Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE FIRST NIGHT in Spain, Colonel Fitzwilliam slept in the street.
The next day, he was sober enough to gather what was left of his belongings, what hadn’t been plundered by street urchins and thieves, and to secure himself something in the way of lodgings. This, he was ashamed to say, he did using his father’s name and lines of credit.
He fully expected that word of this would get back to England, and his family would send someone to deal with him. His father wouldn’t come himself, of course, but he would settle up any debts Richard had made, clean up any messes, and then…
Oh, God.
He’d be forcibly taken back and given in some arranged marriage to whatever woman they could bully into taking him, he supposed. Probably not someone with a title or connections, he supposed. Probably the daughter of some new-money upstart looking to marry into the peerage, even if Richard himself had no title. Connections to the Earl of Matlock might be appealing to someone like that, a social climber.
He thought about killing himself.
Not for long, really.
He didn’t have the stomach for it, for one thing, and he felt too guilty about leaving the mess to clean up. He had seen enough death on the battlefield. He knew what it was like.
Anyway, his mother would grieve him. Likely Elizabeth, too. Darcy as well, but the thought of hurting Elizabeth was insupportable.
No, suicide would be far too easy. He must stay alive and suffer.
Until then, however, oblivion. Drink. He took rooms in an inn where it was still quite warm, even as November closed in. He drank Spanish wine with the windows open. He stayed out too late in taverns and bought drinks for courtesans who seemed confused when he wanted nothing further from them.
Time passed.
And then one day, there was word at the inn that someone had inquired after him, someone English, and he knew that it had happened, that his father had finally found him and sent someone to deal with him.
The innkeeper told him—best as he could, anyway, since he spoke little English and Richard spoke little Spanish, which meant they communicated in fragments of French much of the time and what little of Spanish he could cobble together—that the inquirer had waited for him to return, but it had grown very late. Richard often returned very late, of course. The innkeeper said the inquirer would return on the morrow—well, on that day itself, since this had been yesterday.
Richard knew it was pointless, because he could not run forever, but he simply left and didn’t come back.
He drank himself into a stupor and stumbled about in the streets that night. He fell asleep standing up in an alley, leaning against a building, and when he woke, he considered never returning to the inn at all.
Of course, he had spent all the coin he’d brought from his room, so he decided it was best to return, take what he could carry, and go elsewhere.
He staggered back to the inn, smelling of drink and sweat, dirty and bedraggled, and there she was.
Elizabeth Darcy, standing in front of the establishment, in a bonnet and gloves, a strand of her hair slipping out and blowing in the breeze of the late fall morning.
He stopped in his tracks, thinking he must be hallucinating. Had he drunk absinthe or gotten dosed with laudanum unawares?
Then she caught sight of him.
She was real. She was here. And he was a wreck of himself. He wished to go to her. He wished to run far away so that she could not see him this way. She decided for him and rushed to close the distance between them, calling out his first name.
He just stood there as she loomed in his vision. She smelled like soap and sweetness and her own scent, a scent he had nearly forgotten, and he made a noise in the back of his throat as her hand settled on his chest, where his shirt was parted for he had somehow lost his cravat hours before.
“There you are,” she said. “We’ve been waiting.”
His lips parted. “I’m… not fit for company.” He looked down at himself, hotly ashamed. But he put his hand over hers, holding her palm there, holding it to his heart.
She smiled up at him. Then, carefully, she seized his hand and moved it to her body, to her belly. She raised her eyebrows at him meaningfully.
His heart stopped beating. He shook his head. “No, but…”
“We’ve come for you, Richard. Your wife, your husband, and your babe.”
They were in the street. He was filthy. It was all wrong, but he pulled her against him, pressing his lips feverishly against her forehead. “Elizabeth,” he breathed. “Oh, Elizabeth.”
DARCY SAT IN the carriage, one arm slung around Richard’s shoulders, even though the other man smelled like he’d been doused in a distillery. He didn’t mind, not at all, he found. He was so happy to have found Richard, at long last, that he could not find anything to complain about in that moment. Elizabeth sat opposite them, gazing out the window, a smile playing on her lips.
