His cousin looked at Darcy with a serious pursed frown.
“That is the guilt that pains me. I wanted her — I love her, and I hurt her. In essence I assaulted her, and—”
“Did she refuse her bed?”
“What choice did she have? We were married.”
“The choice to fight. She had a choice, no matter how trapped she felt by the situation, to notmarry you.”
“If a man puts a gun to the head of a woman and says to her that she must—”
“Not another word.”
The wood in the fireplace crackled, the soft footsteps of a servant walking past in the hall, Darcy’s own breathing.
With a terribly loud glass on glass clang, Colonel Fitzwilliam poured himself a glass of brandy, his hands almost trembling.
He threw back the whole thing without a single cough. “I hate when I remember that day. The way that poor brown woman’s eyes looked. The bruises on her face. And Colonel Douglas insisted that we could not punish the men responsible. She was just a Hindoo. I’d only been with the regiment for two weeks, and I didn’t yet understand the way things had to be done when we were outside of England.”
“That is not—”
“That is how it always is! That is what being a soldier, what the whole thing means. And the colonel wasright. I have always tried to do what I can to minimize such atrocities, I makesure my men have ample opportunities to buy the favors of the women wherever we are campaigning. And I’ve hung one or two men to keep discipline — military necessity approves when we keep the natural hatred of the natives as small as we can manage. But I’ve once or twice needed to let a man ‘scape from any punishment, because that is what it means to be a soldier, whose duty is to see that his king and his countrywin. Don’t pretend,do not pretendthat marrying a woman and then taking her to bed, when she would have suffered nothing worse than having people say mean things about her is anything like… like forcing a woman.”
“I did wrong. And if you do not punish such men, you do wrong.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam shrugged insouciantly and lifted his refilled tumbler nice and high. “To pretty principles. If only they could prevent mutiny, and to a world where only the worthless soldiers rape, and never the capable or popular ones. At least when I was in Spain everyone thought we ought to keep a closer reign on ourselves as this was in Europe, and I was the colonel whose distaste for such behavior was widely known, instead of a freshly purchased captain.”
“Such things cannot be so common. Not amongst our men.”
“Common? They are notcommon. But certainly not unknown.” Colonel Fitzwilliam added, “That bastard Douglas is now a general without employment who bought himself a fine estate with his share of the booty from the campaigns in India. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t rape a woman on his own.” Poured himself more and took a decently sized swallow. “God damned bastard. Douglas knew very well that the peasants in the area were almost all Mohammadians. He just liked to call them Hindoos to sneer.”
There was not a great deal to say.
“I don’t think a month has gone by when I don’t remember that woman’s bruised and bleeding face. Her brother demanding that we give satisfaction and punish the one who'd raped his sister and made the family honor worthless. Colonel Douglas had him beat until he went away. I think they shattered his wrist.”
“What happened to her?”
Colonel Fitzwilliam took another drink of brandy. “Why do you think I’d have any notion? They came to demand satisfaction while we organized ourselves for the morning march. The man was beaten with sticks, and then the regiment marched off.”
A sort of rage at that unnamed soldier who had done this to this poor woman. A rage even against his cousin who in the end had stood aside and let it happen filled Darcy’s soul. “And the man who did it to her?”
“Men. There were a half dozen.”
“They were never punished?”
The officer shrugged. “When I joined my current regiment, one had died in battle, one had died from disease, another had been honorably discharged with military pension at the end of his term of service, and the other two were still enlisted.”
The two were quiet.
Darcy drank more, Colonel Fitzwilliam drank more. They absentmindedly finished the pineapple and half the cheeses and meats that had been set out.
“Jove,” Colonel Fitzwilliam exclaimed suddenly. “Nearly as dull as drinking by yourself. Tell me more about this quarrel you had with your woman.”
“With my woman?” Darcy said with a small smile.
“The soldierly, campaigning word for a wife.”
“Ah. I… I suppose I thought I had made a fair trade toher. My position for her person and conversation… and then I learned I had paid her in false coin.”
