Page 130 of Ashes and Understanding
“I do not make deals with murderers.”
“I spared the nurse. I would spare you. Leave the boy and walk away.”
“Never,” she hissed.
His voice darkened. “You are beginning to irritate me.” Another hard shove against the door. “Come out.”
Where is Papa? Where are the servants? Anyone?“Help me!” she shouted.
He laughed. “I am afraid they have been delayed… a distraction out near the stables should keep them occupied for a time.”
As he spoked, she could smell the faintest whiff of smoke. “Why are you doing this?” she asked in a whisper.
“Because it is my job,” he said simply. “My last job. As soon as the brat is eliminated, I retire. Some place warm—maybe Barbados. Or India. A man in my profession makes enemies. It is time to vanish.”
Suddenly, his voice cut off abruptly. She heard some scuffling, and hope rose within her breast.Perhaps someone has come.
“Hello?” she asked tentatively.
“Still here,” he said coolly, and her blood turned to ice as his new tone. “Youwillcome out, one way or the other. The boy willdie, one way or the other. The only decision you have to make is whether or not you will die with him.”
At that moment, a wave of smoke rolled under the door from Jane’s room, thick and choking.
“What have you done?” she cried.
“I told you, you will come out. Or you will die. Will you suffocate to death with the child, slowly burning as the fire I have set consumes you? Or will you come out, hand the boy over to me, and save your life?”
“You are a monster!” she screamed.“Somebody help us!”
“You will burn or surrender. It is your choice.”
Elizabeth coughed and looked wildly around the small closet.
There was no escape. Fire through one door, an assassin on the other.
She clutched Benjamin to her chest and screamed again, as loud as she could, praying someone—anyone—would hear.
The wood was warm now. The smoke thicker.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please come.”
∞∞∞
Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and Wickham rode hard along the road that went from Netherfield to Longbourn. They reached the Bennet estate just as the first glow of dawn began to rise behindthe trees. But it was not the gentle light of morning that met them—it was fire.
A fire roared in the distance, the stables fully alight, the orange glow reflecting off the house’s windows like hell’s own lanterns. Shadows danced along the gravel drive as servants dashed back and forth with buckets and wet cloths, fearfully shouting to one another as they fought the growing flames.
Darcy leapt from his horse before it had fully stopped, heart pounding. At the edge of the drive, Mr. Bennet appeared, ushering Mrs. Bennet and four daughters away from the house. Mary clutched Kitty’s hand, who was coughing into her sleeve. Lydia was weeping noisily, and Mrs. Bennet wailed that her nerves would never recover.
But it was not the absence of composure that struck Darcy—it was the absence of one face.
She’s not here.
He ran to Mr. Bennet with Colonel Fitzwilliam and Wickham close behind. “What has happened?” he demanded. “Where is Elizabeth?”
Mr. Bennet’s face was pale and grim. “She realized the man from the ball and the man in our nursery were not the same person. I told her to fetch Benjamin while I gathered some footmen. But as I woke servants, I saw the fire, so I also woke my family.”
