Chapter 10
The morning of the third of June brought with it a heat that seemed to dissolve the very lines of the port of New Orleans.
The air was a muddy soup of river silt, roasting coffee, and the briny scent of the Gulf.
At the quay where the keelboat The Heron's Wing lay moored, the activity was of a kind that permitted no rest. Barrels of salted pork and crates of biscuit were being hauled onto the deck with a rhythmic shouting that competed against the cries of gulls and the distant tolling of church bells.
Mr. Darcy stood on the levee, his coat already a burden in the humidity.
He held a ledger in one hand and a pencil in the other, but his eyes were not on the list of supplies.
He looked instead across the brown, churning expanse of the Mississippi.
The river was a monster that season, swollen with the late melt of the north and the heavy rains of the spring.
It was a path into a wilderness that few of his countrymen truly understood, and fewer still respected.
General Wilkinson had been most particular about the choice of a guide.
The expedition moved under the auspices of the territorial government, yet Darcy knew the true masters were in Washington and London.
He was to find the limits of the new state's security and, more importantly, to ensure that the British did not find a foothold among the tribes to the north.
His personal motivations, kept locked behind a face of flint, were tied to the safety of a sister half a world away.
If he could prove his worth to the Crown through this service in the Americas, he might secure the protection for Georgiana that his letters home so desperately sought.
"The cargo is nearly settled, Darcy," Thomas said.
Thomas approached from the boat, his linen shirt damp with sweat. He looked less like a gentleman of fortune and more like a river trader, a transformation that seemed to suit him. Since his proposal to Cécile, he had moved with a new sense of purpose.
"The powder stays dry?" Darcy asked.
"It is double-casked and stored in the center of the hold. I have seen to it myself."
"Good. We cannot afford a single spark or a drop of moisture. We are too far from any magazine once we pass Baton Rouge."
Darcy turned back to his ledger, marking off the final shipment of iron tools.
He was interrupted by the arrival of a small carriage, moving slowly through the throng of merchants and laborers.
It bore the seal of the Governor's office.
From it stepped a man in a crisp blue uniform, accompanied by another individual in a travel-worn coat of buckskin and cloth.
The officer, a Lieutenant with a self-important air, saluted. "Mr. Darcy, I believe. General Wilkinson sends his regrets that he cannot see you off in person. He is occupied with the latest dispatches from Washington."
"The General is always occupied when the work is at hand," Darcy said.
The officer cleared his throat. "He has, however, secured the services of the finest scout in the territory. May I present Mr. George Wickham. He has spent the last three years among the traders of the Red River and knows the northern reaches better than any man in the army."
The world seemed to go still for Darcy. The heat of the world was replaced by a sudden, icy shock that began at the base of his neck and crept down his spine.
He looked at the man in the buckskin coat.
The face was older, the lines around the eyes more pronounced, and the easy grace of a pampered youth had hardened into the lean strength of a frontiersman.
But the eyes were the same. They were eyes that held a mocking light, a total lack of shame, and the memory of a betrayal that Darcy had never expected to encounter in the New World.
"A pleasure, I am sure," Wickham said.
His voice had lost some of its English polish, catching on the vowels in a way that suggested years of speaking French and Spanish patois, but the underlying insolence remained. He extended a hand that Darcy did not take.
"I was not told the name of our guide," Darcy said.
"And I was not told that the leader of this little jaunt was a Darcy of Pemberley," Wickham said. "It seems the world is smaller than a London drawing room. Or perhaps your father's ghost has a long reach."
"You will address me as the commander of this expedition or you will not address me at all."
The Lieutenant looked between them, his brow furrowing. "You are acquainted, then?"
"We are," Wickham said. "I had the honor of being a sort of protégé to Mr. Darcy's late father. A most generous man. It is a pity his qualities were not always hereditary."
Thomas stepped forward, his expression wary. "Is there a problem, Darcy?"
Darcy did not look away from Wickham. He felt the familiar, hot anger rising in his chest, the same anger that had burned when he had been forced to pay off Wickham's debts and cover his scandals. To find him here, in a position of trust, was a cruel joke of fate.
