Free Elizabeth Bennet's Excellent Adventure: A Pride and Prejudice Vagary by Regina Jeffers

served as the group’s leader grumbled.
    Without notice, they released him, and Darcy’s knees buckled, sending him face first into the damp earth. Before he knew what to expect, one of the men on his left kicked him hard in the side. The air rushed from Darcy’s lungs as the pain in his ribs screamed for succor.
    “Leave him be,” the leader snapped. “Tie his hands and let’s be from this place ’for someone sees us.”
    One of the man’s cohorts bent over Darcy to wrench Darcy’s arms behind him. The movement increased the pain shooting through Darcy’s chest. Too weak to resist the man, Darcy concentrated on how the man laced what felt of a leather strap about Darcy’s wrists before tugging the constraint tighter.
    And then they were gone.
    Before Darcy could lodge a complaint, he heard their rapid retreat.
    “Wait!” he called, but even to his ears his voice sounded weak.
    “Wait!” he attempted to call them back. “How am I to find my way from here?”
    “Yer not,” a voice announced from a distance.
    A round of laugher and then sickening silence followed the man’s pronouncement.
    He was alone. Injured. Blindfolded. And restrained. Even if he could manage to stand, Darcy had no idea how he could discover assistance. The nearest farm or village was likely miles removed, and without his sight, Darcy would possess no means to find his way.
    With an effort, he rolled upon his side and then paused to rest.
    “Slow and deliberate,” he announced to his waning spirits. “Find assistance and return to Elizabeth.”
    * * *
    Three days passed, and Elizabeth thought it impossible that there were still tears to be shed. Mrs. Hill reported that Mrs. Bennet claimed her bed with a case of the ‘nerves.’ Elizabeth would like to offer her mother sympathy, but she could not. It was Elizabeth’s life that Mr. Darcy ruined, not Mrs. Bennet’s.
    Jane slipped a note under Elizabeth’s door to share the information that Miss Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam departed for London from the church with a promise to send word of Mr. Darcy’s excuses, for Jane and the gentleman’s family felt certain something far-reaching occurred to prevent Mr. Darcy’s appearance. Jane wrote…
    Mr. Darcy would never act in such a craven manner. I observed him in London, Lizzy, and the man holds you in deep regard. I do not err in this matter. Moreover, Mr. Darcy would never leave himself open to Society’s condemnation, nor would he expose his family name to a public breech of promise suit. Mr. Bingley agrees. For all his faults and awkward mannerisms, Mr. Darcy is a gentleman.
    “But no letter begging for my forgiveness arrived,” Elizabeth told her badly bruised heart.
    She knew for certain no message came by express or otherwise for Elizabeth’s bedroom overlooked the drive before Longbourn’s main door.
    “No letter of forgiveness. No excuses. No pardons. Only open disdain. I thought better of you Fitzwilliam Darcy. Although I feared this very outcome, somehow I clung to the hope that you would act with honor and that your word was law. I am as foolish as Miss Bingley and Miss De Bourgh for you will neither marry for fortune nor family bloodlines nor love.”
    In the long hours without sleep, Elizabeth considered her future and came to necessary conclusions.
    “A gentleman does not deliberately avoid the church where his fiancée awaits him,” she reasoned. “At least, not if the man respects the woman he intends to marry. If Mr. Darcy wished to withdraw, he held multiple opportunities prior to the wedding to send me his regrets. His absence was meant as the ultimate revenge for my private snub of his attentions. It is painfully obvious the gentleman wished all to know a woman of my ilk could not occupy a place by his side.”
    With a heavy sigh of resignation, Elizabeth spoke to her reflection in the window.
    “I was nothing more than a nuisance. My pleas for assistance fell upon deaf ears and upon a heart set against