9. IX
IX
Your Name Will Do
“You propose marriage?”
“I propose terms on which two stranded English people may stop being separately useless.”
He crossed his arms. “What terms?”
“Vega can be bribed, or stalled, or leaned upon, or shamed. Which of the four, I do not know yet, and I shall not find out from a kitchen, in another woman’s apron.
When my uncle’s case is laid before whatever office will hear it, it would come from Mrs Darcy of Pemberley, and not from a woman with no name worth reading twice. ”
He narrowed his eyes, tapping one finger on the opposite sleeve. Married to Elizabeth Bennet… “You realise what you are saying,” he asked cautiously.
Her features paled for the first time since the kitchen. “I… I have not worked out the whole of it. I know that apart, we are both finished.”
Mrs Darcy. She could be his… the object of far too many of his fascinations, after two years of silence raised over the wrong woman entirely. And Elizabeth Bennet was standing in the wreck of his chamber, laying out a marriage as plainly as an engineer laid out a bridge.
“Mr Darcy, if your sources of intelligence want mourning, have the goodness to mourn them later. Just now, I need an answer large enough to travel on.”
The wine, and the sleeplessness, and the shock of her here, of all places, and the whole edifice of what he had believed of her pulled down between breakfast and noon — none of it sharpened his judgement. Judgement pointed one way, regardless.
“What do you propose for… after?” he asked. “After your uncle is freed, my own business resolved one way or another… what then?”
Twin chocolate brows arched softly. “I had not got that far, but I suppose we would go our separate ways with no one the wiser.”
He scoffed and let his arms fall. “Go our separate ways! I do not know how it has escaped you, but marriage is rather more than a fortnight’s commitment. I require —”
“An heir? I would not have supposed otherwise, but you will have to look to some other woman to obtain one. If we do this, we marry here. A Spanish rite, a Spanish register. Words no soul in England will ever hear spoken, and a paper that will be conveniently lost or burned the moment my uncle is freed and your bond is honoured.”
He blinked. “Then… you propose this to be a fake marriage? A fraud?”
“‘Fraud’ is such an unfriendly word. I prefer ‘utilitarian.’ I do not want to be married to you any more than you do to me, but do you see any alternative before us?”
“I —” He shook his head. “What?”
“Come, Mr Darcy, we know almost nothing of each other apart from the fact that we hardly got on back when we were acquainted. I do not suppose two years has improved either of our characters so far as to make us agreeable to a lifetime with someone we hardly found worth the trouble of pleasantry. And do not think I am offering any ‘services’ beyond my grasp of the language, sir.”
His face fell cold, and that trickle of blood that had begun to race in his veins clotted somewhere under his spleen.
“In… indeed, Miss Bennet. But so long as we are in Spain, we would be lodging as husband and wife. Perhaps travelling God knows where before it is over, perhaps seen by our fellow countrymen. Given that we encountered each other here, it is not impossible that we might be recognised by someone else. You have weighed what that means?”
“More carefully than you have. I am the one who must say it aloud to a customs officer who would otherwise be turning me out of the country. I am the one who must trust your honour not to… well.” She stopped.
“I should, perhaps, ask one thing before any priest is troubled. Are you free? Free in law, I mean — no wife, no betrothal, no banns crying your name across an English parish?”
He might have lied.
It would have been simpler. After all, she just told him she did not care, and he should not, either.
He could not afford to care. He had the answer to half his financial woes waiting for him to return to England and formalise his declaration, and she need not know any of it, for this matter would be behind them long before the cost came due.
But he was a fool, and his face gave him away before any words could be uttered.
“There is some commitment, is there not?” she asked. “Are you already married?” She made a quick inspection of his left hand, not even bothering to hide the direction of her gaze.
“At this hour, I am entirely free, but I had meant to alter that when Spain was behind me. There is an understanding waiting for me at home. Or there was, before this morning made a pauper of me, and I hope to Heaven there still is, so I may not have to clean dust bins for a living when I return to England.”
“Ah, an heiress! My congratulations, Mr Darcy. Fear not, I have no designs upon your future, only upon your name, and I mean to give it back unmarked. You are quite safe on that score.”
