Carrie Bebris: The Intrigue at Highbury

Darcy drew Elizabeth aside. “We have no notion of where to find these relations of hers, and Miss Jones herself will be of no help. We will take her with us to the inn at Highbury. Surely someone there knows the cousins.”

Elizabeth had begun to believe they would never reach the inn. She peered towards the carriage. Darkness yet shrouded it; she could barely discern the vehicle and could not make out their servants at all. “Ben must yet be repairing the lantern, but I see no sign of our groom, either.”

Darcy frowned. “Perhaps he is assisting Ben behind the carriage.” He called the men’s names, but received no response. The silence was more disturbing than the raven’s cry. Only the horses’ snorts penetrated the stillness.

He glanced meaningfully at her reticule. “Have you—”

“Yes. Do you want it?”

He shook his head. “Keep it at hand and stay here with Jeffrey and Miss Jones.” From the folds of his greatcoat he produced the small pistol he carried with him when they traveled, and walked towards the carriage.

He left the light with Jeffrey and the women, making it more difficult for Elizabeth to see his figure. Her nerves were taut as she and the coachman watched her husband retreat into the darkness surrounding the vehicle. Miss Jones’s continual complaints did not help.

“Oh! Where is he going? Can we not leave this place at once? I have heard there are highwaymen about—”

“Highwaymen!” Elizabeth said. “Why did you not say so before now?”

“Heavens, I did not want to speak of such people!”

With now even greater anxiety, Elizabeth turned her attention back to the carriage. She could just distinguish Darcy moving round its side. “Then kindly hold your tongue so as not to draw them to us.”

Behind her, Miss Jones mercifully lapsed into silence. The horses, however, were restless, and created quite enough noise themselves as they hoofed the ground and shook their harnesses. Elizabeth held her breath, unable to release it until she saw her husband safe again.

In a moment, Darcy came back into sight, running towards them. He bore grim news. Their servants lay unconscious.

Their chest was gone.

Elizabeth whirled round. So was Miss Jones.

Emma Woodhouse Knightley, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition — a happiness recently compounded by her marriage to a gentleman of noble character and steadfast heart — seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-two years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

With two notable exceptions: the Reverend and Mrs. Philip Elton.

“I am still appalled by their conversation,” Emma said to her husband as they sat in Hartfield’s drawing room after dinner. Her father had just retired for the night, leaving the newlyweds to enjoy an hour of peace before retiring themselves. Emma’s mind, however, was anything but quiet as she dwelled upon the discussion she had overheard that morning, and neither the familiar comforts of the room — the Chippendale sofa and side chairs, the portrait of her late mother above the great hearth — nor the novelty of her bridegroom’s now-permanent presence there, could quell her agitation.

“That is what comes of eavesdropping,” Mr. Knightley said.

“I was not eavesdropping,” Emma insisted. “I was tying my bootlace.”

The lace had come undone as she left the home of Miss Bates, a middle-aged spinster who lived with her elderly mother in reduced circumstances on the upper floor of a modest house. Emma had visited their rooms many times (though perhaps not so often as she ought), but never before had the humble apartment felt so small. The Eltons had called so shortly after Emma’s own arrival that it was some time before she could with propriety effect an escape. “I paused at the base of the stairs to fix the lace. Could I help it that the Eltons emerged from the apartment and began their discussion on the landing before I had done?”

Mr. Knightley’s expression suggested that she might have secured the half-boot more rapidly had she wanted to. Sixteen years her senior, he had known Emma her whole life, and was as well acquainted with her foibles as he was with her charms. His dark eyes narrowed in doubt, and for a moment she dreaded an admonition delivered in his usual forthright manner. Instead, he rose and stirred the fire. The flickering light shadowed his countenance and silhouetted his tall frame. Though he possessed the maturity and bearing of a man eight-and-thirty, he had maintained the firm figure of younger days, and Emma congratulated herself on having found such a fine-looking husband once she had finally opened her eyes to the gentleman next door.

He returned the poker to its stand and adjusted the screen to shield them from the heat. “It is fortunate that you managed to exit without the Eltons’ seeing you in the stairwell.” He sat down beside her on the sofa. “To have been caught listening to their conversation, however involuntarily, would not have reflected well on you.”

The last position in which Emma would want to find herself was that of giving Augusta Elton any room to expand her already inflated sense of superiority. Mrs. Elton’s greatest claim to society was a brother-in-law who owned a barouche-landau and an estate near Bristol. Though the house was named Maple Grove, Mrs. Elton seemed to think it was St. James’s Palace. She also took extraordinary pride in her status as the vicar’s wife, performing her role with pretensions of elegance and a pronounced air of noblesse oblige. Sadly, Mr. Elton, though a clergyman, was nearly as vain and insufferable as she.

“It is still more fortunate that I did overhear them, for now I can rescue poor Miss Bates from their plotting.”

“Emma—”

“Honestly, you should have heard them! Talking about how Miss Bates will surely become dependent upon parish charity after her mother dies.”

“I doubt that will happen, with her niece marrying Frank Churchill next week. A gentleman who stands to inherit an estate the size of Enscombe will not forsake his wife’s aunt.”

Emma knew that Mr. Knightley spoke not from conviction of Frank Churchill’s reliability, but from his own principles. Because Mr. Knightley would never neglect a needy relation, he expected all gentlemen to demonstrate the same sense of duty. In fact, he had forfeited his own independence to act rightly by Emma’s father. Upon their marriage, Mr. Knightley had graciously moved into the house of Emma’s birth so that she need not abandon the invalid Mr. Woodhouse or subject the old man to the trauma of leaving his lifelong home to live with them at Mr. Knightley’s more sizable estate, Donwell Abbey. Though the distance was slight — Hartfield bordered Mr. Knightley’s grounds — Mr. Woodhouse suffered from a nervous disposition and did not bear well change of any sort. The living arrangement left Donwell Abbey without its master in residence, and Emma appreciated the sacrifice her husband had made on behalf of herself and her father.