Heat
XXXIV
She came back to herself in reaches, in waves, each one a little further up the shore than the last, and long grey withdrawings between.
For a long time, there had been only the swallowing.
Someone lifting her, a hand behind her head, hard and warm and insistent, and a cup at her mouth with a bitterness so profound it had its own colour in her mind.
A voice she knew like she knew her own heartbeat kept telling her to drink, only drink, all of it.
And she had drunk, because the voice was the only one she would obey from the grave, if it came to that, and each time, she had gone back down under.
Then the burning sweat, the vomiting, and the agonising chill that she thought would never abate.
This morning, the tide came in and did not go back out.
She lay and stared at an unfamiliar ceiling until it resolved into shapes — dark beams, a water stain in the corner, a crucifix on a whitewashed wall.
Her body felt scoured, like a rag wrung out and hung up and left, and she was weak past anything she could possibly describe.
But she was awake, unmistakably awake, her own mind back in her own skull and looking out.
And beside her, like a rock, was the warmth that had been there through it all.
Darcy had not left her. Some part of her had known it every hour of the fever, and had been glad of it — shamefully, thoroughly glad of feeling his body beside her.
She had spent more than a month forbidding herself any pleasure in him and had lacked, in her sickness, the strength to deny it any longer.
He had sat by her, kept her warm when she shivered, lifted her and poured the bitter cure down her throat and called her sweet things she could hardly permit herself to believe.
She turned her head on the pillow to look at him.
He would be waiting, watching her, those dark eyes kindling when she roused, and trying not to show more than common relief at the sight.
If he were particularly pleased, he would say something cutting, so that she might answer in kind, and then he would pretend no warmth had passed between them at all.
But he would kiss her forehead, as he had been doing all through her fever.
Elizabeth lifted her head slightly to see him better.
He was not looking at her.
He lay on his back, the length of his arm wedged under hers on the narrow bed, his hand fallen open atop the blanket. His face was turned up, and his jaw hung slack, his mouth slightly open as an uneven rasp escaped it.
He must be more than usually exhausted. She had heard him snore on other nights.
Usually, it was when he had taken the floorboards instead of the chair, and ended up on his back and unable to move, as he was now.
But this did not sound like the usual deep rumble in the back of his throat.
This was higher, less regular, more like a man with someone’s elbow stuck in his rib cage. Which hers might have been.
“You may stop hovering,” she said. It came out a cracked whisper. She wet her lips and tried again. “I am awake. You need not —”
He did not stir.
Heat was flaring off his body. That was not from her. It was not the blanket, which was thin, or a skin of hot water laid over her against the chill, for there was nothing like that. It was him, and had been him all along.
She lifted her hand and put it against his face. Surely, it was nothing too unusual. He always felt warmer than she did. That had been one of the first things that startled her when she first touched…
His skin was burning.
She pulled herself up a little more, spanning from his cheek to his temple. He was on fire, a furious, raging heat pouring off him.
“No!” She moved closer, sweeping her fingers down to the place where his pulse drummed visibly under his jaw. Fast. Shallow, like his breathing. “No, no, no. Fitzwilliam!”
The heat that had soothed her, kept her from shattering her teeth on the chills, had never been just comfort. It was him, giving up the last of his strength, watching over her. Staying awake, pouring medicine down her throat, all while he was sinking. Who was caring for him?
She got herself up onto one elbow. The room swung and greyed, and she hung her head for a few seconds until the depth and distances made sense again to her eyes. “Darcy?” She had her hand on his chest, on his shoulder, shaking him. “Fitzwilliam, wake up. You are — you have to — wake up!”
His head rolled toward her senselessly, and his eyes did not open. She caught his chin again. “You have to come back to me. Say something!”
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he breathed something intelligible. Elizabeth, the way he had said it in the dark all those nights. He had been drowning beside her the whole time.
“No, no, you have to…” She sniffed, and she could not tell if that was tears or sweat from the remains of her fever pooling on her cheeks.
Her head was light, and she had never in her life been given to swoon, but she was sure she would now if she tried to stand.
It did not matter. Pulling him back, finding help…
where was she to find help? There had to be someone — a doctor!
