Chapter 27
Fitzwilliam Darcy
In the end, the passage to Guernsey took two days to arrange and another two to endure.
Darcy had never known two days to feel so long.
Every hour brought some new delay. One captain would not sail in uncertain weather.
Another had a vessel Darcy would not trust with Elizabeth.
A third crew was too eager for his money and too vague about its business.
Even the tide seemed determined to prove that rank and fortune could not hurry everything.
He used the period of waiting as best he could. He sent letters back to London and Longbourn, placed Mr Gardiner’s solicitor in possession of what they knew, and made arrangements for their return before they had even left.
Elizabeth bore the delay with outward composure, but he saw the strain beneath it.
His new wife read and reread Mrs Jenkins’s scrap of paper until the creases deepened.
She asked after the weather more often than the weather deserved.
She slept badly, though she claimed otherwise, and when she thought herself unobserved, her hand went again and again to the reticule where she had placed a small notebook with the few details they possessed: Captain Jenkins, Mr Le Marchant, St Peter Port, Guernsey.
Darcy did not tell her to be patient. He would have had no wish to hear such a useless instruction himself.
On the second morning, he secured passage on a small, well-kept vessel under a captain who seemed neither reckless nor timid, which Darcy had decided was the best one could hope for in a man responsible for carrying them across the water.
Elizabeth stood beside him at the harbour while their trunks were taken aboard, her cloak drawn close against the wind and her face turned toward the sea.
“We are really going,” she said.
“We are.”
“I thought I should feel better once we had a ship.”
“And do you?”
“No,” she said. “But I feel less useless.”
Darcy took her hand and helped her aboard, then caught her up in a quick, tight embrace. A year ago, he could not have imagined publicly embracing a woman, but to judge by the soft smile Elizabeth gave him afterwards, they both felt better for the indulgence.
The crossing was not severe, but neither was it comfortable.
The first day was all motion and salt air, the vessel rising and falling beneath them with a rhythm Darcy disliked more with each hour.
Elizabeth was pale before noon, though she refused to admit it until he put a cup of weak tea into her hand and told her, very calmly, that he had married her too recently to permit her to expire through pride.
“That is an unromantic reason to preserve me,” she said wryly.
“It is not my only one.”
She smiled at that, if only faintly, and drank the tea.
The second day was worse than the first. The novelty of departure had passed, and Guernsey still seemed too far away.
Elizabeth bore the discomfort without complaint, but Darcy saw how little she ate, how often she looked toward the horizon, and how tightly she held the rail whenever the vessel shifted beneath her feet.
More than once he wished he had left her safely in Portsmouth, and each time he knew the thought was useless.
She would not have forgiven him for it, and he would not have forgiven himself if he found her father and she was not there to see it.
When land came into view, she stood motionless beside him.
The captain pointed ahead. “St. Peter Port.”
Elizabeth did not answer. Darcy looked from the harbour to his wife and saw hope and fear move across her face together.
The island had ceased to be a word on a scrap of paper.
It was real now, close enough to see, and somewhere upon it Thomas Bennet had either passed through, waited, suffered, vanished, or died.
Darcy did not offer comfort. Not yet. There were moments when comfort only made fear feel foolish, and Elizabeth’s fear was not foolish at all.
Once ashore, they went first to the local authorities, carrying Mrs Jenkins’s paper, the name of Captain Jenkins, and every description of Mr Bennet they had repeated for days in Portsmouth.
The reception was courteous enough, but discouraging.
They were sent from one room to another, then from one official to another, each man more willing to be sympathetic than able to be useful.
A ledger was opened. Names were checked.
A second ledger was fetched from a locked cabinet and proved no better than the first. Elizabeth stood beside Darcy through it all, answering the same questions until even his patience began to thin.
Yes, her father was English. Yes, he was a gentleman. No, he was not a merchant. No, he had not written. No, she did not know what business had brought him to the island. Yes, he possessed a dry manner. No, that was not the sort of detail one generally found in a harbour record.
