The Dread Mr. Darcy Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  EPILOGUE

  The Dread Mr. Darcy

  a Pride and Prejudice variation

  Valerie Lennox

  THE DREAD MR. DARCY

  © copyright 2018 by Valerie Lennox

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy stood in the captain’s cabin on the ship he was planning on swindling opium out from under, his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m Nathan Black, and I’m with the East India Company, and I’m boarding because your sails aren’t regulation. You can’t keep going in the manner that you are, or a dangerous accident might occur at any moment.”

  The captain, who had given his name, but Darcy hadn’t heard it, looked completely flummoxed. “Regulations sails? What are you on about, man? And how does that give you the right to board my ship?”

  Darcy shrugged. “It’s my job. I spend my time sailing in this area, observing ships that work for the company, and if there are any problems with them, I board and get them fixed.”

  “Well, you’re obviously confused,” said the captain. “Because we don’t sail for the East India Company.”

  Darcy’s confident facade cracked for a moment. “You don’t?”

  “No, we’re just on our way back to England with passengers and a bit of spice.”

  “You don’t have any opium on board?” said Darcy. That was, of course, the swindle. He intercepted boats that were meant to be taking opium east to China, and he made up some trumped-up charge about their ship, saying that he could report them to the company, or they could just pay him off with half of the opium they had on board.

  Since China wasn’t allowing the opium legally across its borders anymore, it was easy enough for someone like Darcy to find a buyer for the opium. There was heavy demand for the stuff in China, no matter how the government was trying to keep its people off the stuff. Darcy pocketed the profit—pure profit since he didn’t have to pay for the opium, and he sent it back home to England to take care of his estate.

  Without some money coming in, he would have certainly lost the family home. Turning to piracy wasn’t exactly an honorable choice, but whatever pride Darcy’d had he’d lost a long time ago.

  “No, we don’t have any opium on board,” said the captain. “What would make you think something so ridiculous?”

  “Well, you’re in the same waters as the ships that carry opium,” Darcy snapped. He was angry at having made the mistake of boarding this ship. This was a waste of time and energy, it seemed.

  “Yes, there was a storm three days past. It blew us horribly off course.”

  The storm. Darcy sighed. He remembered the storm now. He’d spent most of it locked in his cabin, curled around the light of his opium lamp, in a cocoon of warmth and wonder, but now he was running low on opium, and he needed it, and—

  Darcy seized the captain by the throat. “You’re worthless to me, you know that?”

  The captain’s eyes bulged.

  What was he doing? Darcy dropped the man, letting him go. “Well, it seems this is all a misunderstanding.”

  The captain massaged his throat. “What did you say your name was? Black?”

  Darcy smiled thinly. “Nathan Black.” He always used a different name every time he boarded a ship, just as a matter of course. What he’d called himself didn’t really matter. “And I suppose that my men and I will just exit your ship now, no harm done.”

  “I think I’ll want to get in touch with your superior,” said the captain. “The way you’ve treated me is abominable.”

  “Oh, well, accept my deepest apologies,” said Darcy with mock sympathy. He turned and stalked out of the captain’s cabin. He needed to gather up his men and get off this boat. The sooner they sailed on, the sooner they’d find a ship that actually had opium on it.

  But when he pushed open the door, he was met with some resistance.

  He put his back into it, and the door slowly inched open. Only then could he see what was blocking it.

  A body. The first mate was lying on the floor, his throat cut, his blood seeping into the deck.

  “Dash it all, who killed someone?” Darcy said.

  “Sorry, Cap’n,” said his first mate, Jacob Mackie. “He was going for his pistol, he was, and I wasn’t about to let myself get a belly full of lead, so I did what I had to, I did.”

  Darcy sighed. “Is he the only one?”

  “Well.” Mackie scratched the top of his head. “See, then the others started getting rowdy, and me and the others, we had to keep that from getting too messy, so we had to kill… oh, ten or so of them, sir. I’m sorry, I know you want us to do it bloodless when we can, but in this case—”

  “Shut up, Mackie,” Darcy said darkly. He turned back to the captain. “I’m terribly sorry about this, sir. It really is unfortunate, but if I let you go at this point, after having killed ten of your men, there’s no way you won’t tell someone about me, and I do pride myself on keeping as low a profile as possible.”

  The captain took a step backwards, his brows furrowed. “What are you? You don’t work for the East India Company after all, do you?”

  Darcy shook his head. “I’m afraid not.” He took his pistol out of its holster and leveled it at the captain. “Again, my deepest apologies.”

  The crack of the gun echoed throughout the ship.

  * * *

  Miss Elizabeth Bennet was screaming.

  She was screaming even though Mrs. Graham had told her not to, even though Mrs. Graham had told her to hide behind the bags of spices and not make a peep no matter what happened.

  Because they had murdered Mrs. Graham.

  Mrs. Graham was a portly woman who always spoke loudly and smacked her lips a lot. She wasn’t the most pleasant of company, and she had been the only other woman on the ship, and numerous times, Elizabeth had thought to herself that she should quite like to be shut of the woman.