She was sure she heard him calling for a doctor!
It was at that moment that the door opened.
She was half-braced over Darcy’s body when she looked up.
She must have seemed a feral creature, possibly even crazed, but whoever came in that door would see — they must be made to know — that this man must live.
Everything must be done, help must come, and if it did not, she would go out and find it herself!
The man who came in was in a cassock. He had little hair left, but his cheeks were round and creased with many years of good humour, and for that alone, Elizabeth’s immediate instinct was to trust him.
He held a bowl of something in his hands and a cloth over his arm.
He stopped when he saw her upright on her elbow, awake, her hand fisted in Darcy's shirt.
“?Gracias a Dios!” He came nearer, setting the bowl on a little table beside the bed, and held out his hand.
Not knowing what else to do, Elizabeth gave him hers, and he bowed over it to kiss it. “Dios ha sido bueno, Senora!”
She took her hand back and laid it on Darcy’s chest. “Padre, mi marido está enfermo.”
The priest’s expression brightened when he heard her speaking his own tongue. “Sí, sí, esto lo sé. He estado cuidándolo. Está muy mal.”
Muy mal… He said Darcy was very bad. And he crossed himself when he said it. She had to know… surely the good padre had prayed for her husband, as he must have done for her. Surely, he would nod and tell her that as she was recovering, so would he, in time.
“?Dónde está la medicina?” The medicine, he must be giving Darcy the medicine, too!
Where was it, that bitter remedy she remembered from her fever, that Darcy had held to her lips and bade her to drink?
It was her turn now, and she would sit behind him, pull his shoulders back to her chest, and cradle his head while he drank, and soothe his brow with kisses and tender words she would never have dared utter in this lifetime, but now would have shed her own blood to be able to say to him.
But the priest’s face fell into sorrow. “Ya no queda la corteza de los jesuitas.”
She blinked. Jesuit’s bark?
Quina.
Of course! Her uncle had once considered trading in that, but had found it too hard to source. Armies would plunder for it. Some killed for it. And it had saved her life, apparently, and hopefully Darcy’s, too.
But he said there was no more. He gave Darcy some of the bark before it was gone… did he not?
“Tú también le diste un poco. ?Seguro que sí!”
The priest took up his bowl again, dipping the cloth. “No. Tu marido te lo dio todo.” He bent and swabbed Darcy’s brow, smoothing away the sweat and fever. “No hay más. No puedo conseguir más.”
Horror came, swift and merciless. Darcy had given her the medicine. All of it. And the padre said he could not get more.
Her gaze fell to her husband, and his face swam before her eyes. “Oh, you stupid man,” she breathed. “You stupid, noble, wonderful man. You have saved me and killed yourself.”
The padre looked up. His eyes were full of sympathy, but he did not seem to understand her words.
He told her that Darcy had known there was not enough medicine for them both, and refused to take any himself.
For the first two days, Darcy had cared for Elizabeth entirely on his own, not even letting the padre touch her.
He had bathed her, cooled her brow, and held her when she moaned from chills and fever.
But by the third day, yesterday, Darcy could no longer open his eyes, and so the padre had taken on the care of both of them.
He had spooned broth down their throats, helped Darcy’s hand to find hers in his sleep, and then he had prayed. He had prayed for both of them.
But he had only held hope for Elizabeth.
Tears were pooling in earnest now. She covered her mouth on a sob, and another rush of tears blinded her for several seconds. “?Morirá?”
The priest looked down. “Lo siento, Senora.”
No… Her breath shattered in her throat. She had asked if Darcy was going to die, and instead of giving her an answer, he only said he was sorry.
She looked down at the man beside her. Her husband, the man she had married to survive and sworn never to love.
She had tried so hard, persuaded herself that she had even succeeded, to keep him at arm’s length.
To keep her heart safe from him, because the moment she confessed the truth — that the man she once thought proud and distant was the most human, loyal, gentle and honourable man alive…
the moment she confessed that no other mind had ever answered her with the same dry wit, the same quickness, the same gallows humour that met every trial with the sort of strength that gave her courage…