Page 83 of Homeless

Yet, here it was. Not burned, just stolen, and forgot, and shelved wrong, and here it was, on a table under his fingertips with a fly buzzing around it.

“Then we have it,” he murmured, still so much in awe that he had no recollection of whether he was repeating himself. “Better even than the case file Jennings stole. This is the document the case file was meant to prove.”

“Which is worth precisely what the man who receives it decides it is worth. And no office in this town can decide anything.”

“They will not let me just take this, though. A copy at best. What can we do with it?”

“We put it where it cannot be lost again, and we make certain it goes to the one man who can act on it before the year is out.” She turned back to the clerk.

The clerk shook his head immediately when she started asking more questions. Her speech had sped up, the fire back in her voice and half a spark returned to her eye as she bartered, haggled, possibly threatened and probably lied. Bit by bit, she appeared to wear him down, as the clerk started shaking his head less and glancing towards Darcy more.

Elizabeth's courtesy had quickened into boldness. She was not asking any longer. She was informing the clerk what he was to do and how quickly he was to do it. And finally, after naming commissioners and officials, she gave instructions concerning a name that straightened the clerk's spine — Captain Ferrers, the liaison officer, the Englishman with the strings to pull at home. The man who had told them, kindly, that everything they had done and meant to do was not only futile but foolish.

Finally, the clerk reached for his pen, drew out a fresh sheet of paper, and began scratching ink over the surface.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting it out of his hands before he forgets it exists.” She did not stop watching the man write. “A certified original in a drawer in Vitoria is liable to burn in the next fire, or be shelved under the wrong year or confused with the wine merchant list. It cannot be lost again. So, I have told him it must be entered into the record as received, sealed, and forwarded under his hand to the British liaison, who has standing to carry it home. I have made it his responsibility. His name is on it now. If it goes missing, it goes missing from his desk, and a British officer will ask him why.”

“And he agreed to that?”

“He agreed to that because I told him we are friends with the liaison officer ourselves, a man in authority who will want to know who was helpful to his countrymen. Which is true. And because I frightened him a little, which is also true, and cheaper.” She drew a shaky breath as her hands tapped nervously on the counter. “It is the best I can do. It is probably not enough.”

“It sounds a great deal like enough. The thing exists. It is certified. It is going to the man who can press it —”

“It is going into a channel, Fitzwilliam.” She turned on him then, and it was the first full look she had given him all day.

“Do you understand what a channel is? It is a slow river with a great many places to sink. It goes first to Ferrers, because Ferrers has the connections and the resources to put this into diplomatic hands and send it upstream from us.”

“Do we not still need to pass this through the commissioner’s hands?”

“No, because this is the original. No commissioner has the power authenticate or deny it. But you are a British subject with a debt the Spanish crown has sworn it does not owe. You may stand in Madrid until you rot, waving that seal, and no Spanish court will force its own king to honour a thing he has disavowed. A subject cannot compel a crown. But a government can compel another government. So the proof must reach a man at the Foreign Office, and he must decide your debt is worth England's trouble, and take it up as England's business — one kingdom telling another that it expects the debts owed to its people to be paid. And if he does that — if he leans on Madrid, and keeps leaning, until refusing costs Spain more in favour and standing than the money ever would — then Madrid pays. But only because London made it dearer to refuse than to yield.”

His heart was kicking randomly — in one instant, awed and awash in gratitude that an interminable wall had been suddenly removed from his path, and in the next, mortified that she was the one to whom he owed his salvation.

“I have it from… from an authority connected to the Foreign Office that London does, indeed, take these matters seriously. Elizabeth, you… you may have saved —”

“I have saved nothing. Not half of it will take place before the day your mortgage falls due. I did all that could be done, but it is not fast enough, and it was never going to be, not even if you had found this two and a half months ago when you first came to Spain. I knew it before I opened my mouth, and I did it anyway, because the alternative was to leave the only proof of your father's loan rotting in that room.”

Cold washed through him again, and it mingled with the sick twisting of his stomach whenever she refused to look at him. “Then… I am still ruined.”

She glanced up at him, but only briefly, and her eyes fell away as her lips thinned into some approximation of a smile. “Not if you hurry home and make yourself son-in-law to Lord Marchwood in time to appease your bank. All need not be lost.”

Getting out of Vitoria took the rest of the morning and most of what remained of Elizabeth’s patience.

They went straight to Captain Ferrers first. He was politely astonished when Darcy explained what they would be asking of him, swore he would see it done, and wished them safe passage on their journey home.

And then, his gaze passing from one of them to the other, he asked if they were well.

Elizabeth had been holding herself stiffly since dawn, but she blinked in surprise when the captain noticed. Indeed, she was not well. Her head throbbed from too much wine, her stomach was still knotted after their argument, her back and legs ached from… she refused to acknowledge from what… and walking inflamed the tenderness in certain parts of her body that she would be hanged before she would confess.

Darcy looked little better, save for the bit about walking making him sore. Twice this morning, she had caught him kneading his temples, and once, he had clutched his stomach as if last night’s sour wine still nauseated him.

“Perfectly well,” Darcy answered the captain. “We leave Vitoria within the hour.”

Ferrers glanced once more at Elizabeth, and his brow furrowed as his eyes took in the dutifully preserved space between her body and Darcy’s. “Forgive me. It is only that Mrs Darcy appears… somewhat diminished today. Much travel, especially in the heat of summer, can be a burden on a lady’s constitution. You would not be the first of our countrymen to suffer illness in this part of the world.”

“It was only some bad wine I had last night,” Elizabeth said promptly. “Nothing a proper meal and a bit of rest will not set right, but Mr Darcy is correct that we cannot afford to remain in Vitoria. I mean to wear my bonnet on the road and drink as often as the mules do, and I shall be perfectly well by tomorrow.”