Darcy clenched his fists, his shoulders bunched and a hundred protestations and accusations boiling in his breast. “More than you will ever understand, but helping you leave…” He shook his head and turned around, crossing his arms. “There must be another way.”
“There is, if you happen to be good friends with King Edward. No? Then for God’s sake, man, do me this one last service. Or if you will not do it for me, for all the old days between us, do it forher.”
Darcy looked over his shoulder. “You mistake me.Sheis the reason for my refusal.”
“Then you are a witless pig. I thought better of you, Darcy. I looked for you to be the one man I could trust, who might think of my best interests instead of his own.”
“And you think dragging a woman you scarcely know around the world, always hiding and living in hardship, subjecting her to the worst kind of uncertainty and loneliness, the best answer?”
“I would protect her,” Richard muttered defensively. “And besides, she is tougher than you know.”
Darcy rounded on his cousin and set his fists on the edge of the bed, staring down into the face of a man dearer to him than life. “I knowpreciselyhow strong she is. And I know it would not beyouprotectingher, but the reverse. You have no business asking it of her!”
“What do you expect me to do? Leave her here? A fine thing that would be!”
Darcy stood back. He was panting, his blood coursing hot through his limbs, and, unfortunately, his tongue. “What were you going to do if we had never found you? Disappear forever, with no one the wiser? You did not mean to look for your wife, I warrant.”
Richard frowned. “No, but I did not know she was in trouble.”
“She was not, until you overturned her life again and started blabbering about dragging her off to parts unknown. Better for her if you had remained dead.”
Richard’s face purpled, and an obvious wave of enraged dizziness overcame him. Darcy would have felt wretched for it… except that he was already on his way out, and the door was slamming behind him.
Chapter 46
“Youneedtospeakto your brother!”
The earl’s head snapped up from his desk as Darcy barged unceremoniously into his study. “Darcy! You nearly gave me a heart seizure. What is this?”
Darcy set his hands on his hips and screwed his mouth into something more civil than the oaths he longed to spit out. “Richard. You need to talk some sense into him before I render him unconscious all over again!”
The earl straightened in concern. “What, is he delusional again? Mother said something about that.”
“I cannot decide. He seems perfectly lucid, but he keeps rambling on about the army hunting him. It may be true, it may not, but in such a state as he is in, I cannot determine what is what.”
“Wait... the army hunting him? Are you certain he was not talking in his sleep?”
“Not this time.” Darcy stomped to the window and set his knuckles on the framing, peering intently through the glass. “He wants me to smuggle him to the coast so he can board a ship for Greenland. Worse, he means to take Elizabeth with him!”
“What? He is mad!”
“As a hatter. He says the army, his own fellow soldiers, chased him across Africa and he has the bullet holes to prove it. He says he never intended to be found and plans to disappear for good the moment you look the other way.”
Reginald scoffed. “Ludicrous. When I sat with him earlier, he was still drooling from the morphine and could not make his toes point the same direction.”
“He is not so now.”
The earl paced around his desk, then stopped and looked incredulously at Darcy. “Is he in earnest?”
Darcy shook his head helplessly. “He seems to be.”
“Well... as you say, it may be true, and it may not be, but how can this have come on so suddenly? He cannot walk ten paces without buckling over.”
“That is what I said, but the surgeon informs me his fever is clearing rapidly, now that he’s had proper care and a bit of rest. He grows stronger and more alert by the hour. What happens tomorrow when he becomes more restless? Or the next day when he starts feeling like his old self? Are we simply to let him go?”
Reginald’s brow clouded. “If his life truly is in danger, I do not see how we can stop him. He is a grown man.”
“He is your brother! You would let him vanish from the face of the earth?”
