A/N: I am reverting to form a bit. In the early part of my writing career, I would lay down a few chapters and just let fly, often with no idea where it was going. Later, I experiment with better organization, such as outlines and the like. For this one, I had a good idea of where it was going but did not bother outlining. I just published the first few chapters and went at it hammer and tongs.
I expected maybe 20 chapters and ended up with 40, which is typical scope creep for me. I wrote this FAST, 60 days from the first word to the last of 110k words, meaning I was doing a chapter a day for much of the time, averaging 1,800 words/day.
Fun Fact: I wrote the first 8 chapters over just a few days, then got concerned I might have a timeline FUBAR, so I went back and looked up sunrise and sunset times, travel distance, etc. (conveniently referring to a blog post I wrote). It turns out I pretty much nailed it the first time, but it's nice to know it works. If you're curious, type "Distance and Time In Regency England Wade" into any search engine and you can read my post.
NOTE: I hate spoilers and overly long descriptions, so I avoid them, but others prefer fair warning. I compromise by putting warnings and spoilers at the bottom of this chapter. Scroll down to the very bottom if you want a clue, otherwise, stop when all the dots appear.
Wade
The gentlemen walked their mounts into the stable with a certain feeling of contentment.
As usual, the professional cavalryman bested the gentleman in a hard race, just as he did every time regardless of which horse either rode, the time of day, the terrain, or who started first. Neither man was distressed by the gentleman's lack of success. In fact, both men suspected if he ever did win, he would forfeit because he must have cheated.
Fitzwilliam Darcy and Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam were sportsmen in the prime of life, and both loved nothing so much as a good gallop. Not only did it have the dual benefits of exhilaration and exercise, both of which were good for body and soul—but it also gave them a few hours away from their extremely annoying aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her equally insipid, sickly, and annoying daughter, Anne. Both ladies of Rosings firmly believed Darcy would marry Anne, while both men knew Darcy would take a scullery maid or Caroline Bingley to wife first.
Every year they went through the same argument. Lady Catherine, in some apparent confusion about how families worked, asserted she wanted to keep Rosings in the family, and her sister, Darcy's mother agreed, even though she was no longer a Fitzwilliam, Darcy had never been one in the first place, and nobody but Lady Catherine believed Lady Anne Darcy had agreed to anything.
The irony was that Lady Catherine had two eligible nephews, one rich as Croesus and already in possession of far too many estates, and the other poor as a church mouse and desperate for a way to escape the army without starving in the streets, or worse yet, taking a larger allowance from his father and elder brother. Not only that, but the poor one was also an actual Fitzwilliam, with the appropriate lineage, surname, accomplishments and so forth. It made no sense, but then again, their aunt seldom did, and Anne never.
On that slightly cloudy spring day just after Easter, they rode out at twelve but were waylaid on the way back to the stables twice.
The first delay was a drainage issue in a field that was flooding because their irascible aunt refused to implement Darcy's suggestion. To be honest, refuse was not the exact word, because she always agreed to the plan but never spent the money.
Not exactly dressed for a London ballroom, they chanced upon a mare that went into labour too far from the barn to bring her in. Half the stable hands were called out to attend. They, of course, had things well in hand, but a couple of hours welcoming a new foal into the world seemed a vastly superior prospect to spending the time in the Rosings drawing room. After all, a poor excuse handily beat none. It was not quite as good as a visit to Mrs Collins' pretty guest, but that pleasure was unavailable. When they rode past the parsonage about one, they found she had just left on an extended walk. That put her away from her awkward cousin (good for her), but also unavailable for the awkward gentlemen (bad for them).
As they approached the stable at a slow walk, a very worried groom approached and touched his forehead.
"Sirs, I am becoming concerned. Miss de Bourgh has yet to return from her phaeton ride. She said it would be longer than usual, but it has been several hours. She left just after one."
"How bad can it be? She has a tiger with her," Fitzwilliam replied calmly.
To be candid, the idea of his cousin Anne sitting in a broken phaeton for a few hours waiting for her tiger to walk back for help was more amusing than concerning. Of course, there would be hell to pay, and Darcy would probably have to get positions for every groom in the place, again, but all in all, it might be worth it just to watch their cousin fume.
