Chapter 14
Benavente
“Mr. Darcy, when is Elizabeth returning? She’s been gone ever so long.
” Tentatively, Lydia approached Darcy as he sat on the ridge overlooking the bustling French camp.
Wisps of smoke still curled up from the burnt-out ruins of the monastery.
Once again he felt so useless. As master of Pemberley he had always been in control; here, he was but an encumbrance, forced to follow, unable to lead. It was a totally new experience.
“Your sister has gone with the Colonel and Don Mateo to meet with Wellington. They have already left to stay ahead of the French army, which has begun to move out.” To the south, he could see the dust raised by cavalry which was screening ahead of the army in order to prevent attacks by partisans.
“Is she alright? Was she—?” Lydia gripped his arm, her voice trailing off.
Eduardo, a partisan, had brought a message from Don Mateo that Miss Bennet—Senora Isabella, as they called her—had succeeded, that she knew of the plans for the army.
There was nothing more—how Miss Bennet had succeeded, he did not know.
What a frustrating, perplexing woman! At Netherfield he had been enamoured of her—a passing infatuation.
During the chase after Wickham and Georgiana’s rescue, he had been certain that she had been in cahoots with the cur and Mrs. Younge.
Walking the Camino de San Salvador, the ancient pilgrim’s trail from Oviedo, her hand in his as he assisted her across the rock-strewn path, the relief in her eyes when she could walk near him, free from the curse of thoughts—other memories pressing in on her—was so palpable it tore at his heart.
He could almost see himself making her an offer—his condescension, her gratitude certainly reward enough—despite her connections and the vulgarity displayed by her mother, and her sisters, Kitty and Lydia at the Netherfield ball.
Miss Lydia. Who now stood before him, her eyes red-rimmed from crying.
The young girl who had comforted Georgiana on the long trek over the mountains.
She was a different person. Yet, Miss Elizabeth was also a different person: how could he contemplate marriage with someone who had brazenly walked into a French army camp, accompanied only by a Spanish pimp, for the sole purpose of seducing a French colonel? Something made his heart lurch.
“I cannot say, Miss Lydia. Eduardo knew little himself.”
“Mr. Darcy, we are about to move out,” said Lieutenant Goulding.
Already Darcy could see the riflemen arranged in their marching order.
Petersen had returned from León, but not Donnelly and Simmonds who presumably were accompanying Richard and Don Mateo.
Darcy had heard the distinctive sound of rifle shots echoing up from the camp, but no more.
He wished to know, but without Richard’s presence as the senior officer, he had no place in the chain of command.
Once again, he felt superfluous, unnecessary—except to comfort Georgiana.
Some resentment arose within him, directed towards Lydia—but that, he knew, was grossly unfair.
The two girls could chatter on, deflect their worries by talking of fashion, of glimpsing the Prince Regent in Brighton, the novels they had borrowed from the circulating library.
Eduardo had explained that the route south would be hard, following the west bank of the River Esla, forced to cross the many tributaries of the river which flowed from the León Mountains, where the Cantabrian Mountains merged with the Galician Massif.
“The women, they are strong,” said Eduardo, “we should make good time. General Santoclides is moving east, and we meet up with him south of Benavente.” Eduardo crossed himself, then moved to take the lead. Darcy walked with Will Goulding.
“My mother wished me to marry Miss Elizabeth, but we wouldn’t suit.
We are friends; but I believe I am a little in awe of her,” Goulding said, his eyes scanning the hills which loomed above them as they descended a narrow ravine.
“She appears to the world so much in command. All of Meryton came to rely on her, for she always knew what would be for the best.”
“I met her only when I stayed at Netherfield,” replied Darcy. “Indeed, she seems very competent.”
“Yet, it is a mask she wears,” said Goulding.
“Perhaps she is the most vulnerable of us all, for she knows our futures, does she not? Surrounded by soldiers, knowing who will live, who dies, who is severely wounded, must be a great burden. To speak cheerfully to a man who she knows will lose a leg, and return to England reliant on the charity of the Parish—it would drive me mad.”
A whistle from Eduardo made the lieutenant scurry forward. There was a French patrol in the valley—they would be forced to climb yet another ridge to skirt around.
