Elizabeth stopped her horse and looked around. Very strange.
The horse was not one she had seen in the Darcy stables, nor did it look like that of a farmer. A doctor, perhaps, or a hired horse? The hair along the back of her neck prickled, and she gave the clearing a wide berth as she walked on. No doubt she would have continued, unseeing and content to mind her own affairs, but then she heard a woman’s giggle. A man’s laughter joined in, and then in a flash of colour, the couple came into view.
The man reached for the reins of his horse, but as soon as he took them down, the woman caught him by the neck from behind, then drew him down for a long, passionate kiss. He obliged, but eventually pushed her back, with many urgent caresses and what appeared to be a lover’s promise of a swift return. He mounted his horse and trotted down the valley, towards Lambton, but the woman remained. She watched after the retreating rider for a moment, then as she was turning away, her eyes found Elizabeth.
Elizabeth swallowed. It was Georgiana Darcy.
Johannesburg, South Africa
Theworstpartaboutthe train ride was the heat. Darcy mopped the back of his neck again with his handkerchief. He tried to put his head close to the window for a bit of fresher air, but anything wafting into the car was just as hot and stale as the air already inside. If this was only a sampling of the climate, and he not even carrying supplies or fighting, Darcy developed a new appreciation and pity for the soldiers encamped there.
Jabu’s anxiety notwithstanding, they arrived safely, and Darcy was able to secure lodgings and the direction for certain persons in charge. The yard at the base was a perfect sea of ordered confusion. Mules carted massive bales of hay, sandbags and munitions were piled higher than Darcy's head, and khaki uniforms crawled through the midst of it all.
Darcy took a moment to gain his bearings and was grateful for Jabu. The Zulu man indicated with his head which direction Darcy should go. Nearly a hundred men in uniform milled about, some watching Darcy in suspicion and others in mere idle curiosity—the half-interest of one who is too jaded or too weary to rouse himself.
“You wish to speak with important man, yes?” Jabu asked.
Darcy cast an eye about the indolent soldiers. They might be more willing to tell what their superiors would not, but just now, in the heat of the day and with flies buzzing around most of their heads, they did not appear willing to talk at all. “Yes,” Darcy decided, “important man.”
The general’s aide was reluctant to admit him, but at last, he conceded to permit Darcy to wait. Over an hour, he sat and stood by turns, occasionally tugging at his collar where the sweat tickled his neck. A lieutenant colonel would do, he decided, or even an infantryman; anyone who could pass his questions farther up the chain of command. The key was a man with a bit of sympathy for the family.
And so, when a stiff-looking older man with heavy, pensive eyes, thin jowls, and a chest full of gold braid came out, Darcy at first assumed the man was not seeking him. However, he came directly forward, extending his hand in an unassuming greeting. “Sir Thomas Kelly-Kenny, and you are Mr Darcy, I take it?”
Darcy was nearly speechless. The Lieutenant-General, commander of the 6th Division of the South African field force! Trying to decide whether such notice from the fourth highest-ranked officer in the country was a gift or a curse, Darcy shook his hand and followed the lieutenant general into his office. “Thank you for seeing me, General. I came on a matter of business—an investment about which I wish to speak to you.”
“Yes, I have heard about your ‘businesses,’” the general replied with a shake of his head. “You have been talking to quite a few people since you arrived in Cape Town, Mr Darcy.”
“You have heard of me?” Darcy asked, a gloom already gathering in the back of his mind.
“You’ve been watched since you set foot on South-African soil. A man dressed as you? Asking questions? Yes, I know all about you. Cousin of Colonel Fitzwilliam, are you?” The general nodded and then clicked his tongue. “Bloody shame, that.”
Darcy stepped forward. “He was listed as missing in action four months ago, and we can learn nothing more. The earl desires better information regarding his own brother.”
“Matlock can desire all he likes, but I will not fabricate information to please him,” Kelly-Kenny replied with a bit of amused indignation. “I will give the best I know, but I doubt it shall satisfy.”
Darcy deliberately softened his manner and stepped back. “Then you are familiar with my cousin?”
The general shook his head again. “No, but when I heard a wealthy gentleman from England had arrived and was passing out coin asking after that name, I did a bit of digging. Colonel Richard Andrew Fitzwilliam of the 4th Battalion of the Derbyshires, captured last June in the ambush at Roodewal.”
“Captured—you are sure of it? What happened?”
The general’s mouth pinched in an uncomfortable grimace. “At dusk on the 4th, the Regiment arrived and pitched their camp in the lee of a string of kopjes. Owing to the darkness, they could not do much in the way of reconnoitring. Though the commanding officers were warned by some of the natives that Boers had been espied in the vicinity, they did not heed. The pickets, which had been posted on a range of kopjes north of the camp, were strengthened, and some few shots fired at distant snipers. Then the whole of the regiment went to bed. Before dawn, they were under musket fire, and even as the men turned out with their rifles, they dropped. A hundred forty or more were killed that night, with some four hundred twenty taken prisoners. Only six escaped.”
“And where were the prisoners taken?”
The general frowned, and a look of remorse played over his weathered features. “Here. We liberated all the survivors when Botha surrendered Pretoria. I am very sorry, Mr Darcy.”
Darcy felt something in his spirit shatter, and his spine turned to water. It was more out of numbness than denial when he asked—“He was not discovered alive?”
“Some eighty men were said to have died of their wounds, or of sleeping sickness. All buried by now, thank heaven.”
Darcy preserved his dignity enough to keep from clutching his head in his hands, but he was still dazed, broken, when he asked, “Is there a way I could speak with any of his compatriots?”
“The Derbyshires are presently encamped on the Vaal, still pursuing Botha. I wish I could be of more help, Mr Darcy.”
He forced himself to breathe, to focus his vision, and to accept… to believe at last. “No, General, you have been most helpful. I did not expect such a frank reply, and I am grateful for your time, at least.”
Kenny-Kelly extended his hand once more. “Please convey my regrets to the earl. It is an awful duty, reporting to the family that a man has been lost.”
