XLVIII
A Pretty Piece of Irony
Viscount Bramwell took the air on the quarterdeck at the same hour each afternoon, and by the ninth day of the passage, Darcy had come to understand that this was not accident, but discipline — that the man ordered his days by the force of habit.
He was a short, reserved, plain man of perhaps fifty, grey at the temples.
He had, until this afternoon, confined his acquaintance with the Darcys to a civil word and the touch of his hat.
It was Elizabeth he warmed to at last. Darcy might have predicted it.
Men of that stamp, who found most society a waste of good silence, were often undone by a woman with a quick tongue and no interest in flattering them.
Elizabeth had, that afternoon, drawn three sentences out of him about the set of the sails and then a comment about the fair winds they had for the journey.
Darcy had watched the man, in perhaps four seconds, decide he liked her.
They fell into talk, because a long crossing wanted conversation, and Bramwell was, whatever his reserve, a man of substance.
He kept a residence in Upper Brook Street, a fashionable enough address, to be sure, but Darcy had never met him.
Bramwell explained it himself — he did not subscribe to Almack’s, rarely attended the club where he did have a membership, and when in London, kept largely to his home and his duties.
Within a handful of minutes, Elizabeth had drawn enough of him out to paint the picture of a devout man, father of two grown sons, immoderately fond of his wife, ill-suited to the trappings of nobility but capable enough to make some honest use of himself in the world to which he had been born.
Bramwell had been of some diplomatic service to his country during the war.
Even now, after the Peace, he carried on with various functions which he declined to detail, save that they had called him often to Spain, Portugal, and even the West Indies on two occasions.
But his primary concern had been royal Spanish relations, and he was, at present, returning from a tour in Madrid.
It could not help but enter the conversation, and after some ten minutes, it did.
“You have connections to the Spanish government?” she asked. “Then you may be just the person to whom I might apply for more advice. My uncle is a prisoner in Spain, taken for ransom in the south, and held still in the mountains north of Pamplona, so far as we know.”
Bramwell looked at her with more attention than he had yet spent on anything. “Taken by whom?”
“A man named Vega is the one who captured him. An officer, or calling himself one. The man given charge of keeping him was one Don Ibarra.”
“Vega.” Bramwell said the name without surprise, turning back to the sea.
“Yes. I know the operation. Vega has taken a dozen that I am aware of and released most for payment. He is a ‘patriotic’ businessman, whatever else he pretends, and a businessman does not keep stock he cannot sell. He will have made certain England heard his demands, and quickly. Where has the handling of it been?”
“They made him write to his people in London. His clerks, his men of business. And I…” Elizabeth hesitated.
“That is, we had been given to understand that a merchant's clerks applying through the ordinary channels would come to nothing. That such a matter is only truly moved by a personal appearance of some sort. A plea, sworn and public, by a family member or some visible connection. That letters and papers merely gather dust, and that the thing wants a face put to it before the right men, or it will sit for a decade unregarded.”
Bramwell was quiet a moment. Then he made a sound that in a less contained man would have been a snort.
“You were told that by someone who has never done it,” he said.
“Forgive me, Mrs Darcy, but no. That is the sort of thing men say who imagine the offices work as a play would have them work — the weeping petitioner, the moved minister, the thing set right by a fine speech.
It is not so. There is no place in the business for a lady to stand up and plead, because there is no procedure for it and no man who would know what to do with her if she came.
These matters move on paper. Sworn statements, documentation, the particulars properly lodged with the men whose office it is.
That is what moves them, and that is all that moves them, and I will tell you plainly that if your uncle's case has been properly documented and laid before the right desk, then it is being attended to, whether anyone weeps over it or not.”
Elizabeth’s features had paled a few degrees. “Indeed?” Even her voice sounded drained.
“It is so. The captives taken in this war, and even after it, are a known business. We are getting them home. Your uncle among them, in the ordinary course, if the papers are in order.”
Elizabeth’s face, as she heard this, was a complicated thing to watch.