"There is no problem that cannot be managed," Darcy said. "Lieutenant, you may inform the General that we have met."
"Excellent. Then I shall leave you to your preparations," the officer said.
He departed quickly, clearly sensing a tension he had no desire to mediate. Wickham remained on the levee, leaning back against a wooden piling with a casual ease that was an insult in itself. He pulled a small knife from his belt and cleaned his fingernails.
"I suppose you mean to send me back with a letter of complaint," Wickham said.
"I have half a mind to do so," Darcy said.
"You could. But you won't. You need a guide, and the General won't give you another. Not with every able-bodied man being called to the militia. There is talk of a draft, Darcy. The whispers from the capital are not of peace and trade."
"The political climate does not concern you," Darcy said. "Your task is to lead us to the designated points on the map. If you fail in that, or if you attempt the slightest deception, I will leave you in the swamps without a second thought."
Wickham laughed. It was a dry, hollow sound. "Always so dramatic. I have survived the swamps for years. I doubt a fine gentleman like yourself would even know which way the water flows without my assistance. Are we to depart, or are we waiting for your valet to pack the silver?"
Before Darcy could reply, another carriage approached. This one was far less formal, a simple hack that smelled of damp wood and old leather. It stopped near the keelboat, and Elizabeth Bennet stepped out, followed by her father.
Elizabeth had risen before dawn to pack.
The trunk lay open on her bed, its contents a catalogue of transformation: the ledger she had kept since arriving, a pressed magnolia blossom from the garden, three letters from Jane tied with a ribbon, and the sturdy boots she had purchased from a cobbler on Chartres Street who had looked at her feet with professional scepticism and produced, to his credit, an excellent pair.
She wrapped the botanical sketches in oilcloth and placed them at the bottom.
There was something final in the act of folding one's life into a wooden box.
She looked around the small room—the shuttered windows, the desk where she had written her letters, the view of the garden where her father's specimens wilted in dignified protest against the heat.
"You are taking the boots," her father observed from the doorway. "That suggests you expect to walk a great deal."
"I expect to be prepared, Papa."
"A dangerous ambition. It has never served me well."
Elizabeth looked at the scene before her with a keen, observing eye. She wore a dress of sturdy dark cotton, her hair tucked firmly under a bonnet that was more practical than fashionable. Beside her, Mr. Bennet looked as though he had been dragged from his library into a circle of hell.
"Mr. Darcy," Elizabeth said.
"Miss Bennet. Mr. Bennet. This is a surprise," Darcy said.
A different tension gripped him now. He had seen Elizabeth several times since the night of the ball, and each meeting had left him more certain of his own feelings and more confused by hers. She had a way of looking at him that made him feel as though his very soul were being weighed and measured.
"I believe you are missing a crucial member of your party," she said.
"The crew is complete, Miss Bennet. We have our boatmen, our guards, and, it seems, our guide."
He glanced at Wickham, who was now standing straighter, his eyes raking over Elizabeth with an interest that made Darcy's hand itch for a cane.
"You have no one who knows the people of the interior," Elizabeth said. "You have maps drawn by men who have never stepped off a boat. You have a guide who knows the paths of the traders, but do you have anyone who can speak with the Choctaw and the Chickasaw as a friend?"
"I have my orders," Darcy said.
"Your orders will not keep you from being scalped if you stumble into a village without the proper greeting," she said.
"My father and I have spent months among the people of the north.
We have the trust of the headmen. More than that, I have the maps that my father has been preparing for the past two years.
They are far more accurate than anything the General possesses. "
Mr. Bennet sighed, leaning on his walking stick.
"I have told her it is a foolish idea, Mr. Darcy.
But when my daughter decides that a man's life is in danger due to his own stubbornness, there is no stopping her.
I have agreed to accompany her as far as the first outpost, provided there is a decent supply of tea and a lack of mosquitoes. The latter, I fear, is impossible."
"I cannot allow it," Darcy said. "The interior is no place for a lady."