Page 102 of A Debt Inherited

Wickham laughed softly. “My dear fellow, I have been smiling upon ruin since I was fifteen. It has served me admirably.”

“Not to-day.”

A pause followed. Leather creaked. Paper rustled.

“You have made it very solemn,” Wickham said. “Had I known you possessed so clerical a hand, I should have put you to copying billets-doux long ago.”

“Read it again.”

“I have read it twice.”

“Then read it a third time.”

The paper sounded once more. Wickham’s voice altered, took on an affected gravity, and carried just clearly enough through the door. “Mr Thomas Bennet is required to place ten thousand pounds in Bank of England notes, wrapped in oilcloth, beneath the third milestone upon the St Albans road by twelve o’clock three nights hence. He will come alone. He will speak to no magistrate, officer, neighbour, servant, or relation. If any alarm is raised, or any man follows the bearer, his daughter’s safety is forfeit. Lord Julian is not forgotten.”

Elizabeth’s breath stopped.

Ten thousand pounds.

The sum stood before her not as money, but as impossibility. Longbourn’s books, her father’s careful columns, rents, economies, repairs deferred, timber counted, fields calculated to the acre: all rose in her mind and broke against that figure.

Then the name came after it, quieter and no less strange. Lord Julian. She knew no Lord Julian. She had never heard her father speak the name. Yet Mr Kerr had set it at the end of the demand as if those two words alone would open some locked chamber in her father’s memory.

Wickham continued, lighter now. “There. Horrid, plain, and quite persuasive. Though I still maintain that a little mention of beauty imperilled would improve the effect.”

“You will deliver the words written.”

“And if Mr Bennet refuses?”

“He will not.”

“You have a higher opinion of paternal affection than most fathers deserve.”

“He will not refuse.”

The certainty in Kerr’s voice disturbed her more than Wickham’s levity.

Wickham made a sound of amusement. “You want him bent.”

“I want him to remember.”

Elizabeth heard a sharp movement, then a small thud, as if a hand had struck wood very near the door. She drew back.

Kerr’s voice came lower. “Your money depends upon obedience.”

“My money depends upon success. Do not mistake me. I shall carry your demand to Longbourn, and Mr Thomas Bennet shall have a wretched morning.”

A horse shifted outside; metal rang lightly against a buckle.

“You will ride by the lower road,” Kerr said. “You will put the letter into his hand and be gone before the house is properly stirring.”

“The house has stirred, I dare say.”

“As it should.”

“And Miss Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth’s name in his mouth made the small room contract around her.