“So,” Darcy was saying to Richard, “we found out that word had been sent back to England that you were too ill to perform your duties and had been deposited in Spain. But from the way the news was delivered to your family, it was rather clear that you had not been really ill, for they would not have left you there and washed their hands of you so easily, if so.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, “and we rather suspected that you might have been in a state, but Will went here and there and discovered that you’d been drinking yourself to death.”
“Not to death,” Richard protested faintly.
Darcy squeezed him. “You shouldn’t have been alone. I tried to stop you leaving, you know.”
Richard looked up at him, his expression painfully full of adoration. “I should have known you’d be this way, Will. You’re wretchedly arrogant and self-assured, but you are so very together. I should have known you’d wish to care for me. You’re a very good husband.”
“He is that,” said Elizabeth, her expression sunny.
Darcy kissed Richard’s forehead. “You’re an idiot, of course. Why wouldn’t you read any of the letters we sent to that inn? We found out you were using Lord Matlock’s lines of credit, and I wrote to you.”
“I did get a letter here and there,” Richard said, furrowing his brow. “But I was always drunk and I assumed they were from my family, ordering me back home. I barely looked at them before I chucked them into the fire.”
“Idiot,” said Darcy again, affectionate. He kissed his forehead again.
“I’m sorry about that,” said Richard with a helpless shrug. “I’m very sorry for being an idiot.”
“Anyway,” Darcy resumed, “it took a bit longer than we might have liked, because I was procuring a place for us here.”
“A place?”
“Yes, it’s a villa outside San Fernando,” said Darcy. “We are heading straight there, and your chambers are all ready and waiting.”
“Here?” said Richard, sitting up. “A villa.”
“We came around to the idea that leaving England entirely might be the best thing for us,” said Darcy with a shrug. “We are assured of having a string of visitors who wish to come to the south, though. Georgiana will likely be here for Christmas, and God knows if we’ll get rid of her, knowing how long she likes to stay.”
“Yes, but otherwise, we shall be quite isolated,” said Elizabeth. “Will and I have selected our servants with care, and they are being paid quite handsomely to accept things as we tell them to accept it.”
“We can stay here a long time,” said Mr. Darcy. “The children, however many there are, can call you ‘Papa,’ and when we go back to England, they will be old enough to have it explained to them, to know to conceal it.”
Richard shook his head, wordless.
Darcy stroked his face. “You look a fright, Richard. Perhaps we shall save the rest of it until after you’ve bathed and slept and eaten, hmm? This is too much for you to take in just now.”
“You can’t,” said Richard to him. “You can’t… they will be your children.”
“Well, yes,” said Elizabeth. “They will be ours, all of ours.”
“But you wish to be a father in a way that I don’t think that I do,” said Darcy. “I want it for Lizzy. I want it for you. For myself, I want our family, I want this, us, but I don’t need it.” He was not sure how to explain this. He had tried to talk to Elizabeth about it at length, and she kept falling back on the idea that the children belonged to all three of them.
That was true.
The children would bear his name, and they would inherit his property, and he would be their father.
Perhaps there was no reason to make the distinction, he supposed, but he sensed it was important to Richard. The colonel would not have a legal claim on their wife or his own babes. It seemed that he must allow Richard to have this, then. His children must know that he was their father by blood, that they came from his body. It mattered to Richard. So, he would give this to his husband, to the man he loved.
Richard’s lower lip trembled. He covered his face with both hands.
Darcy tried to soothe him, but Richard pulled away.
“Richard,” whispered Elizabeth, “we are so sorry we did not get to you sooner. You have been abandoned here, lost—”
“I don’t deserve either of you,” Richard said thickly. “I don’t deserve any of this.”
“Well, neither do I,” said Darcy. “I am a wicked man. Look what I’ve done to all of us, look what my carnal desires have—”
“None of that,” said Richard faintly. “I shall not listen to you abusing yourself, Will.”
“Then I shan’t listen to you abusing yourself,” he countered.
Richard dragged his hands over his face and met Darcy’s gaze. “All right. No more of that, then.” He gave them one of his lopsided, devil-may-care smiles. “So, what happens now? Do we live happily ever after?”
Elizabeth nodded, her expression still so very sunny. “I think we do exactly that.”