Chapter 14
The return to the camp by the river was a shadowed affair.
Haigh and Vance were in a state of suppressed fury, while Wickham maintained a cold, mocking silence.
Darcy walked ahead, his mind a tumult of conflicting duties.
He had sabotaged the mission. He had, in all likelihood, ended his career as a servant of the Crown.
Yet, for the first time since they had entered the wilderness, he felt the air was easier to breathe—or it would have been, had it not been so heavy.
"That was a masterstroke, Darcy," Wickham said, catching up to him as they reached the riverside. "I didn't realize your sense of self-importance extended to the destruction of a diplomatic effort two years in the making."
"I told him the truth," Darcy said.
"You told him a truth that was not yours to give. You were sent here to represent the King's policy, not your own delicate conscience."
"The King's policy was a lie, Wickham. I will not be a party to it."
Miss Bennet was walking with Cécile and Thomas Ashford a few paces behind. As they reached the tents, she came forward, her eyes searching Darcy's face.
"Mr. Darcy," she said.
"Miss Bennet."
"The Chief's question was quite direct," she said.
"It was."
"And your answer was equally so."
"I fear I have displeased our companions," Darcy said.
"You have done something much more difficult than pleasing them," Miss Bennet said. "You have behaved with a most inconvenient integrity."
Before he could respond, the sky changed.
It did not darken so much as it turned an unnatural, bruised yellow.
The stillness that had plagued them all day suddenly became absolute.
The birds, which usually kept up a constant chatter in the canopy, were silent.
The river, the great grey snake of the Mississippi, seemed to flatten, its surface as smooth as polished lead.
Jean-Philippe, the lead voyageur, emerged from the supply tent. He looked at the sky and then at the trees.
"Le grand vent," he said. "The big wind! Move! To the heights!"
There were no heights. They were on a flat bank, a tongue of land between the river and a sluggish bayou.
"Secure the boats!" Haigh said.
"The tents must come down!" Darcy said. "Move to the interior!"
But the hurricane did not wait for preparations.
It began with a sound like a distant carriage, then a hundred carriages, then a thousand.
It was a roar that seemed to come from the earth itself.
The wind hit them not as a breeze, but as a solid wall of pressure.
The tent was ripped from its moorings in a single, violent motion, the canvas snapping away into the grey chaos like a wounded bird.
"Miss Bennet!" Darcy said, though his voice was swallowed by the roar.
He saw her huddled with her father and Cécile near a massive oak. He fought his way toward them, the air now filled with debris—leaves, branches, the very water of the river being whipped into a stinging spray.
The sky went black. Not the black of night, but a thick, suffocating darkness that tasted of salt and mud. The rain began—not drops, but a deluge that made it impossible to see or breathe.
The river began to rise. It did not creep; it flowed over the banks in a sudden, surging tide.
"The boat!" a voice said.
A tree, a willow that had stood for fifty years, groaned, and buckled. It fell with a sound Darcy could not hear over the storm, but he felt the impact in the ground. The voyageur who had been holding the boat vanished beneath the branches.
Wickham was thrown against a crate of supplies, his leg pinned beneath the heavy timber. He did not rise.
Darcy reached Miss Bennet. He grabbed her arm, pulling her toward the center of the oak's trunk. "Hold the roots!" he said.
"My father!" she said.
Thomas Bennet was being held by Jean-Philippe, the two men pressed against the lee side of a fallen log. Cécile was there too.
The water was at their knees now, cold, and churning with the wreckage of their camp.
Darcy saw a section of the riverbank crumble.
The supply boat, which contained most of their salt and flour, broke its lines and was swept into the main current, spinning helplessly before being smashed against a submerged snag.
Then the surge came.
A wall of water, pushed by the wind, swept through the trees. It was three feet high and moved with the force of a battering ram. It tore Miss Bennet from the oak root.
"Darcy!"
He lunged for her. He missed her hand but caught the fabric of her pelisse. The force of the water dragged them both into the bayou. Darcy's boots, heavy with mud, pulled him down. He kicked desperately, his lungs burning as he swallowed the brackish, silt-heavy water.
He was underwater, trapped in a tangle of branches. The burden of Miss Bennet against him, her movements becoming slow. He found a footing on something solid—perhaps a submerged trunk—and heaved upward.
His head broke the surface. The wind was so strong it nearly pushed him back down. He could see nothing but a grey-white wall of rain. He held Miss Bennet to his chest, her head resting against his shoulder.
"Miss Bennet! Breathe!"
She coughed, a racking sound that was the most welcome thing he had ever heard.
He fought his way back toward where the oak had been. The world was a kaleidoscopic nightmare of sound and water. He found the trunk, and with a strength born of pure desperation, he hauled her up onto a heavy branch that remained above the rising flood.
He collapsed beside her, his breath coming in jagged intervals.
The eye of the storm brought a temporary, terrifying peace. The wind died to a moan, and the rain slowed to a drizzle. The light was an eerie, sulfurous green.
Darcy looked around. The camp was gone. Where their tents had stood, there was only mud and white water. The bodies of several of their horses lay tangled in a thicket.
"Is everyone—" Miss Bennet asked.
"I do not know," Darcy said.
