midsection, and raising his leg in preparation for a crippling knee into the groin. Darcy, in spite of his pain and blurred wits, sensed what was coming and pivoted his hips away. Wickham’s knee came into crunching contact with the oak, his body sagging in Darcy’s arms.
Burying his hurt into a deep recess of his mind, Darcy rounded with a second clout of the flintlock, this one connecting with Wickham’s left temple. The injured man yelped and reeled backward, Darcy following with a balled fist landing under Wickham’s chin.
His head snapped back, hands desperately reaching for anything to correct his imbalance. He grabbed on to Darcy’s jacket lapels, the men again wrestling together as they tottered crazily into the hallway. The strange dance lasted for only a few seconds, Wickham then securing one arm around Darcy’s neck and clawing at the nape. Darcy knifed his left forearm downward with tremendous force, Wickham’s long arm bone cracking, while simultaneously bringing the pistol to bear and discharging the round into the wailing man’s abdomen.
Wickham released an inhuman squeal of agony, outrage, frustration, and disbelief. The bullet’s impact buckled his body, blood soaking through his clothing in a flood. His rapidly weakening legs bowed and his body rocked unsteadily on the top step of the staircase.
He glanced upward, the fraction of a second stretching as he met Darcy’s eyes with blazing defiance and mania apparent in his wounded gaze.
He opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he meant to say would never be uttered. With the final iota of strength remaining, he threw his uninjured arm over his lifelong enemy’s shoulder, pulling with all his residual might, both of them falling over the edge of the staircase.
Wickham landed flat on his spine with a reverberating thud, Darcy’s muscular body smashing onto him forcefully. The pistol went flying into the air, Darcy releasing it in desperation and flailing his arms wildly for some sort of purchase. It came dually in the form of a handy baluster and the clutching grip of Colonel Fitzwilliam. Richard firmly hauled on Darcy’s left shoulder and side, staying his inevitable descent down the stairs.
Wickham was not so fortunate. The combined momentum of his fall and Darcy’s impact sent his body tumbling and sliding crazily all the way to the bottom. His cries echoed through the air until fatally cut off when his neck snapped on the last step.
Richard and the wiry soldier pulled Darcy to a semi-sitting position on the floor.
“About time! Where have you been?” Darcy gasped.
“You appeared to have it under control. Besides, I thought you would appreciate your wife lying comfortably on the sofa. Come. I will help you up. You look horrible, by the way, and later I shall chastise you for not shooting him in the first place, but right now I think your wife needs you.”
Darcy nodded, wincing with the pain felt from numerous parts of his body. With necessary assistance from each man, he was gingerly lifted to his feet. Richard held on to Darcy’s arm to ensure stability and handed him his handkerchief.
“Your head is bleeding. Are you sure you are all right?”
“I will be fine.” He blotted the back of his head but was already unsteadily moving toward the parlor. “Alexander?” he asked, glancing at the trailing Richard.
“He is with Artois in the bedchamber. He is still drugged but apparently undamaged.”
Darcy felt torn, but the need to touch Elizabeth was calling him. He crossed the threshold, his eyes only for his wife. But, his peripheral vision did note that the Marquis sported a number of fresh cuts and bruises, and was trammeled and gagged in a far corner with two burly guards watching him. He was thrashing maniacally, his muffled voice raving and face bleeding and red as a beet with eyes bulging scarily. He appeared near to an apoplectic seizure, foam and spittle soaking through the muzzling rag. The unfazed warriors stood nonchalantly a foot away, passing a cigar back and forth for several puffs before roughly dragging the insane man out of the room.
Darcy spared scant thought to Orman’s condition. He assigned immediate and total attention to his wife. Richard had positioned her body comfortably on the sofa, head resting on the pillow, and a blanket obtained from somewhere covering her lower body modestly. He had removed the rope bonds from around her wrists and ankles. She looked peaceful and beautiful, except for the snarls in her disheveled hair and the angry red marks on her cheeks that filled Darcy with fresh anger. Upon closer inspection he noted four circular pressure bruises the size of a man’s fingertip on one cheek, and raw burns on her dainty nostrils. He dropped to his knees, clasping her hands and brushing kisses over her face, not aware that tears were falling from his eyes.
