Pamela Aidan - Duty and Desire

“You are mistaken, sir, if you think to frighten me or engage my sympathy for my ‘brother.’” Lady Sylvanie’s lips curved in derision. “What sympathy did he have for me when he packed my mother and me off to a cold pile of stone and moss in Ireland? Did he care that we almost starved?” Her voice rose higher. “Does he quake before his god at the remembrance of what he has done to his own father’s wife, his own sister, who shared his blood?”

“Sayre has, indeed, much to answer for —”

“And answer he shall! Tonight he was to have been called to account, if you —”

“If I had ruined him, as you hoped?” Darcy bridled. “What else? Was I to offer you marriage after I had brought him low?”

“If I wished it,” she replied. Her eyes flashed insolently, then narrowed upon him. “And I may still.” She turned from him then, hugging herself as she stepped away. “I will have vengeance, Darcy! I will see Sayre brought down!” She turned back to him, the fairy fierceness he had admired when they first met glowing now with unnatural fervor. “It is promised me, and no one will deny me now!”

Darcy looked at her in wonder. So deep, so unforgiving was the lady’s resentment of her past and her family that she had set herself at war with all the world. If she had ever been whole, her looks and words warned him that now she was not. She had become instead a broken creature for whom the world was not atonement enough for her pain.

“You would destroy Sayre and all around him then, lady? Those innocent of your mistreatment as well as the guilty?”

“Have you never desired revenge, Darcy?” Lady Sylvanie’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. Against his will, he stepped closer to catch her words. “Has no one ever hurt you, almost destroyed you?” Darcy froze, a chill frisson traveling as lightning up his back. “Taken what was most dear to you…” One name, excluding all other thought, burned in his mind. “…twisted it, defamed it beyond recognition or redemption?” Bitter anger rose from his heart so suddenly it almost choked him.

“Yes,” she drawled softly, “you have. You desire it still. What is its name?” Wickham’s smirking face — the triumphant mien, the satirical eye — arose before him as it had been when he had discovered it at Ramsgate, then again, in Hertfordshire. “Remember it, Darcy! Think on what was done to you, to those you love. The betrayal, the pain.” Georgiana! He saw once more the sorrow-laden shadow that had been his sweet, innocent sister before…Wickham. He had come so close, so very, very close to destroying them all.

He has been so unlucky as to lose your friendship. The accusation in Elizabeth Bennet’s voice and in the eyes she had laid upon him arose in his mind’s eye and flayed him anew. He saw himself that night, mute before her charge, his last opportunity to recover himself in her esteem — ruined! Wickham! A deep groan formed in his chest.

“You have suffered its bitterness long enough, borne the pain of it beyond endurance!” Lady Sylvanie’s words drew him. “Reason will not soothe, logic does not answer; they have no power. Embrace passion, Darcy. Embrace ‘th’unconquerable will, and study of revenge.’ I can guide you, help you — comfort you — in the way!”

Revenge! The temptation she offered grew in his mind, and for a moment, Darcy allowed himself a glimpse into the desire that had lurked deep within his heart from the first time Wickham had deceitfully shamed him in front of his father to Georgiana’s months of pain.

“But the child, Your Ladyship.” Fletcher’s soft plea broke through Darcy’s heightened senses and arrested Lady Sylvanie’s flow of words. “Have mercy, dear lady!”

Lady Sylvanie hesitated, then turned from Darcy to face the valet. “The child will come to no real harm, save for a few plucked hairs and several nights away from its mother. Its usefulness is nearly at an end. Lady Sayre will be convinced she has conceived before the week is out, and then the child will be returned.” She laughed. “Can you imagine! That cow! She believed my tale that if she suckled a peasant’s child and swallowed some herbs, she could cure the barrenness of her womb. As if I would help her against my own interests!”

“Lady, you have no week.” Darcy recovered himself from the mesmerism of her words. “You have only minutes before the mob that confronts your brother at this very moment descends into this hall in search of that child.” He advanced upon her, determined to force the issue. “I say again, my lady, give over. It is all ended. Bring him to me now, or your safety can in nowise be certain.”

“Give over! When all is within our grasp?” The voice rang out strongly and echoed against the chamber’s stone walls. A door set low in the wall and down a few steps behind Lady Sylvanie opened, and the bowed shape of her companion ascended the stairs, a child limp in her arms. “The time is at hand, and we stand in no need of your feeble help!”

“Doyle!” Lady Sylvanie gasped sharply as the old woman pushed her aside and faced Darcy.

“Mr. Darcy has worked it all out, have you not, Mr. Darcy? Or is it your manservant who has pieced it all together? Clever man” — she sneered — “but not clever enough. Men never are.” Darcy’s astonishment at her boldness was nothing to his doubt of his senses when the crippled serving woman seemed to grow before his eyes. Her preter-natural increase in stature was matched by a decrease in age as, with a mocking smile that was now level with his face, she untied her widow’s cap and threw it from her. Hair black as night, touched lightly with streaks of gray, tumbled down about her shoulders.

“Lady Sayre!” exclaimed Fletcher, in awe at the now straightened figure that stood defiantly before them.

“Yes, Lady Sayre,” she answered him but did not take her eyes from Darcy. “Not that plaything upon which my stepson has lavished the title. Twelve long years it has been, and all would have been set to right already tonight, Mr. Darcy, if you had acted as you were bid.” Her eyes slid to her daughter. “He is right in one thing, Sylvanie. We must leave now, but we do not leave empty-handed, defeated. We will have our full measure of —”

With her attention diverted from him, Darcy moved to seize the child; but as he made his move, the woman brought a small, intricately carved silver dagger to the child’s throat. “Mamá!” Lady Sylvanie cried as Darcy froze, his eyes flying to meet hers in alarm. “What are you doing?”

“‘ Une femme a toujours une vengeance prête,’ ma petite !” Lady Sayre replied with a laugh. “Stand away from the door, sirs!”

From the corner of his eye, Darcy could see Fletcher slowly moving around them. “What will you do with the child once you are free from Norwycke, ma’am?” Darcy demanded, centering the lady’s attention upon himself.

“I think you know, Mr. Darcy.”

“Another visit to the King’s Stone? It has been you; has it not? Rabbits, kittens, pigs …” Lady Sayre’s lips twitched as he cataloged her activities. “It was you I saw that first night, returning from the Stone and your latest —” His face darkened with disgust. “In point of fact, the entire plan has been yours from the beginning. Tell me, is Sayre’s agent still alive, or is he buried in some forgotten place in Ireland?”

“Tell him it is not so, Mamá.” Lady Sylvanie looked desperately at her mother, but she did not reply. “The child is in no danger,” she declared again hotly as she turned to Darcy, “and the man was paid off. I saw the purse! He is somewhere in America!”

“Truly, my lady?” Darcy addressed Lady Sayre in a voice heavy with sarcasm. “Sayre’s man is living happily in America, and the child will remain unharmed?”