Where Fear Ends and Worry Begins
XXXVI
His head was in her lap.
It had been for some while. He remembered when she had squeezed in behind him, lifting his shoulders — pinching and poking him more than a little in the process, but he had refused to give any sign of complaint — and then wedged herself between his head and the wall.
He remembered her cupping his chin and coaxing him to swallow the broth-soaked bread she had plied him with, and then the cloth she used to clean up what he had dribbled.
And he remembered that she stayed there, under him, her fingers toying lightly in his hair, her other hand spread over his chest.
If he refused to open his eyes for the next hour, she was far more to blame than the fever.
“You are smiling.”
He opened his eyes at last and peered up at her — the quirked brow, the suspicious tug of her mouth, the way her face had tilted to observe him from a better angle.
“I was having a pleasant dream.”
“You were not. You were perfectly awake, and trying to fool me. I felt your breathing change.”
“Good Lord, madam, have you done nothing for the last hour but fixate on my breathing?”
“I have done nothing for the last ten days but fixate on your breathing. You had me fooled at least six times that your toes were crossing into the grave, but you kept stepping back, you vexing thing.”
“All the better to tease you, Mrs Darcy,” he murmured, closing his eyes. “I’ve not the patience to attempt it as a spectre.”
“There, you come back with wit, but twelve hours ago, you looked into my face and did not know it was me, so do not try to fool me with your jokes, sir.”
He smiled a little and let his eyes remain closed.
It was too much work to open them. “I distinctly recall talking to you last night. Something about the state of my shirt, after being shredded to ribbons on the barge. I believe you told me I needed my hair cut and I informed you that my hair was far more presentable than that stained merino gown you wore, so we should attend to that before securing me a valet.”
“I do not know who you said those things to, but it was not me. You are, however, not presently delusional and breathing on your own, so…” She stiffened, testing her leg to see if she could move it from under his shoulders, but he caught at her hand.
“Just stay for another moment.”
The tension in her muscles eased. “Very well, but you shall have to answer to Padre Ignacio for the plate I have left untouched across the room. He will come in at any moment to see that I have eaten every bite, and he will be very cross when he discovers I have not.”
“I imagine he will find the reason a compelling one. I will tell him that you were praying the rosary over me.”
“That was him. Half the night, and all day for the past two days. He meant to give you Last Rites two evenings ago, but I ran him out of the room.”
He squeezed her hand. “I know. I heard him. I heard you, too.”
“Did you? And here I thought you never listened to me.”
He gazed up at her. “I heard every word.”
A faint smile touched her mouth. “Ah. Then, I imagine you have some words with which to chastise me today. Go on, then. Let me hear your indignation at being ordered to live. Tell me what a selfish beast I am, refusing to walk to Santander alone. You know I cannot saddle the pack mule by myself, and I absolutely loathe having to pay every bribe at every check point. I would like as not behave very impertinently to the wrong person and find myself in some cell by the end of my first day on the road alone.”
His chest shook with silent laughter. “Very well, I shall tell you I am furious, but you will not like the cause.”
“Try me.”
He reached up, his fingers testing her cheek. He was sure there had been tears there earlier, but now, it was soft and creamy to the touch. “I am furious that I put you through this.”
She caught his hand for an instant, squeezed it, and brought it back down. “There, now you will have me going all sentimental again, and you know how I hate that. I had just fooled Padre Ignacio into thinking me a rational creature, and I will not have you ruining my reputation.”
“I thought I already did that.”
She was staring down into his eyes. For a few seconds, there was a flare in them, a teasing, hungry flame that he had taunted and got burnt by in Vitoria.
She was still for a moment, one hand twisted in his and the other still curled in his hair. Then, she bent down to kiss his forehead. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
So, that was how it was to be. After all the nights she had pressed her body against his, pulling him back from delirium and even death itself, after wringing her own depleted body to exhaustion by caring for him in the most intimate ways possible, she meant to remain coy about the night they had become one flesh.