  But she had not meant that she wanted Mrs. Graham to be murdered, a dagger stuck into her heart in the middle of the hold, bleeding all over the bags of spices and not even making a noise. She was staring straight up at the ceiling, a grimace of pain frozen on her face.

  Elizabeth couldn’t help but scream.

  “Where’s that coming from?” said one of the pirates, the two men who had murdered Mrs. Graham. The ship was crawling with them. That was why Mrs. Graham had taken her here to hide.

  The other man tossed aside several of the bags, revealing Elizabeth.

  She looked into his face, which was a little dirty.

  He had a scraggly beard, and he was missing a tooth. He leered at her.

  She stopped screaming.

  “This one’s younger than the other,” said the pirate.

  “So what?” said his companion. “You know the cap’n’s opinion on women.”

&nb
sp; “Nothing but trouble, yeah, I know it.” The pirate cocked his head. “She’s a comely one, though. Maybe we should have a bit of fun with her before we kill her.”

  “No, that’s the trouble the cap’n’s talking of, don’t you think?”

  Elizabeth licked her lips. “Don’t kill me. Please, don’t—”

  “Shut up,” said the pirate. “Can’t handle it when they beg. It makes me all regretful-like. Gives me nightmares.”

  “Stab her quick, then,” said his friend. “She’s just going to keep whining otherwise.”

  “I don’t want to die,” Elizabeth said. “Please, if you leave me here and pretend you didn’t see me—”

  The pirate seized her by the bodice of her dress and dragged her up into the air. He slammed her into the wall. “None of that, I said.”

  “I don’t know why you aren’t stabbing her already,” said his friend. “You’ve had enough chances.”

  “You stab her, then,” said the pirate.

  Elizabeth was feeling a little woozy from the sight of dead Mrs. Graham and from being slammed into the wall, but she was also terribly alert. Nothing had ever been more important. They were going to kill her, and she had to get away—

  Abruptly, she began to struggle.

  The pirate slammed her into the wall once more, pressing his body against hers. “None of that either,” he said, but his voice was gruffer.

  “Get out of the way, Ned,” said his friend. “I’m going to stab her, I am.”

  “Oh, I can’t,” said Ned. “It’s such a waste. She’s a pretty one, so soft and kind of bouncy. Creamy white skin too. Now, neither of us has had a woman—let alone an English woman—in more months than I care to count.”

  “Cap’n says—”

  “Well, the cap’n doesn’t have to know, now does he? We do it quick like, and then we stab her when it’s done.”

  Elizabeth’s heart was pounding so fast that she thought it might rip out of her chest. She didn’t think she wanted these men to do whatever it was they wanted to do to her, but she also knew that doing it would extend her life long enough that she might be able to find a way to escape them, to hide better, and to survive, and she wanted that.

  “What you mean is that you’ll do it quick like, and then there won’t be time for me to do anything, because we’ll be leaving the ship, and the cap’n’ll want to know where we are and what we been up to, and then he’ll find out everything, and—”

  “Find out what?” said a voice from across the room.

  Elizabeth snapped her head over to look at the opening to the hold. She couldn’t believe who she saw standing there. It was Mr. Darcy. He wasn’t dressed the way he usually did. Instead, he looked like a sailor. But she would recognize that face anywhere. She had only met him once, at the Meryton Assembly years ago, but he had made an impression on her.

  “Sir,” she said. “Mr. Darcy, help me!”

  Darcy rushed across the room, tearing Ned away from her.

  Her heart soared. She was saved.

  But Darcy only slammed her against the wall in much the way that Ned had. His voice was at her ear, quiet but sharp. “Where did you hear that name?”

  “I—” she choked. “You must remember me, sir. At the Meryton Assembly, when my sister met her husband, Mr. Bingley. He is your dear friend. You would not dance, and then you heard about some soldier being in town, and you left in a flurry, and—”

  “That’s enough.” He drew back.

  And the next morning, we heard there had been a duel, she finished. Bingley told us. He was there as your second. You had killed the man you dueled with. Mr. Wickham, I think his name was. No one is certain what the quarrel was between the two of you, except perhaps Bingley, who would not say. It was whispered, though, that it had something to do with your dead sister.

  “I’m sorry about this, Miss…”

  “Miss Bennet,” she supplied. “You do not remember me?”

  Darcy turned away, to the pirates. “Why is she still alive? Didn’t I tell you to kill everyone on board?”

  What? Elizabeth choked on a sob. She wasn’t saved after all. This man, this proper gentleman, was talking about killing her. How could this be?

  “We were getting ready to kill her,” said Ned. “We really were, but… well, she’s got such creamy skin and—”

  “You idiots,” said Darcy. “I’ll have to kill her myself.”

  “No,” said Elizabeth. “No, please, I beg you—”

  “Shut up,” Darcy said between clenched teeth.

