Chapter 26 #2
Mrs Jenkins looked between them, and for the first time something like hope on Elizabeth’s behalf entered her face.
“If you go there, ask at the harbour first. Men remember passengers better when they disembark than when they board. There may be someone who carried his trunk, or directed him to lodgings, or heard him ask for a street. If he made a jest, someone may remember that too.”
Elizabeth managed a faint smile. “Then we must hope Papa was in a very ridiculous mood.”
“From all I have heard of your father, I believe our odds of that are good,” Darcy said.
Mrs Jenkins rose and went to a small desk near the window. She opened a drawer, searched among folded papers, and returned with a worn scrap on which a name and address had been written in a large, slanting hand.
“My husband had a friend in St Peter Port,” she said. “A Mr Le Marchant. He kept a lodging house near the quay, or did when my husband last spoke of him. I cannot say whether he knows anything of your father, but he knew Captain Jenkins and may remember the ship’s arrival.”
Darcy accepted the paper with a bow. “You have been more helpful than we had any right to expect.”
“I hope I have been helpful enough.”
Elizabeth stood, and after a moment’s hesitation, crossed to Mrs Jenkins and took her hand. “You have given me my father alive in this room. Whatever comes next, I shall be grateful to you for that.”
Mrs Jenkins’s composure broke only slightly. Her fingers closed around Elizabeth’s. “Then I am glad of it, Mrs Darcy.”
They left the house quietly, stepping back into the street with the scrap of paper in Darcy’s hand and a golden coin quietly placed into Mrs Jenkins’s.
The carriage waited at the corner, but neither of them went toward it at once.
Elizabeth needed the air, even with the harbour smells drifting through it, and Darcy seemed to know better than to hurry her.
For several minutes they walked without speaking.
At last, there was something of a direction.
Her father had not vanished somewhere between Longbourn and London.
He had not died on the London road. He had not been only a rumour in Portsmouth.
He had sat in Mrs Jenkins’s parlour, eaten at her table, made a child laugh, and sailed for Guernsey with Captain Jenkins.
Elizabeth held those facts carefully in her mind, arranging and rearranging them until they became both comfort and torment.
At last, their steps looped back to the carriage, but Darcy stopped before entering it. “Elizabeth,” he said gently. “Let us speak of it.”
“He was alive,” she said.
“Yes.”
“He came here. He went to Guernsey. And after that, we know only that the island is close to France, letters may not come, ships may be stopped, and storms may take men even when the ship survives.”
His expression did not change, but she knew him well enough now to see the care with which he chose his answer. “We also know he reached the place we must search next.”
She gave a small, unsteady laugh. “You are determined to be useful.”
“I hope so.”
“I do not know whether to be relieved or terrified.”
“Both would be reasonable.”
That nearly undid her, because he had not asked her to choose.
Elizabeth looked past him toward the busier end of the street, where the ordinary life of Portsmouth continued with no respect for the gravity of what she had just learned.
A cart rolled by. A woman called to someone from an upper window.
Somewhere nearby, a sailor laughed too loudly.
“I have spent months angry with him,” she said.
“Angry that he left, angry that he did not write, angry that he made everything worse by doing what Papa so often does, which is to disappear from difficulty and leave the rest of us to manage it. Now I find he may have gone somewhere dangerous, and all my anger feels very small.”
Darcy’s hand covered hers where it rested on his arm. “It is not small. It is only no longer alone.”
She looked back at him.
“You may be angry with him and afraid for him at the same time,” he said. “One feeling does not cancel out the other.”
The answer was so simple, and so exactly what she needed, that Elizabeth had to look away again.
“What if we are too late?” she asked. “What if he reached Guernsey and something happened before he could send word?”
“Then we will learn that,” Darcy said quietly. “And I will be with you when we do.”
The words frightened her and comforted her in equal measure. For a moment she could not speak. Darcy waited, his patience steady and grave, and Elizabeth loved him fiercely for it.
At last she said, “With luck, the answer will be found in Guernsey.”
“Yes,” Darcy said. “If it is there to be found, I mean to find it.”
“And I am going with you.”
He did not answer at once, and that silence was answer enough.
Elizabeth turned fully toward him. “Fitzwilliam, you cannot truly mean to argue with me about this.”
“I cannot like the idea of taking you nearer to danger.”
“And I cannot like the idea of sitting in Portsmouth while you go without me.”
“I would not be gone longer than necessary.”
“You do not know that.”
“No,” he admitted. “I do not.”
“And you do not know my father. You have heard of him from me, from Mrs Jenkins, from those we have questioned, but you have never met him. If he is altered, ill, thinner, older, dressed differently, or using another name, you may not know him when you see him.”
“I would have your description.”
“My description is not enough.” She softened her voice, because she saw what it cost him.
“If Papa is there, I may recognise him where no one else would. His voice, his manner, some ridiculous thing he says under his breath. Mrs Jenkins knew him because he sounded like himself. I am his daughter. I may be the best chance we have.”
Darcy looked down at their joined hands. His thumb moved once over her glove, a small, unconscious motion that betrayed more than his face did.
“I want to protect you,” he said.
“I know.”
“I have wanted it since before I had any right to want anything where you were concerned.”
“I know that, too.”
“And I have just married you.” His voice lowered. “I have had less than a week to call you my wife, and already I am being asked to take you across the water toward uncertainty and danger.”
Elizabeth’s throat tightened. She reached up and laid her hand against his cheek, caring very little who might see them from the street.
“You are not being asked to take me away from safety,” she said. “There is no safety for me in being left behind. Not while my father is missing. Not while you are gone.”
His eyes closed briefly beneath her touch. “And if I asked you to remain here?” he said.
“I would refuse.”
That made him look at her again.
“Respectfully,” she added.
Despite himself, he smiled. “That is meant to comfort me?”
“It is meant to be honest.”
“It succeeds.”
Elizabeth let her hand fall back to his arm. “I know you are afraid for me. I am afraid too. But I would rather be afraid with you than safe without you.”
He held her gaze for several seconds, and she knew before he spoke that he had yielded.
“At least allow me to arrange the safest passage I can,” Darcy said.
“Gladly,” Elizabeth replied.
“And allow me to be cautious once we are there.”
“I will welcome caution, though I do not promise silence.”
That earned a chuckle from him. “I would never ask for the impossible.”
“Wise of you.”
He drew her hand to his lips and held it there a moment longer than was necessary. “Then we go together.”
“Together,” she said.
He helped her into the carriage and followed her inside. When the door closed, the noise of the street dulled around them. Mrs Jenkins’s scrap of paper lay in Darcy’s hand, the written name and direction that carried the weight of everything ahead. Mr Le Marchant, St Peter Port, and Guernsey.
Elizabeth looked at the paper, then at her husband. “When can we leave?”
“As soon as I can secure passage and make the necessary enquiries,” Darcy said. “Not rashly. As we will likely need to wait for the tide, it may be some days.”
“At least we know now where to look,” Elizabeth said with a sigh.
She leaned into him, and he gathered her close at once. For the first time since arriving in Portsmouth, the search seemed to move again. If what they had learned was not entirely comforting, they had at least gained a direction to look. That was more than they had possessed that morning.
There was one source of great comfort, Elizabeth thought. Whatever waited across the water, she would meet it with the man she loved by her side.