Two against one. Not bad odds, if Darcy could just get Mrs. Bennet to stop screaming and grabbing at his coattails.
The two brigands were at angles on each side of him, and in the gloom, it was hard to see if they carried rifles or bows. Darcy had already hit one of the two, bloodying his nose and busting his lip. They circled him like wildcats—wary, but ready to strike at any moment.
“We are all going to die,” Mrs. Bennet screamed from inside the carriage.
“Mother!” Kitty admonished. “Quiet! Mr. Darcy cannot fight them and fight you at the same time.”
“Thank you,” Darcy muttered.
Kitty, at least, was brave and spoke her mind. Her forthrightness reminded him of Elizabeth, which made him like her all the more. No faintness of heart with that one.
The uninjured brigand took a lunge at him, as he watched the third one pull Elizabeth over his horse and start galloping away. Not fifteen minutes earlier, he and Elizabeth had been discussing after wedding plans; now, a brigand was riding off with her.
No.
In a flurry of jabs and punches motivated by that possibility, he dispatched the uninjured outlaw, who first fell to his knees, then flopped on his face, unconscious.
The second brigand, seeing the turn of events, took his chances in the woods. Throwing the knife he was holding at Darcy to slow him down, he turned and dashed away.
Darcy snatched the knife and ran him down, grabbing his jacket and hauling him up so they were face to face. The man was shorter than Darcy, a thin, scrawny figure who had seen many days without food. His feet dangled as Darcy hauled him in closer.
“Where did he take my fiancé?” Darcy screamed, his gaze dark fire. “If you don’t tell me where, I will kill you where you stand.” He put the knife in the man’s face to emphasize his point.
“I can show you.” The man’s voice had taken on a high-pitched tone. “Please don’t kill me. I will show you.”
Darcy dragged him back to the carriage. Mrs. Bennet and Kitty were helping the driver to his feet, dusting him off and looking at the nasty knot on his forehead.
“I am sorry, Sir. They were on me before I realized it. I could not stop them.”
“It is fine, Mr. Rendell,” Darcy said. “This cretin will take me to retrieve what is mine.” He shook the brigand. “What I need you to do is take Mrs. Bennet and Miss Bennet on to Netherfield. I need you to send for Colonel Fitzwilliam and ask him to follow me to this brigand’s lair just in case I need help to rescue my fiancé, Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
Darcy turned his attention to the ladies. “May I borrow your scarf, Miss Kitty.” Kitty quickly handed it over.
“But that is one of your best scarves,” Mrs. Bennet complained.
“Wait,” Jessup intervened. “There is rope in the back of the carriage, used for the horses. Kitty retrieved her scarf, and Darcy bound the brigand’s hands with rope instead.
“You don’t know Lazarus,” the brigand whispered, struggling against his bindings. “Lazarus is a scaly cove of the meanest sort. If he finds out I led you to him, he will kill me. So, it is either you kill me now, or he kills me later.”
“So be it,” Darcy said. “Kitty, hand me one of those rifles, and then you and Mrs. Bennet, go to the carriage and—”
“You cannot kill him!” Kitty protested, staring down wide-eyed at the struggling bandit. “It would be a sin.”
“Perhaps his corpse will convince his associate I am serious.” Darcy used all of the coldness employed in London’s finest company to show a disdain he prayed the bandit understood and feared. Darcy doubted he would have the strength of will to murder a captured man in cold blood, but he could not let the bandit know that. “Death is death, as this man says.”
“Wait!” the bandit cried.
“Yes?” Darcy said.
“I can take show you where he is, but then, please let me go. For me wife and children!”
“You will be turned over to the constable, both of you.”
“I only did this because Lazarus promised me food and a cow for me trouble. My family is mucked out. We have nothing, and my wife’s pregnant with our third babe. She lost the last one. Please, sir, have mercy!”
Darcy doubted one in three words the bandit had offered were true, but persuasion came by both the carrot and the stick. He said, “If we find my fiancée and she is unharmed, I will ask the magistrate for leniency in your case. Your wife will not be a widow, which is more regard than you and your associates have offered me and mine.”
“Yes! Let me up, and I will take you!”
“What is your name?” Darcy asked.
“Philip,” the man said, offering no surname.
“I cannot believe you are listening to him,” Mrs. Bennet put in. “He is a robber, a thief, and he was part of the plot to abduct Elizabeth.”
“Mother, please be quiet.”
“Desperate people do desperate things,” Mr. Darcy said. “I want my fiancée back, and I will accept your help on the terms we have set.”
“Yes, sir! I speak the truth. My wife is Anne, and our daughter Penelope. She is six. The other babes passed. One in the womb, the other of fever. I have no reason to lie to you. I am already dead if this doesn’t work. And Lazarus will kill my family, too.”
“Then we have reason to work together.”
Philip indicated the rope around his wrists.
Darcy shook his head in the negative. “Trust is earned. First, you show me to my fiancé.”