His chest fell, and his gaze dropped to the wall rather than her face.
But her lips were still close to his ear, and she murmured something that would have made a dead man get up and walk out of the grave. “I would not dare test your strength so soon, but I might be induced to recall this thing you speak of, if you promise not to frighten me again tonight.”
He gazed up at her once more and tugged her hand to his lips. “Done.”
“Padre Ignacio says you must not think of trying to cross the mountains for another month complete. A man who darkened his own headstone half a dozen times over the last fortnight ought to be a little more sensible of his own mortality.”
Darcy looked up from the greasy, dark organ meat on the plate and tried to swallow the bite he had so doggedly forced into his mouth.
It had been a week since he last woke up drenched in his own sweat, clinging to Elizabeth’s hand like it was the last piece of this world to catch him before he vanished from it.
A week since the last nightmares, since being so cold he would have cheerfully run into a burning house to keep warm.
The fever was not gone, entirely, but he could stand up.
He could walk. He could attend to his body’s needs without the mortification of Elizabeth having to hold him up.
And he could start asking what day it was, how much time they had lost.
“You know very well how little we can afford to convalesce here for a month,” he replied between bites.
The liver was not bad. It was certainly not up to the standard of the French cook he employed in London, but he could not see why Elizabeth gagged on it so.
Particularly after two months of eating whatever the road could spare, something hearty and filling, no matter how unappetising, was not to be scorned.
Ignacio was watching him, and he turned to say something to Elizabeth.
“He says the fever is in your blood now. It will come back. Weeks, months, even years from now, you will relapse and wish you were dead.”
“It sounds as if I have very little control over the matter,” he replied, taking a sip of fresh milk Ignacio had set beside the plate. “Why should I wait a month?”
“Because,” she said, “the stronger you are before your body is drained once more, the less chance of the fever returning. He says it comes back when the body is already weak from fatigue or worry.”
Darcy nodded and took another bite. “Then may tell him I shall not sleep and will worry myself into the grave over the affairs I have left unsettled. Keeping here another month, even another week, would only make matters worse. It is already August. We must return to England.”
Her mouth thinned and turned downward. In another woman, it might have been a sign of surrender, but he knew better than to think that of her. She turned to the padre and asked something. Ignacio waved a hand, shook a finger, shook his head, and then sighed when Elizabeth argued him into silence.
“He says you would be a fool to start in less than a week.”
“Two days.”
She blinked. “Two…”
“Elizabeth.” He held her gaze until the arch disappeared from her brow and the breath she had captured to argue with him left her.
“Your uncle still needs you to put his case before the Foreign Office if no one else has done it yet. Think nothing of Pemberley, of the debt come due in seven weeks’ time.
Think of your uncle, who has, quite possibly, suffered a similar fever without someone as good as Padre Ignacio to see him whole and well again.
Think what must be done to bring him home. ”
A deep shudder passed through her, and she bit her lip.
When she turned to speak to Ignacio again, the padre seemed more willing to hear her argument, though he clearly still thought it a bad idea.
A long exchange followed — Darcy caught some words, talking about the mules, the food, the road north through Reinosa.
Then, the padre was gesturing at Darcy’s person, telling Elizabeth more, which he did not comprehend.
Some of it seemed to make her blush, and all of it looked rather disquieting.
He watched his plate and ate, rather than stare stupidly back at them as they discussed Heaven-knew-what about him.
At length, Ignacio rose and left them. “He has duties at the church this evening,” Elizabeth explained as he closed the door behind himself.
Darcy nodded and finished the last bite on his plate. “As soon as may be, I intend to send him a gift from London.”
Elizabeth took his plate and set it aside, then returned with a glass of wine. Undiluted, for the first time. “What sort of gift?”
“The sort that sees that his church never wants for candles, nor suffers from a leaking roof or lack of beds for the sick. The sort that fills his barrels with flour and wine, and arrives directly, without first being routed past a hundred official hands who would take their share before he is able to put it to its proper use.”