  “I won’t,” she said. “You are a gentleman, at least you used to be, and I am an innocent woman, and if you kill me, it will mean that you are a horrible man, and I don’t think you are a horrible man, I really don’t.” But that wasn’t strictly true, maybe. She had heard rumors about him, after the business with the duel. Rumors about drinking and gambling and general unrighteousness, but they hadn’t even hinted at murder.

  Darcy sucked in breath through his nose. “It’s nothing personal, Miss Bennet, I assure you. It’s only that I am going to sink this ship so that no one finds it, and if I leave you on board, you’ll drown to death, and a stabbing is surely a mercy compared to that sort of torturous death.”

  “Why are you sinking the ship?”

  “I told you, I don’t want anyone to find it.”

  “But… but…”

  “Listen, Miss Bennet, everyone else is dead already. I’m sorry to kill an innocent woman, as you say, but I’m afraid that you’re mistaken about me. I really am a horrible man.” He put his dagger to her throat.

  “No!” She seized his hand, trying to push away the hilt. “Don’t do this. Please don’t do this.” Tears were streaming down her face. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real. Only a half hour before, she had been thinking of writing a letter, even though she knew that no one would get it until she arrived back in England. Everything had been completely normal then. Couldn’t she go back in time, take away all of this?

  His face twitched. He didn’t lower the dagger, but he didn’t keep pushing either. “I can’t keep you alive. What would you have me do? Take you onto my ship?”

  “Yes. Why not?” she said, seeing some ray of hope in the unworldly darkness that had somehow become her reality.

  “Because having a woman on a pirate ship is a recipe for disaster. There simply is not enough of you to go around, and trust me, stabbing you now would be a mercy to being passed around in that way.”

  She gazed at him, uncomprehending. “P-passed around?”

  “Oh, dash it all, they would destroy you, Miss Bennet, and unless I put you under my protection—”

  “So, do that,” she said. “Put me under your protection. Don’t kill me.”

  He sighed heavily. “I can’t.”

  “Please.”

  He moved the dagger.

  She let out a little breath.

  “We’ve been talking too long,” he said. “It’s most difficult to kill a woman after having a conversation with her.”

  “That’s what I told Ned, Cap’n,” said one of the pirates. “If he would have listened to me, this one would already be dead.”

  “Pity he didn’t.” Darcy slid his dagger back into its sheath. He looked Elizabeth over. “Miss Bennet, I will take you back to Bombay, and I’ll do my best to keep the men off you. That’s all I can promise.”

  * * *

  Elizabeth stepped gingerly over the bodies of the crew, walking behind Mr. Darcy. She was surprised that she was standing upright. She had never truly considered being caught up in a situation such as this, but a cursory consideration always left her with the notion that she would faint straight away in the face of so much death.

  Surprisingly, she was moving, she was speaking, and she had somehow kept herself alive.

  She felt vaguely numb, but oddly alert, as if some primitive part of her had taken over her body and was holding the reins, guiding her. She took even, steady breaths, and
she put one foot in front of the other, and she kept moving. She was alive, and that was the important thing.

  “…my protection, and if I find that anyone has laid so much as a finger on her, I shall be most cross,” Darcy was saying. “Is that clear?”

  The men were all looking at her, except the ones who were bringing up the rear with her trunk, and they had a hungry look in their eyes that she didn’t like at all.

  She looked down at her feet so as not to have to see that look.

  “She will be off the ship as soon as I can manage it,” Darcy said. “And we will stop in port somewhere to find women, I promise.” He reached back for her, yanking her after him. He lowered his voice. “Miss Bennet, you are ruining everything. I need to get more opium, and now I have no idea when I will be able to. But I can’t very well tell the men to keep clear of you and not promise them some touch later on. Why, I ought to just kill you right now.”

  She let out a tiny squeak.

  He tugged on her. “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t.” He pointed. “We’re going down into a lifeboat and over into my ship across the way, do you see that?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.” He raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t thanked me.”

  “Thanked you, Mr. Darcy?”

  “For your life,” he said.

  She swallowed.

  “And don’t call me that.”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Darcy. Or any of that. I’m Captain Thorn to the men, only Captain most of the time. They don’t know who I am, that I have land in England. And I’d it to stay that way, if you don’t mind.”

  She nodded again.

  “Good. You can call me Captain, like all the others. Not that you’ll have much of a chance to speak to me, because you won’t be on my boat for very long. Don’t get comfortable.”

  She blinked hard, suddenly fighting tears again. It was odd. The sight of all the dead men on the ship didn’t cause her to feel this way, but a harsh word from Darcy, and she was about to sob. Damn the man.

  And she wasn’t going to thank him for her life, not at all.

  He was awful, really awful.

  She allowed him to lead her across the deck and to help her into one of the lifeboats. From there, it was as he said. They were lowered down onto the choppy sea. She felt dizzy and a bit scared. There was nothing between them and the water. The salty air whipped around them, tearing at her hair, which had been put into a nice braid by Mrs. Graham that morning. She didn’t have a maid on board—couldn’t have one, no maids to be spared. The woman who had waited on her in India was Indian, and it wasn’t as if she would go back to England with her.