He saw the relief first — a loosening at the corner of her mouth, a breath let go that she had perhaps been holding since a dinner table in Santander.
She had been right. Gardiner had steered her properly back in Tudela, and matters would already be in hand, regardless of how long it had taken her to board a ship bound for home to verify it.
Her face was crossed with a deep, private sort of vindication.
Harcourt had blithely told she was a fool for trusting her uncle’s advice and her own judgment, and she was now being told, by a man who plainly knew, that her judgment had been sound all along.
Her uncle's clerks, the proper channels, the documentation — the course she had defended and been laughed out of — was the right course.
But the relief was clouded by a pained twist in her countenance that he knew well enough to fear.
If no plea was needed — if she had never needed to stand up publicly as Mrs Darcy to save her uncle — then the necessity that had brought her guard down at Santander was gone.
She had let herself be his because she believed the saving of her uncle finally tipped the scales, making Darcy’s financial ruin but a side concern in the greater scheme of Gardiner’s safety and her own desires.
And now, she had just been told that scale had been tilted in error.
“Then it wants no help at all,” Elizabeth said. Her eyes had flicked towards Darcy… then moved out to the sea.
“I did not say that. I said it wants no theatre.
Help is another matter. A case may be sound and still sit longer than a man in a Spanish gaol would wish, because there are a great many sound cases and only so many hours in an office.
If one wished it hurried — moved up the pile, pressed with the ambassador, made someone's particular concern rather than merely everyone's general one — that can be done. But it wants the right hand on it. There is one man who could do it with a word, if he chose. Marchwood.”
Darcy’s eyes closed.
“Marchwood?” Elizabeth repeated. Her voice was hollow bones now, the interest and warmth in it gone gold and shaken.
“Yes, the Earl of Marchwood. He is Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, and the Spanish claims and such business fall very much within his part of it. A capable man. If your uncle's case were made his, he might move in a fortnight what may otherwise take six months.”
Elizabeth turned to regard Bramwell in some shock. “He has that much authority?”
“Oh, he knows the right strings to pull, to be sure. Though I will be honest with you and say it is likely unnecessary. The case will come right on its own, particularly if your uncle’s London house has raised the funds and put matters in order from their side.
Marchwood would only be the difference between soon and sooner. ”
“And how would one make it his?” Elizabeth asked. “This Lord Marchwood. Is he a man one may simply apply to?”
“One may apply to anyone. He receives callers at his house in Mayfair. Whether he attends is another question.”
“But how? What would make him attend?”
Bramwell gave a careless wave of his hand.
“Marchwood attends to what serves Marchwood. Like many others, I suppose, he has his own interests. He is a great landowner whose wealth has been increased in cooperation with his foreign undertakings; wool chiefly, with long interests in Spain — he has traded there for years, has a name there, and is by way of being one of the largest men in the English trade besides. There is a good deal of talk that he means to enlarge himself at home — that he is buying land, and looking hard at water and mill-sites, with a view to weaving his own wool rather than depending on the Spanish clip, which the war has made a chancy business. Whether it is true, I could not say. But it is the sort of man he is. He looks a long way ahead, and always to his own advantage, and he is very good at it. If you can show him that hurrying your uncle serves his interest, he will hurry your uncle. If you cannot…” Bramwell lifted one shoulder.
“Then he will be perfectly civil, but not exert himself unduly, and you will never be able to say he refused you.”
Elizabeth was clasping the rail with both hands now. “Indeed,” she said in a voice gone husky. “I have no means to move such a man.”
Bramwell turned back, as if suddenly recalling.
“Oh, but if memory serves, he has a daughter near your age. Fine creature, I believe my younger son had been in company with her a year or so ago, and spoke well of her. If the daughter of Lord Marchwood were to befriend Mrs Darcy, I think that might recommend you warmly to his interests.”
Darcy’s cheeks were scalding now, and he did not dare to look at his wife. He stared very fixedly at the sea, but he could sense the weather changing at his side.