Chapter 9 #2
Milton sighed. “Poor child. You should know by now that Darcy’s idea of devotion is reducing paperwork by one quarter.”
Darcy rose when breakfast concluded, bending to kiss Georgiana’s cheek as he passed her chair. “I will return in time for dinner. I have an errand to run first.”
She caught his sleeve before he could step away. “Not a dangerous errand?”
“In London? The danger will consist chiefly of mud, bad paving, and excessive politeness.”
“That is not amusing.”
“No,” Darcy said, smiling faintly. “But I must laugh to give strength to courage.”
Georgiana studied him as though deciding whether this was acceptable, then released his sleeve. “Do not be late.”
“I shall endeavor not to offend your sense of punctuality.”
A short time later, Darcy left Matlock House on foot.
The rain had stopped for the moment, and a thin, uncertain brightness filtered through the clouds.
It seemed foolish to waste such rare clemency upon a carriage, particularly when London streets had become so congested with repairs, deliveries, and the endless aftermath of flooding.
He had several errands in mind: a brief inspection of Darcy House, a visit to the solicitor handling its lease, and then, if the day permitted, a call at Mr. Gardiner’s warehouses.
That last errand drew his thoughts most strongly.
Edward Gardiner had once offered him grace when Darcy possessed neither money nor pride enough to ask for it properly.
The debt had been repaid in coin long ago, but Darcy had learned that some obligations outlived ledgers.
If the floods had damaged Gardiner’s business, then at the very least Darcy could offer what assistance or influence he possessed.
It might amount to very little. A militia colonel with a recovering estate and dwindling funds was not precisely a powerful patron.
Still, he owed the man the courtesy of trying.
The distance from Grosvenor Square to Gracechurch Street was not insignificant, but Darcy found the walk preferable to the confinement of a carriage.
The rain had ceased for the first time in what felt like weeks, leaving behind a pale, watery light that gleamed upon the paving stones and dripped from eaves into already overflowing gutters.
London smelled of damp brick, coal smoke, horses, and river mud.
As he walked eastward, that last scent grew stronger.
At first, the evidence of flooding appeared only in small signs: a line of silt gathered against the base of a wall, straw and rubbish caught in an iron railing, a shopkeeper sweeping brown water from beneath his threshold.
But the closer Darcy drew to the river, the more visible the destruction became.
Several cellars stood open to the street while men carried out ruined crates and waterlogged ledgers.
A woman in a soaked apron scolded two boys attempting to salvage warped planks from a heap of debris.
Near one narrow lane, three laborers argued over a cart piled high with spoiled cloth that sagged under its own weight.
Darcy slowed more than once, struck by the scale of it.
Lord Matlock had spoken of merchants being injured by the flood, but seeing the damage gave the words weight.
He found the warehouses after asking directions of a porter carrying a coil of rope over one shoulder.
The man pointed him toward a row of buildings near the river, where several doors stood open and men worked with the grim industry of those who had no time for despair.
The name Gardiner Pemberley improved, but slowly, and militia pay did not make wealthy men of its officers.
Yet if Gardiner’s business had truly been broken by the floods, Darcy knew he would do what he could. A letter to Matlock, perhaps. An introduction. A loan stretched beyond prudence. Something.
“Can I help you, sir?”
The voice came from behind a crate. A young man emerged carrying a ledger nearly half the size of his chest, spectacles slipping down his nose and ink staining two of his fingers. He looked more clerk than laborer, though his sleeves were rolled back and his waistcoat bore evidence of recent work.
Darcy inclined his head. “I am looking for Mr. Gardiner. It is a matter of business.”
The young man’s mouth fell open. For several seconds, he stared as though Darcy had asked to speak with Julius Caesar.
“I—Mr. Gardiner?” he stammered.
“Yes.”
The clerk swallowed, glanced toward the open door, then back at Darcy. “Wait here, sir.”
Before Darcy could ask another question, the young man set the ledger down upon a crate and hurried away.
Darcy frowned. That was not the reaction he had expected.
He had nearly decided to leave when the clerk returned, this time accompanied by an older gentleman whose plain dark coat and steady manner suggested neither merchant nor servant. The man’s face was lined with fatigue, but his eyes were sharp.
“Mr. Darcy?” the man asked.
Darcy turned fully toward him. “Yes. I fear there may have been some misunderstanding. I was seeking Mr. Edward Gardiner.”
The older gentleman lowered his head briefly. “I am sorry, Mr. Darcy. My name is Philips. I was Mr. Gardiner’s brother by marriage and have been assisting with his affairs. Mr. Gardiner perished in the floods.”
Darcy went still. The noises of the warehouse seemed to recede—the scrape of wood, distant voices, the drip of water from some unseen beam.
“Perished?” he repeated quietly.
Mr. Philips nodded. “He was caught near the warehouses when the waters rose.”
Darcy looked across the half-empty warehouse, and the loss before him changed shape. It was no longer merely a business injured by water. It was a dead man’s work, being sorted by those left behind.
“I am very sorry,” he said, and the inadequacy of the phrase struck him even as he spoke it. “Mr. Gardiner once showed me a kindness when I had little right to expect it. I came to see a debt settled.”
Something softened in Mr. Philips’s face, though sorrow remained. “That sounds like Edward.”
“His wife,” Darcy said after a moment. “Perhaps she—”
Mr. Philips closed his eyes briefly.
Darcy understood before the answer came.
“The shock of her husband’s death brought on her confinement too early. The child was born too small to survive, and Mrs. Gardiner passed soon after.”
Darcy felt the words physically. A good man drowned in the flood. His wife dead of the shock. An infant gone before life had properly begun.
“Were there other children?” he asked, his voice lower than before.
“Three.”
“Orphaned, then?”
“Yes.”
A cold, urgent anxiety rose in him. Three children, suddenly without parents.
A business injured. Servants frightened.
Legal affairs uncertain. He thought wildly of workhouses, of distant relations unwilling or unable to take them, of fortunes swallowed by water and creditors.
He had not the means to take in three children.
He could scarcely keep Pemberley’s accounts breathing.
Yet the thought of Gardiner’s children being left to charity after their father’s kindness to him felt intolerable.
“What will become of them?” Darcy asked. He could hear the desperation in his voice. “Is there family?”
Mr. Philips seemed to read more in the question than Darcy intended to reveal. “Yes. Their father’s sister is married to a gentleman with an estate in Hertfordshire. The children have already been sent there and will be cared for.”
Darcy closed his eyes.
Relief came so swiftly that he nearly swayed with it.
“Thank God.”
Mr. Philips regarded him with new attention. “You knew my brother-in-law well, then?”
“Not well.” Darcy reached inside his coat and withdrew the folded banknotes.
“But well enough to know he was a man of honor. Some years ago, after my father’s death, I found he was in a tremendous amount of debt.
One of those was due to Gardiner. At the time, I could not pay it.
Mr. Gardiner allowed the matter to rest, and though I later sent what I could, he wrote that I owed him nothing. I did not agree.”
He held out the notes.
Mr. Philips looked at them but did not take them. “If Edward told you the debt was forgiven, then he meant it.”
“I believe he did. But I would still prefer the children to have it.”
For a long moment, Mr. Philips did not answer.
His gaze moved over Darcy, taking in what most people of his own rank either overlooked or pretended not to see: the coat that was well-brushed but no longer new, the gloves mended neatly at one seam, the boots polished to disguise wear, the absence of the small extravagances expected in a man of fortune.
Darcy felt the scrutiny and disliked it, but he did not withdraw his hand.