“Good Lord,” Darcy breathed.
“Aye, we prayed that often. My... friend, I suppose, for despite his personal beliefs I found him to be an honourable chap and a reasonable man, too—we shared more drinks than I ought to confess. He desired me to infiltrate the guard and effect the release of his wife Annie and his four children. To cut a long story excruciatingly short, I was successful, but I was seen and fired upon. They called me by name, Darcy…. and a British corporal died in the escape. After that, I could not go back to my own ranks unless I bore my benefactor’s head on a platter.” He leaned his brow on his hand. “A thing I refused to do.”
“So... where the devil have you been? All these months!”
“Skipping across Africa, more often than not begging help from traders and smugglers and trying to stay ahead of any British soldiers.”
“And you could not have found a way to send word? We thought you dead. I even went to Pretoria looking for you!”
Richard lifted his head. “You did? Of course, you did. I oughtn’t to be surprised. That is why, Darcy—if you ever think to ask me why I trust you with my life, or withhers—”
“Before we speak of that,” Darcy interrupted with a pained grimace, “tell me how you got out of the country.”
“Oh, as to that, the man I spoke of proved a resourceful ally. He tasked a commando in his forces with my safe extradition from South Africa. He saw me as far as Victoria Falls, and I was only shot at half a dozen times by my own countrymen.” He snorted. “I tell you, Darcy, nothing will dishearten you like that. A man starts to question everything.”
“Such as?”
Richard covered his mouth and heaved a broken sigh. “Do you know how long the horses last there? Within a month, most of them are dead. Every bloody one of those noble animals I uprooted from the States lies somewhere out on the Transvaal, little more than bleached bones now. You think that does not crush a man, seeing those poor beasts suffer and knowing you were the cause of it? Try watching soldiers in your company, mere boys, most of them, sweating out the last of their life’s strength in a delusional nightmare with no possible cure. Or seeing the man beside you drop mid-sentence with a sniper’s bullet in his back. All for a strip of land that happens to be beneficial for trade! It is enough to make an anarchist out of the most loyal patriot.”
Darcy pursed his lips. “Richard, you should not excite yourself overmuch just now.”
“Excite myself! These sentiments are hardly fresh,” he retorted bitterly. “I’ve done with the Army, with Britain and her Empire, with the whole blasted world. I’d like nothing better than to catch a steamer to Greenland and take up whale fishing or disappear into the Nordic frontier with a pack of sledge dogs. Someplace I will never be seen again. It is just... I suppose I have Elizabeth to think of. I wonder if she would care for Switzerland.”
Darcy’s gaze dropped to the floor, and he raked fingers into his hair. “Richard, I cannot advise—”
“You must have got to know her by now. Bully of a girl, isn’t she?”
Darcy’s voice refused to cooperate. He opened his mouth and only succeeded in blinking at the whiteness of the window as his eyes blurred, and his throat ran hot and useless.
“Did she... did she tell you how we met? A bit of her story?”
Darcy groaned out an approximation of a response and managed to nod. “Everything.”
Richard’s face brightened in relief. “I know it is strange, marrying a girl in a moment like that, but I figured I would never regret it. Anyway, I honestly thought she would do well enough after I left. She told me a bit earlier, about why she had to leave... Do you know, she said she wrote to me, but I never got the letter. They must have opened it after I had to run—hoping to find me that way, I suppose.”
Darcy nodded silently. Yes, the Army would have tried to track Richard by learning where his wife was.
“I wish I had seen the letter!” Richard continued. “The things that poor girl has suffered! I think I must have dropped off in the midst, so I suppose I shall have to ask her again. Did she tell you any of that?”
“I—I know all about her.” Even how soft she was in his arms, the way her lips seemed formed for his own. How she knew his most private of thoughts, how she could light up a room with one of her saucy quips or give rest to a stricken soul with the barest caress.
“You probably know my wife better than I do.” Richard craned his neck as if to stretch it, then gazed up at the ceiling. “It won’t be an easy life for her,” he confessed soberly. “She cannot go back to America, and I am not safe anywhere in the Empire. Tell me honestly, Darcy. Can she do it? What is your feeling on the matter? You know, a wife was the last complication I expected, but I cannot very well leave her. And to be perfectly honest... well, a man wants a woman to cradle his head from time to time, and she will make a damn fine wife. By-the-by, did you ever marry Anne?”
Darcy shook his head, and his voice emerged as a rough, fragile thing. “Richard, these questions of yours—I am not qualified to answer them.”
“But you will help me, won’t you? Before you run to my brother and it becomes a family brouhaha, I mean. Let me quietly kiss my mother and board a train for the coast before anyone comes looking for me!”
“What, and send for Elizabeth when you have settled?” Darcy snapped in agitation.
“No, I rather hoped she would come with me. It only makes sense, after all. You all have sheltered her long enough, and I am grateful for it, but—”
Darcy jerked from his chair and paced away. “You can barely sit up in your bed! Heaven only knows if any of what you are telling me is true, or the result of some fevered hallucination.”
Richard’s countenance flashed dismay, and his lip curled. “Doesthislook like a hallucination?” he barked, stabbing a finger at the bandaged orb where his left eye had once been. “What about this?” He jerked down the front of his nightshirt, exposing more shrapnel scars, slashes that looked like razor cuts, and one gnarled pit in his shoulder. “That is an English bullet there, Darcy. Still buried under my collarbone, and it aches like the devil whenever the rain comes. Does that look like a hallucination to you?”
“You are only proving my point. You are so battered in body and spirit I would not trust you to walk across the house, let alone board a ship. You expect me to help you strike out on your own? Takeheroff on some misadventure on the far side of the globe, where neither of you will ever be seen or heard from again? Insupportable!”
“I asked you to help save my life, Darcy. Thought that might mean something to you.”