To be handed his liberty before he had surrendered it, and handed it so briskly, landed nearer to insult than to relief. “I did not ask to be made safe.”
“No.” She was looking at the floor between them. “You asked for none of this. Neither did I.”
“What would you have of me, beyond the use of my name?”
“Your visible protection. Your purse, so much of it as can be recovered. Once we are returned to England, my uncle’s trading house will see you made whole, and you may be assured that I will keep an account to the penny.
In exchange for your willingness to fund my survival, I inquire, negotiate, flatter, threaten, interpret, and do whatever I may to help us both recover what was lost. I supply the tongue and…
forgive me, Mr Darcy, but the wits to survive those who would cheat you, and you supply what wants height, and money, and a face that discourages liberties. ”
“A brute’s office.”
“A highly ornamented one.”
He very nearly smiled. She did not.
“Suppose I refuse?”
“Then this afternoon, I will discover whether Tudela holds a priest reckless enough to marry me to a stranger with a cart, a mule, and no conscience. I would rather not. Most of the alternatives appear diseased.”
The picture put an end to refusal where it stood. He would be hanged before he watched her give her hand to a muleteer who smelled of stale spirits and was missing half his teeth. “You fight unfairly, Miss Bennet.”
“I fight with what is within reach.”
“Very well, Miss Bennet. If this is the only road left open, I will walk it with you.”
“You consent very civilly for a gentleman about to lay himself upon the altar of necessity.”
“Civility costs nothing. I consent because no gentleman could do otherwise and still call himself one. Do not dress it up as anything kinder.”
“I had not asked for anything kinder.” She was already turning for the door. “Your name will do. You may keep the rest.”
Pilar was still crying when Elizabeth took her by both shoulders and turned her toward the hearth.
“Enough! We have done with tears for ten minutes. After that, you may drown the house, if you please.”
The girl stared at her through wet lashes and flour, breathing in little broken catches.
“Listen to me. Is there a priest who may be had tonight?”
Pilar crossed herself by instinct before she answered in Castilian. “Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight. A poor one would be best. A poor one, and not too curious.”
The girl blinked. “For confession?” she asked in Spanish.
“For marriage.”
Pilar made a sound between a gasp and a laugh and clapped her apron to her mouth.
“Surely, you must know of someone. With luck, even someone close enough to be had without hiring a mule to find him?”
Pilar lowered the apron. “There is Padre Tomás, at Santa María Magdalena. He marries anything for money, and some he marries twice.”
“Excellent. Is he sober?”
The girl considered. “At night, not always.”
“Better and better. What does he require?”
Pilar counted them off on her fingers. “Money. Witnesses. Names. Papers.”
“Names, we have, and money, some, if he can exchange dubloons for something more practical. Papers we have almost none — they went into a soldier’s pocket this afternoon with everything else worth taking.”
Pilar looked doubtful. “He is old, and frightened of soldiers. If it is late, and paid in silver, papers become less beautiful to him.”
“How many witnesses?”
“Two.”
“The landlady and you will do.”
Pilar recoiled. “I?”
“You can stand upright and say that you saw me. Those are the principal qualifications.”
“I am only a servant.”
“So am I, to judge by the apron in which your country has preserved me this afternoon. You are perfectly cast.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “But the gentleman — does he know?”
“He has been informed, cornered, contradicted, and brought to consent. I hope he knows. If he has forgot it already, I shall remind him on the road.”
Pilar crossed herself again, this time for the Englishman’s soul.
“How far is it to Magdalena? Is that not the church with the stripped nave and burned timbers? I wonder that any priest still darkens its walls.”
“Only a few minutes walk, and the side chapel is still standing.”
Elizabeth pictured the square with its broken frontage and the fountain gone dry under a sky that did not care how many people bargained beneath it. It would serve as well as Westminster, if it served quickly.
“Good. We go there.” She turned toward the door.
Pilar caught at her sleeve. “And if the English gentleman changes his mind?”
Elizabeth laid her hand upon the latch. “Then he will have the distinction of doing it in public, and if there is one thing I recall all too plainly about Mr Darcy, he despises a spectacle.”
She opened the door and stepped into the passage.