The march grew more arduous as the party scrambled up the steep, rocky incline, boots slipping against loose shale and limbs aching from exhaustion.
Darcy, now accustomed to such relentless physical strain, found his thoughts turning inward.
Each step seemed to echo the uncertainty gnawing at him—about Miss Bennet, and about his place in this strange, war-torn land.
Georgiana, pale but determined, kept close to Lydia, her shawl clutched tightly around her shoulders.
The two girls exchanged whispered reassurances, their voices barely audible above the wind that whipped across the exposed hillside.
Every so often, Eduardo would pause, scanning the horizon for movement, his nervous energy infecting those around him.
At the crest of the ridge, the company halted. The valley below was a patchwork of fields and copses, bisected by the silver ribbon of the Esla, while in the far distance, the smoke of burning villages curled upward—a grim reminder of the French army’s passage.
Darcy glanced at Lieutenant Goulding, and their conversation resumed where it had left off. “Do you think she will succeed?” he asked quietly, voice nearly lost to the wind.
Goulding hesitated. “Miss Elizabeth has a way of surviving what others cannot. Still, one cannot help but fear for her. These are not the drawing rooms of Hertfordshire, Mr. Darcy. Here, courage alone may not be enough. Yet, I fear it is the parlours of England that may be her undoing—who will understand why a gentlewoman dresses as a maja and walks unaccompanied into a French camp—”
Darcy grimaced; Goulding was correct. Her name would be mentioned in dispatches, sent to Horse Guards.
Inevitably, all of London would know what she had done.
That she had saved Wellington’s army from ruin would be of no concern—the gilded assembly halls and parlours of the ton were of far more importance.
They would delight in her ruin, if not in Lord Wellington’s rescue. ”
A whistle from the rear broke his reverie—Petersen, face grim, gestured urgently. “Patrol’s doubled back!”
“We move, now!” Goulding signalled to the riflemen.
Fully alert, the small band plunged into the shelter of a thicket, sliding and stumbling down the far side of the ridge, hearts pounding with the knowledge that at any moment, a musket shot might crack through the air.
Darcy pressed onward, assisting Georgiana and Lydia down the steeper slopes.
Curse this war, he muttered to himself, curse society, curse the ton, curse Elizabeth Bennet!
* * *
Darcy had wished to flee the ball at Netherfield.
Now, he wished to flee the León Mountains, the crags, the low mist, their presence always looming over him.
For a moment, he wondered whether this was how Miss Bennet—Elizabeth—experienced the world, the minds of those near her always pressing, constricting, choking her very spirit.
The ground grew gentler and the horizon broadened toward the plains west of Benavente. It should have brought relief: easier terrain, mostly downhill towards low ground. Yet, Darcy’s mind wandered into a landscape more like the crags they were leaving behind, than the levelled plain before them.
He walked behind the group, his stride precise, seemingly relaxed with the ease by which he followed the narrow trail.
His thoughts were anything but. Georgiana and Lydia Bennet, so different in their natures but now united by circumstance and sisterly affection, moved ahead with increasing energy.
Georgiana’s step was cautious and graceful, her hand sometimes extended to Lydia, whose own approach to the landscape was more akin to an impetuous dance—a leap here, a quick laugh there at some misstep, her spirits rebounding from the pain she had known aboard the French sloop.
Will Goulding led his men with an authority that had once seemed unimaginable to Darcy.
There was no trace now of the uncertain youth who had blushed and stumbled through the dances at Netherfield; hesitantly approaching Richard to seek advice as to whether he should enlist in the army.
Forged by circumstance, here was a man who listened to his soldiers and was listened to in turn, whose every gesture seemed to command attention.
The men followed him with a loyalty that Darcy could neither claim nor fully comprehend.
It was not that Darcy begrudged them their camaraderie, nor that he resented the change in Goulding.
Indeed, he admired these qualities in abstract, and yet, he could not help but feel the ache of exclusion.
The bonds of shared hardship had drawn these young men together in a manner Darcy had never experienced.
For all his lineage and education, Darcy was an outsider—worse, he was superfluous.