“Huh.Well after today, nothing from you will surprise me anymore.Hiding women in your townhouse…andtelling me nothing about the matter.I’d tell you ifIhid a woman in a townhouse.”
Darcy rolled his eyes.But his cousin had earned the opportunity to needle him.“You are the one who always goes on about the importance of family, didn’t think you’d like being put in opposition to Lechery.”
General Fitzwilliam snorted.“Of course I would, and you ought have known I would — is she secretly your father’s bastard?”
“What?”Darcy’s voice came out at a slightly high-pitched screech.“Who?No!Good god,no.No, no, no.What dark crevice of your mind spews forth such ideas?”
“Well then why aren’t you marrying her immediately?— doesshehave a secret husband?”
“No!”Then Darcy paused for a moment with a ridiculous and silly feeling of anxiety.DidElizabeth have a secret husband somewhere?
And then Darcy laughed at the absurdity of the idea.“Stop with this — it should be clear to you.It is a matter of honor, she is dependent on me.She came to me for safety, and for protection, and she is now banished from England and her family, perhaps forever.I can’t… she refused me once, I can’t use her desperate situation, what gratitude she feels for me now to manipulate her into accepting me.I honor Elizabeth too much for that.”
General Fitzwilliam did not reply, but from the manner with which he pulled a match out, struck it on the railing, and relit his cigar, Darcy perceived his cousin rather thought he was an idiot for these compunctions.
But he was who he was, and Darcy would never seek to take advantage of the situation that had placed Elizabeth under his protection.That was what being a gentleman worthy of hermeant.Besides… “I don’t want her gratitude, I want her love.”
General Fitzwilliam complacently puffed on his cigar, blowing out bursts of smoke that were blown away immediately.“Don’t drag things out so long that you annoy her,shedeserves better than that.”
The two continued there, on the deck of the softly rocking ship, accompanied by the slapping of the waves against the ship’s sides, and the endless creaking of the wooden beams.The starry infinite sky high above them.
And they talked of other things, as old friends will.
Early the next morning their ship floated into the modest — by comparison with London, or Liverpool — but busy harbor of Calais.An ancient city, with long connection to England.Calais had been an important possession of the crown for centuries, and it remained in good English hands long after everything else that had been united to the crown of England in France had been lost during the Hundred Years War.
And then Queen Mary lost the city.Or King Philip II of Spain, if one was more accurate, and not intent upon being a wag about the deficiencies of female rulers.
A city of famed business importance, and the closest on the Continent to the island of Britannia.
Calais also was a city Darcy had never visited.When he was a young man inclined to travel, England had already entered its two decades of war — hopefully at a permanentfinis— with France.Instead he visited the capitals of German speaking principalities during his Grand Tour, Berlin, Potsdam, Hamburg, and of course the King’s possession of Hannover.And then Vienna, hearing Herr Beethoven perform upon the piano, before the next day watching a performance of Mozart’sDon Juanand later that day hearing one of Handel’s fine symphonies — though Handel could be heard easily enough still in London.
He’d gone to the supposed wilds of the Habsburg crown’s Magyar holdings, which despite the prevalence of impressively large mustaches and the paranoia of the Turk to the south were mostly civilized.
Darcy travelled even further to the east, and he visited in winter the Russian capital of Moscow.Thathad been a foolish idea of his.Darcy thought he could stand any cold comfortably, coming from the cold hills of Derbyshire.After those two lovely, if almost frostbitten months, he was not in theslightestsurprised when Napoleon’s army froze to death after capturing the city several years later.The company and conversation had been excellent, though the Russian mind tended towards the dourness demanded by the weather.
Darcy had only been called back to England by the letter which reached him, too late, with news of his father’s illness.
He had not had opportunity, or more accurately, inclination, to travel from England since gaining the estate.As he walked down the rough gangplank with Elizabeth’s arm nestled in his, he smiled to see her delightedly glance around and around at every sight in the harbor.
Elizabeth grinned with every fragment of conversation in French that came to them.
He would have the opportunity to explore a new, and greatly famed, country with Elizabeth at his side.
When they left the ship, they first went to the customs house, which was thick with the scent of a poorly ventilated fire and musty books.There was a difficulty there.The French clerk who managed the office was not impressed with the old passport of Darcy’s issued by the Foreign Office a decade ago.Darcy considered that rather ironic, as the British passport was written in French, and thus perfectly legible to the man.
“No description of the bearer, no information about your conditions or employment — no reference to the lady.No, no, no.This will not do.”
“I assure you, we are respectable British travelers,” Darcy replied rather annoyed with the man.Elizabeth frowned worriedly.
On the other hand Major Williams, who General Fitzwilliam had sent with them to ensure any problems were smoothed over, grinned.
“You ought to have applied for a proper passport from our embassy in London,” the Frenchman said with moderate outrage.He was a small bald man, with a wispy fringe of hair and dried out skin.“How can I know fromthisthat you are not subversives, revolutionaries,symathetiquesof theempereur!No, no, no!A proper passport.Why did you not go to the embassy in London and get a proper passport?Go back and get one!— Where are your servants?All most irregular.”
Major Williams patted the clerkon his shoulder, the man rather stiffly and prissily drew back from him.The officer said in French that was considerably worse accented than Darcy’s own.“Friend, friend.I vouch for them, as an officer of His Majesty.We aren’t bringing over sympathetics… uh… what is the word I want… uh…”
“Subversives?Revolutionaries?Radicals?Jacobins?”Darcy offered in French to General Fitzwilliam’s aide.
The young man snapped his fingers.“Exactly.”
