“Are you dead?”
Darcy made a face and set his empty glass aside. “I am perfectly well.”
“I am not so sure about that, but if you mean to survive the night, I will join you. You haven’t drunk the whole bottle yet, have you?”
“Not even a quarter.”
“Splendid. That is the last of that lot. I was hoping you might have left me a few drops.” Reginald sank into an opposite chair. “I even brought my own glass,” he pronounced with a satisfied grin. “Thought I would find you like this.”
Darcy hitched forward and filled his cousin’s glass. Reginald sighed, as if all the long day’s trials had been bound up in his chest, then lifted his drink to his nose to sample the bouquet. “Well, of all the ways I could have lost my brother, that was not the one I expected.”
Darcy grunted in agreement as he gazed down into the amber depths of his own newly filled glass.
“Are you well, Darcy?”
He blinked into the darkness of the far corner of the room. “‘Well?’ That state of being is not in the realm I am familiar with now.”
Reginald cleared his throat. “Her Ladyship has given me strict instructions not to try to comfort you. So, you will hear nothing from me about how you will forget and move on, or find someone else better suited to you, or be happy someday that things have turned out as they have.”
“I just heard it.”
“I mean nothing more. Look, I know we saw things a little differently, but there is nothing else to be done now. If you wish to talk about anything or… anyone…”
Darcy laughed bitterly. “What shall I say?”
Reginald shrugged. “Anything, I suppose. I have lost my brother again, but you lost that and more.”
“And you want to know what it is like? Very well, I will tell you.” Darcy leaned forward and braced his hands on his knees. “Do you remember when we were boys, and our fathers took us on our first train ride to the coast?”
“Fondly. Your father took us up to see the engine.”
“Do you recall how the engineer allowed us to sit inside, and you got to pull the great whistle?”
“Of course. Probably the most thrilling moment of my life up till then.”
“We thought we could do anything. When we took our hunt lessons, we were charging through the battlefront with Old Wellington. We could outrun a bullet, leap any wall, and shatter enemy swords with our sticks.”
Reginald sat back with a nostalgic smile. “I remember.”
“Do you also remember just after I graduated Cambridge, when you and Richard and I each threw a sack on our backs and set out for almost a month, exploring Northumberland the Peaks?”
“I thought we would never get you down from those rocks,” the earl mused. “Every vantage point, you had to climb, and then you just sat there overlooking it all like an overgrown Buddha. For a man who never took risks, you certainly did on that trip.”
“It was like being on top of the world. I could look down and see everything, laid out and open before my eyes. I remember thinking, ‘This must be what it is like to fly.’”
“Go on,” Reginald prompted when Darcy’s gaze drifted to the floor, and he fell silent for a moment.
“Every moment I spent with Elizabeth,” Darcy sighed, “was even better. It is not enough to say I had wings. Does not go far enough to compare it with the feeling of invincibility. I was in another world. Sometimes, it was like I could look down again on this petty sphere, with all its cares and soils, and wonder why I ever bothered about any of it. Just to hold her in my arms was like grasping the tail of an eagle and holding fast for the ride, letting it soar higher and higher each day, with never any thought that it could be shot down.”
Darcy brushed his lip with his finger and nodded slowly. “You ask what it is like? What I am feeling? I feel as if she has left me up there in the cold heavens. As if I am still floating above the clouds, but alone now, wondering where the one who lifted me there has gone. And the trouble is… I do not know how to get down.”
The North Atlantic
“Areyounothungry?”Richard lifted his plate, nearly empty now, and gestured as if he would go fill one for her with something from the ship’s board.
Elizabeth glanced at her own sparse pickings and held up a hand. “No, thank you. Being on a ship is not entirely agreeing with me.”
“Oh, of course. A lady’s delicate constitution. Yes, I quite understand. Shall I call for the ship’s doctor? He may be able to suggest something to give you some relief.”
