Chapter 16 #2
The clerk did not quite look pleased to be understood. "I mean that the governor's office has a question for you, and the Custom House has a place prepared until it is answered."
The letter pressed against her pocket and, without meaning to, pressed her fingers to it. The folded paper made a small ridge beneath the cloth.
Darcy said, "Is this because I am English?"
The clerk hesitated. "It is because you are the gentleman named in a report as having been sent by His Majesty's government, and because war has now been declared. There are persons in the city who care to know who has been in communication with the Choctaw, and why."
So that was the shape of it. Not a sweep of suspicion. Not a panic that would snare every foreign face in the port. A decision made from names and reports. Darcy had been found, not guessed at.
"You have my person identified, then," he said.
"Yes, sir."
"And the rest of my party?"
"The rest of your party are not the concern of the office."
No one spoke for a moment. It struck Elizabeth as an almost brutal kind of efficiency. The Americans had no need to trouble themselves with the whole city when one man's identity had already been established. That, more than any display of force, was what made the business dangerous.
Mr. Bennet adjusted his spectacles. "If the gentleman is wanted for a question, surely the question might be put over tea."
The clerk, who was plainly not accustomed to being diverted by a father in a muddy coat, gave a restrained bow. "I regret that tea will not assist the office."
"Most offices are deficient in that respect," said Mr. Bennet.
The clerk looked back to Darcy. "If you will come, sir."
Darcy did not move at once. Elizabeth could see the calculation in him, though he made none of it visible.
He was wounded. He was tired. His arm was useless to him, and his shoulder must have been aching with each step since dawn.
None of that mattered as much as the fact that the city knew what he was, or thought it knew enough. He turned slightly toward her.
"You should go home," he said.
"No."
"There is no advantage in remaining."
"Then you are the only one who does not understand my habits."
"Miss Bennet," he said, and there was warning in the plainness of it.
"Mr. Darcy," she returned, "I am not accustomed to obeying men merely because they look as though they would rather be elsewhere."
Thomas gave a short breath that might have been a laugh if it had been happier. Cécile touched Elizabeth's sleeve, not to restrain her, but to steady the shape of the moment.
The clerk said, with the politeness of a man who would prefer to complete the business before sunset, "You may accompany him to the office, madam, if you wish. After that, the matter lies with the magistrate."
"Then I shall accompany him," Elizabeth said.
Darcy's answer came at once. "No."
She looked at him. "If you think that will alter my decision, you have returned from the river with little profit."
His mouth moved, almost into something like humour. "Your temper is fatigued, Miss Bennet."
"It is refreshed by use."
The clerk made a small motion with his hand, requesting movement and not caring who first complied. Darcy gave him a slight inclination of the head, which was as near to submission as he was likely to appear in public. Then he turned and walked with the clerk toward the Custom House.
Elizabeth went with him.
The building stood near the levee, broad and practical, with offices opening onto a passage that smelled of paper, salt, and damp wood. Men came and went with ledgers under their arms. The city continued its conversation outside the windows.
The clerk who received Darcy inside was a stocky man with a pen behind his ear. He took one look at Darcy, then at the report in his hand.
"Mr. Darcy," he said, "you are to remain here until the magistrate has reviewed the papers."
"For how long?" Darcy asked.
"As long as is necessary."
"That is an American answer," Mr. Bennet remarked from the doorway.
The room was a plain chamber within the Custom House, used for temporary holding when the office required a man to remain where he could be reached.
Its window was barred. Its door had a heavy lock.
The corridor beyond was busy with clerks and paper, not with soldiers.
When the door shut, the sound was final enough.
Thomas followed the clerk to examine Darcy's shoulder, and Cécile stayed with Elizabeth, her hand quiet upon her wrist. They did not speak at first. It was possible, Elizabeth thought, to be furious and calm at once. The heart did not trouble itself to choose a single employment.
"He will manage," Cécile said at last. "He is not a man who breaks under paper."
"No," Elizabeth agreed. "He breaks under conscience, which is far more inconvenient."
Cécile's mouth curved. "You know him well."
"I know him enough to be angry and worried in equal measure, which I believe is the definition of attachment."
"It is certainly the Creole definition," Cécile said.
When Thomas came out, he said, "The shoulder wants cleaning. Nothing worse than the journey has not already done."
That answer relieved her more than she wished him to know.
The magistrate arrived an hour later. There were papers to be read. There was the declaration of war. There was Darcy's name in a report, with enough detail to make denial absurd. He was now in a city at war with his king.
The magistrate, a heavy man with a careful voice, pronounced the only decision that could be made without altering history.
"Mr. Darcy will be confined here pending exchange."
The words came down with terrible neatness. Pending exchange. It sounded administrative, almost courteous. It did not sound like what Elizabeth heard in it. It did not sound like separation.
Darcy gave a brief bow. "I am obliged to you for the candour."
"You are to remain on the premises," the magistrate said. "To be available to both governments, if matters proceed properly."
"That is not the same as liberty," said Darcy.
"No," said the magistrate. "It is not."
Elizabeth had never thought so little of official language. It made confinement sound reasonable and a waiting room sound like law.
By the time she was allowed to the barred door, the light in the passage had turned gold with late afternoon. Darcy stood inside the chamber with one hand resting near the window frame. He looked tired now in a way the river had not permitted him to look tired before.
He saw her and stepped nearer to the grate.
"Miss Bennet."
"Mr. Darcy."
The iron between them was painted black and already warm from the day. She put one hand to it and wished, not for the first time, that formality were less durable than it was.
"You should have gone home when you were told," he said.
"And you should have come back to a city less fond of printed facts."
His mouth twitched. "A poor choice on my part."
"No. A poor choice on theirs, if they imagine me to be obedient."
"That has yet to be tested."
Her fingers closed once on the bars. "You were never in the habit of admitting defeat gracefully."
"I am not defeated."
"No?"
"I am detained."
The distinction was too exact to be dismissed. Even now, in confinement, he preserved his own precision.
The letter in her pocket pressed against her side like a secret with poor manners.
She had not opened it. The very thought of reading it now, while he stood behind iron and the city held him on paper, seemed almost impossible.
Yet she knew it was there, and that knowledge gave her a strange sense of responsibility, as if his words had become part of the room simply by waiting in her possession.
Darcy's gaze dropped, not to her hand, but to the place where the fold of paper must lie beneath her gown.