“Elizabeth, sweet, precious Elizabeth. Wake up! Look at me, dearest. You are safe. Alexander is safe. I am here and no further harm will come to you. Please! Elizabeth, open your eyes!” His alarm grew when she showed no sign of responding. Not a moan or sigh. He touched his fingertips to her forehead, recognizing what his frantic lips had not sensed. “Richard! She is feverish! Why?” He turned questioning, anxious eyes to his hovering cousin. “Does vitriol do this?”
Richard shook his head slowly. His face was naked with concern as he too touched gentle fingertips to Lizzy’s forehead. “I do not know, Darcy. I have no experience with the drug.”
Darcy withdrew, blinking the moisture from his eyes to commence a detailed examination of his wife. First off he noted the rope burns to her wrists, fingering them lovingly, and sending a silent thankful prayer heavenward that her delicate skin was only mildly abraded and not bleeding. He kissed each wrist before moving his tender touch to the ivory, unmarked flesh of her neck. If he had seen evidence of Wickham applying filthy hands to his wife’s throat, he may have returned to the body lying twisted at the bottom of the stairs for a few well-deserved kicks!
He rested his palm over her heart, relieved to feel the steady beat. But, it was then that he became aware of the areas of patchy wetness and dried milk staining over the front of her apron covered gown. Additionally, and far more alarming, was the hard lumpiness of her breasts. He gasped, reaching to discreetly peel the fabric away from her chest. Richard, he noted in his periphery, turned away, leaving Darcy in relative privacy to examine his wife. He did not completely expose her, would not have in any case, but it was not necessary. The erythema spread in a fist-sized blemish over the top of her left breast. Carefully palpating, with tears stinging his eyes and fury freshly rising, Darcy felt the warmth and swelling of the starkly demarcated patch, the engorged milk pockets like little rocks.
“Richard, Elizabeth needs a physician.”
“Very well. I shall send Helt to Oxshott…”
“No. Search for a carriage. Surely there must be one since Orman could not possibly sit a horse. We must return to London immediately.”
“But…”
“No argument. No one will touch my wife but my uncle.” He looked up at the anxious face of his cousin. “Hurry, please. The nicest carriage, if we have a choice, with the fastest horses. Cushions and blankets. She cannot be jostled more than necessary. Quickly!”
Richard moved to administer orders that were carried out hastily. Darcy turned back to Elizabeth, covering her completely before leaning to kiss her feverish lips.
“Do not fear, my love. All will be well. I love you and will not leave you.”
“Mr. Darcy?”
“Papa!”
Darcy jerked at the overlapping voices, his eyes alighting on Alexander, who practically catapulted out of Artois’s arms into the open embrace of his father. Alexander buried his tiny face into his father’s neck, tears falling in waves, and arms and hands gripping adamantly as his little body shook. Darcy savored the sensations, his own body shaking with contained sobs as he clutched the vibrant life to his chest.
Cascades of murmured endearments and promises of safety fell from his lips as he planted dozens of kisses. He stroked over the soft back of his son. His firm hands and sturdy body were ready reminders to Alexander of his father’s strength and devotion. Gradually the weeping and tremors lessened, Alexander finally withdrawing to gaze into his father’s beloved face.
“I knew you come! I miss you and Mama, but I brave boy. I bite bad man, Papa! He got mad, but I not care. Kick him too. Bad, bad man! Bad man Mama not like. I told him you come and get me and he be sorry. Made me smell sweet water that made me sleepy and sick. Sorry, Papa, I try to be brave but I got sick. Nice girl washed my face. I sleepy a lot and my stomach hurt and nose hurt and…”
He spoke in a rush, gasping residual sobs interrupting the rambling dialogue. Darcy smiled through the commentary and brushed his hands and fingers over his son’s body. But the toddler seemed fair enough, all things