"That is just it. She refused to take a groom."
Darcy frowned. "Everyone knows that is suicidal. What was your man thinking?"
"Beggin your pardon, sir, but when Miss de Bourge gets in a mood, she be near murderous. 'Tis not the place of a groom to argue with the mistress."
Darcy grumbled but conceded the point. Since Anne's previous birthday, she had been the owner of Rosings, though Lady Catherine still had lifetime rights to live in the estate, or at least in the dower house. However, instead of taking the reins as was proper, or at least learning how to do so, Anne allowed Lady Catherine to continue dictating to all and sundry but used her new authority to double the misery of everyone in the area, rather than lessening it. He suspected they were trying to goad him to act, in the mistaken belief that the decade they had already been at it was about to come to fruition.
The colonel was thinking similar thoughts. "Only thing worse than one arbitrary and half-crazy ruler is two with different priorities."
"Hear, hear!" Darcy said with a frown. He was frankly more interested in how he was going to either save the grooms' positions or find them new ones, and none of that had anything to do with visiting Miss Elizabeth Bennet—not that he had any idea what to do when he was with her, aside from being tongue-tied and awkward while his much more charming cousin demonstrated his prowess with the ladies.
Fitzwilliam grumbled but they both knew what was expected of any gentleman.
"Miss de Bourgh has never been more than five miles from the manor house in her phaeton in her life, so how hard can it be? Gather men and horses. We shall split up and search while we still have daylight. I cannot imagine it will take more than an hour or two."
"Yes, sir," the groom agreed morosely, no doubt assuming it might be his last task at that estate.
"If it takes more than two hours we bollox up dinner," Fitzwilliam averred with a feral grin. Any excuse to avoid the torture of a dinner with their aunt was good, and he reckoned even if they found their cousin in twenty minutes, they might delay bringing her back.
"We can only hope," Darcy said with a sigh. He hated Rosings dinners, but he knew his aunt would defer it two hours just for the excuse to complain about their tardiness for the following week.
Fitzwilliam looked at Darcy. "I shall take my pack just in case, and we should get a quick bite from the kitchen. No man should have to endure Anne on an empty stomach."
"No time for a bath," Darcy said regretfully, "but some clean clothes might not be the end of the world. Anne can wait ten more minutes, and the grooms must saddle the mounts."
They both made for the manor to implement the plan. They tossed a coin and Darcy (the loser obviously) went to inform Lady Catherine of what was occurring. Ten minutes later he ran from the parlour screeching like a man afire.
Fitzwilliam laughed at the sight of a grown man running from an old woman, but such was the way of things in Kent. He had his cavalry pack, which contained emergency supplies such as bandages and the like. He could not imagine a scenario where they were required, but good soldiers never forgot their training. He donned his uniform because he was most comfortable in it, and even brought his sword, just in case his cousin was more trouble than usual.
Darcy gathered all the grooms and organized them into teams, unrolled a set of maps he borrowed from the office, and assigned search routes. Each team had a pistol with instructions to fire it when they found the phaeton. They designated a junction in the drive to meet after the blasted contraption was found, and a system of messages to call in reinforcements in case of injury. They had plenty of time before dark to search everywhere their hapless cousin might be.
Darcy sent a note to Hunsford for the apothecary just in case.
The group took a few of the best hounds from the kennel and assigned a couple to each team. They were not exactly tracking hardened criminals, but everyone knew a good dog was essential to a good manhunt. At the very least, the gentlemen mused they could get the dogs to howl if Anne became too shrill, as seemed likely.
With a nod, they all headed out to their assigned routes, with the colonel taking a pass by the parsonage just to see if they knew anything.
WARNINGS AND SPOILERS: Scroll down.
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WARNINGS: Violence, Death, Injury. OOC behavior (maybe).
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ENDINGS: Scroll down
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HEAs: Darcy/Elizabeth, Colonel/Jane
Note that I promised my readers a long time ago that I would not make a non-pairing between Elizabeth and Darcy without fair warning, and I've yet to do so. The rest of the pairings are all fair game though.