From the direction of the village, figures appeared. The Choctaw, who had moved to their reinforced cedar-pole houses, were coming. They moved through the water with a practiced ease.
The Principal Chief himself was among them. He looked at the wreckage of the camp—at the broken crates, the lost boats, and the survivors.
"The river has spoken," the Chief said.
They were moved. The Choctaw carried the injured—Wickham, whose leg was badly broken, and Haigh, who was in a state of deep stupor. One of the voyageurs, a young man named Michel, had not survived the falling tree.
They were brought to a large, communal lodge on the highest ground in the area. Fires were lit, and the survivors were wrapped in dry skins.
Darcy sat in a corner of the lodge, his head in his hands. He became aware of a presence beside him. Miss Bennet was there, wrapped in a heavy buffalo robe. Her hair was matted and her face was streaked with mud, but her eyes were clear.
"Mr. Wickham will live," she said. "The Choctaw are setting his leg now. He is making a great deal of noise about it."
"He always did have a flair for the dramatic," Darcy said.
Miss Bennet let out a sound—a sharp, sudden laugh. It echoed in the quiet of the lodge.
Darcy looked at her. "You are laughing?"
"I am," she said. "We have traveled three thousand miles to deliver a message of imperial importance, we have had our offer rejected because you were too honest to be a diplomat, and we have been thoroughly drowned by a river that cares nothing for the King of England.
If I do not laugh, Mr. Darcy, I believe I shall simply dissolve. "
She looked at him then, and the laughter faded.
"You almost died," she said.
"As did you."
"You did not let go. Even when the water took us. I felt you... you did not let go."
Darcy looked into the fire. "I have spent much of my life holding onto things I should have released, Miss Bennet. But I find that in a storm, one discovers exactly what is worth the grip."
She reached out from beneath her robe and placed her hand over his. Her skin was cold, but the touch was steady. His fingers tensed beneath hers, and for a moment she thought he would pull away.
"I think," she said, "that I have been very wrong about the nature of your pride."
Darcy did not move. He did not dare to breathe. Outside, the wind began to roar again, the second half of the hurricane making its way across the land. But inside the lodge, amidst the smell of woodsmoke and the quiet breathing of the survivors, the world had finally found its center.
He had lost the mission. He had lost his supplies. He had, in all likelihood, lost his future in the service. But as Miss Bennet's hand remained on his, he realized with a clarity that no storm could wash away, that he had never been more successfully found.
* ? * ? *
The night was long. The storm raged outside, the cedar poles of the lodge groaning against the pressure, but the structure held. It was proof of a people who understood the land they lived upon—an understanding Darcy now realized he had lacked entirely.
Beside him, Miss Bennet eventually succumbed to exhaustion, her head coming to rest on his shoulder.
He remained awake, a sentinel in the dark.
He watched Wickham across the fire, the man's face pale and drawn in sleep.
He thought of Haigh and Vance, who had spent the evening counting their remaining gold coins as if they could buy dry land.
Darcy looked at the woman beside him. He thought of the way she had looked at him in the council house, and the way she had laughed in the face of the catastrophe. She was not a lady of the ton; she was something much more dangerous, and much more vital.
He had come to this wilderness to serve his country. He found himself wondering, as the rain hammered against the roof, if his country even deserved the truth he had told today—and if he could ever return to a life where such truths were considered a failure.
The Choctaw elders sat by the central fire, their voices low and melodic as they sang. Darcy did not understand the words, but he understood the intent. It was a petition for mercy, and a recognition of power.
He closed his eyes and, for the first time in many years, he prayed. Not for his career, or for his reputation, but for the strength to be the man Miss Bennet already seemed to think he was.
When the dawn finally came, the sky was a pale, washed-out blue. The water had begun to recede, leaving behind a country that was transformed. High-water marks were etched into the trunks of the trees, and the mud was a thick, alluvial carpet.
They emerged from the lodge to find a world wiped clean. The bayou was still choked with debris, and the river was a turbulent brown flood, but the air was light and fresh.
"It is over," Thomas Bennet said, joining them. He looked aged, his usual air of detached irony replaced by a somber reflection. "We are alive."
"Most of us," Darcy said.
"We must begin the salvage," Haigh said, coming forward. He looked disheveled, his natural hair a thin, grey fringe. "We must see what can be recovered of the King's property."
"The King's property is at the bottom of the Mississippi," Darcy said. "Our priority must be the survival of our party."
He looked at the Principal Chief, who was standing at the edge of the clearing. Darcy walked toward him.
"We owe you our lives," Darcy said.
The Chief looked at him for a long moment. "You owed the truth. We have traded."
He turned and walked away, leaving Darcy to contemplate the symmetry of the exchange.
Miss Bennet came to stand beside him. "What happens now?"
"We find a way back," Darcy said. "Or we find a way forward. But I suspect, Miss Bennet, that the path we were on has been washed away entirely."
"I find," she said, looking out at the ruined wilderness, "that I do not mind that at all."
She smiled then—a real smile, without a hint of the arch wit that usually guarded her heart. Warmth spread through him that had nothing to do with the morning sun.
The negotiation had failed. The storm had triumphed. And yet, as they stood together in the mud of the new world, He had finally won a victory that mattered.