide pillows and some blankets. It is not necessary for you to join me if you need the greater comfort of your bed.”
Darcy thought the precaution of being near the locked and bolted front door was unnecessary, but he could not allow a guest to sleep in some discomfort while himself in bed. Feeling he had no choice, he said, “I cannot suppose that whoever killed Denny will be so audacious as to attack Pemberley, but I shall, of course, join you.”
Elizabeth said, “Mrs Bingley is sleeping on a couch in Mrs Wickham’s room, and Belton will be on call, as shall I. I will check that all is well there before retiring. I can only wish you gentlemen an uninterrupted night and I hope some hours of sleep. As Sir Selwyn Hardcastle will be here by nine, I shall order an early breakfast. For now I wish you goodnight.
2
Entering the library, Darcy saw that Stoughton and Mrs Reynolds had done their best to ensure that the colonel and he were made as comfortable as possible. The fire had been replenished, lumps of coal wrapped in paper for quietness and added logs lay ready in the grate, and there was a sufficiency of pillows and blankets. A covered dish of savoury tarts, carafes of wine and water and plates, glasses and napkins were on a round table some distance from the fire.
Privately Darcy thought a watch unnecessary. The main door to Pemberley was well secured with double locks and bolts and even if Denny had been murdered by a stranger, perhaps an army deserter who had been challenged and responded with deadly violence, the man would hardly present a physical threat to Pemberley House itself or anyone in it. He was both tired and restless, an uneasy state in which to sink into a deep sleep which, even were it possible, would seem like an abdication of responsibility. He was troubled by a premonition that some danger threatened Pemberley without being able to form any logical idea of what that danger could be. Dozing in one of the armchairs in the library with the colonel for company would probably give him as good a rest as he could expect for the remaining hours of the night.
As they settled themselves in the two high buttoned and well-padded chairs, the colonel taking the one by the fire and he a little distant, the thought occurred to him that his cousin might have suggested this vigil because he had something to confide. No one had questioned him about his ride just before nine and he knew that, like him, Elizabeth, Bingley and Jane must be expecting him to provide an explanation. Since it had not yet been forthcoming a certain delicacy prohibited any questions, but no such delicacy would inhibit Hardcastle when he returned; Fitzwilliam must know that he was the only member of the family and guests who had not yet put forward an alibi. Darcy had never for a moment considered that the colonel was in any way involved in Denny’s death, but his cousin’s silence was worrying and, what was more surprising in a man of such formal manners, it smacked of discourtesy.
To his surprise he felt himself falling into sleep much more quickly than he had expected, and it was an effort even to answer a few commonplace remarks which came to him as at a remote distance. There were brief moments of half-consciousness as he shifted in his chair and his mind took hold of where he was. He glanced briefly at the colonel stretched out in the chair, his handsome face ruddied by the fire, his breathing deep and regular, and watched for a moment the dying flames licking at a blackened log. He urged his stiffened limbs out of his chair and, with infinite care, added a few more logs and some lumps of coal and waited until they were alight. Then he returned to his chair, pulled a blanket over him and slept.
His next awakening was curious. It was a sudden and complete return to consciousness in which all his senses were so acutely alert that it was as if he had been expecting this moment. He was huddled on his side and it was through eyelids almost entirely closed that he saw the colonel moving in front of the fire, momentarily blocking out its glow which provided the only light in the room. Darcy wondered whether it was this change which had awakened him. He had no difficulty in feigning sleep, looking through almost closed eyes. The colonel’s jacket was hanging on the back of his chair, and now he fumbled for a pocket and pulled out an envelope. Still standing, he took out a document and spent some time in perusing it. Then all that Darcy could see was the colonel’s back, a sudden movement of his arm and a spurt of flame; the paper was being burnt. Darcy gave a little grunt and turned his face further from the fire. Normally he would have made it apparent to his cousin that he was awake and would have enquired if the colonel had managed to get some sleep, and the small deceit seemed ignoble. But the shock and horror of the moment when he had first seen Denny’s body, the disorientating moonlight, had struck him like a mental earthquake in which he no longer stood on firm ground and in which all the comfortable conventions and assumptions which since boyhood had ruled his life lay in rubble round him. Compared with that disruptive moment the colonel’s strange behaviour, his still unexplained ride into the night, and now the apparently surreptitious burning of some document, were small aftershocks but they were still disconcerting.
He had known his cousin since boyhood and the colonel had always seemed the most uncomplicated of men, the one least given to subterfuge or deceit. But there had been a change since he had become an elder son and the heir to an earl. What had become of that gallant, light-hearted young colonel, that easy and confident sociability so different from Darcy’s own sometimes paralysing shyness? He had seemed the most affable and popular of men. But even then he had been conscious of his family responsibilities, of what was expected of a younger son. He would never have married an Elizabeth Bennet, and Darcy occasionally felt that he had lost some respect in his cousin’s eyes because he had placed his desire for a woman above the responsibilities of family and class. Certainly Elizabeth seemed to have sensed some change, although she had never discussed the colonel with Darcy except to warn him that his cousin was about to seek a meeting to request Georgiana’s hand. Elizabeth had felt it right to prepare him for the meeting but it had not, of course, taken place, and now it never would; he had known from the moment when the drunken Wickham was almost carried through the door of Pemberley that the Viscount Hartlep would be looking elsewhere for his future countess. What surprised him now was not that the offer would never be made, but that he who had harboured such high ambitions for his sister was content that this offer at least was one she would never be tempted to accept.
It was not surprising that his cousin should feel oppressed by the weight of his coming responsibilities. Darcy thought of the great ancestral castle, the miles of pitheads above the black gold of his coalfields, the manor house in Warwickshire with its square miles of fertile earth, the possibility that the colonel, when he succeeded, might feel that he had to relinquish the career he loved and take his seat in the House of Lords. It was as if he were making a disciplined attempt to change the very core of his personality and Darcy wondered whether this was either possible or wise. Was he perhaps facing some private obligation or problem, different in kind from the responsibilities of inheritance? He thought again how strange it was that his cousin should have been so anxious to spend the night in the library. If he wanted to destroy a letter there were sufficient fires already lit in the house for him to seize a private moment, and why destroy it now and in such secrecy? Had something happened that made the destruction of the document imperative? Trying to make himself comfortable enough for sleep, Darcy told himself that there were enough mysteries without adding to them, and eventually he slid again into unconsciousness.
He was awoken by the colonel noisily drawing the curtains then, after a glance, he pulled them back again, saying, “Hardly light yet. You slept well, I think.”
“Not well, but adequately.” Darcy reached for his watch.
“What is the time?”
“Just on seven.”
“I think I ought to go and see if Wickham is awake. If so, he’ll need something to eat and drink and the watchers may need some food. We can’t relieve them, Hardcastle’s instructions were adamant, but I think someone should look into that room. If Wickham is awake and in the same state that Dr McFee described when he was first brought here, Brownrigg and Mason may have difficulty in restraining him.”
Darcy got up. “I’ll go. You ring for breakfast. It won’t be served in the dining room until eight.”
But the colonel was already at the door. He turned and said, “Better leave it to me. The less you have to do with Wickham the better. Hardcastle is on the alert for any interference on your part. He is in charge. You can’t afford to antagonise him.”
Privately Darcy admitted that the colonel was right. He was still determined to regard Wickham as a guest in his house, but it would have been foolish to ignore the reality. Wickham was the prime suspect in a murder inquiry