One clerk, a thin man with tired eyes and ink on his cuff, looked genuinely sorry when he closed the final ledger. “I find no Thomas Bennet of Longbourn,” he said. “Nor any Bennet under a similar description.”
“He may not have used his name,” Darcy said.
“He may not. Many do not.”
Elizabeth’s hand tightened on Darcy’s arm. “Would there be a record if he died here?”
“There ought to be,” the clerk said.
‘Ought’ was rapidly becoming one of the least comforting words in the English language.
A second official, older and less inclined to soften unpleasant possibilities, listened to the description again and tapped one finger against the desk.
“If the gentleman was without papers, without local friends, or unable to explain himself, you might inquire at the prison.”
Elizabeth turned toward him. “The prison?”
“It is not a pleasant suggestion, madam, but it is sometimes a useful one. Men thought to be thieves, vagrants or spies have been known to find their way there until someone better informed comes to claim them.”
“My father is not a thief or a spy.”
“I do not say he is. I say that a stranger may be mistaken for many things when suspicion is already looking for somewhere to settle.”
Darcy asked for the jailor’s name and directions before Elizabeth was required to ask anything more.
The prison stood some distance from the better streets, in a part of town where the smell of the harbour gave way to damp stone, narrow lanes, and long confinement.
Elizabeth said nothing as they approached.
Darcy could feel the effort it cost her to keep walking, but she did it, her hand firm on his arm and her face pale beneath the brim of her bonnet.
He would have spared her this place if he could. Since he could not, he made certain his own expression gave nothing away.
The jailor, Mr Corbin, was a broad man with heavy shoulders and a face made for suspicion. He looked at Darcy’s coat first, then Elizabeth’s face, and only after that seemed to decide they were some portion of his attention.
“You are looking for a prisoner?” he asked.
“For a gentleman who may have been taken up here under some suspicion,” Darcy said. “Mr Thomas Bennet. English. From Hertfordshire.”
Mr Corbin scratched at his jaw. “We have Englishmen enough.”
“This one would be older, though not elderly,” Elizabeth said. “He would have a dry manner of speaking. He is fond of saying alarming things very calmly and making other people decide whether he is serious.”
At that, the jailor’s eyes shifted toward her with more interest.
Darcy saw it at once. “You know such a man?”
“I know a man who talks more than is wise for a fellow behind bars,” Corbin said. “Says little that helps him and much that annoys everyone else.”
Elizabeth drew in a careful breath. “What does he look like?”
“Thin. Grey at the temples. Gentleman’s hands, though not gentleman’s clothes now. Looks at a man like he has already found him wanting and is only waiting to be proved right.”
Darcy felt Elizabeth’s hope move through her before she spoke.
“That sounds like him,” she said.
“I make no promises,” Corbin replied. “Names are not always names here, and men who are taken up do not always give them truly.”
“May we see him?” Darcy asked.
Corbin looked at him for a long moment. “That sort of thing can be arranged.”
“For the lawful fee?”
The jailor gave a short laugh. “For the fee that makes it worth arranging.”
Darcy did not look at Elizabeth. He took out his purse and counted money into Corbin’s hand with as little expression as he could manage. The man weighed it in his palm, considered asking for more, and apparently decided that greed had already done well enough for one morning. “This way.”
The passage beyond was narrow, dim, and close with the smell of damp stone, old straw, and too many men held too long in too little air.
Elizabeth’s grip tightened on Darcy’s arm, but she did not falter.
He wished, with sudden sharp anger, that Mr Bennet could see what his absence had brought his daughter to endure.
Then he was ashamed of the thought. A prison was not a place for tidy judgments, and he did not yet know enough to make any.
Corbin led them past two doors, down a short flight of steps, and along another passage where the light came from a single high window. Somewhere deeper inside the building, a man coughed. Somewhere else, another laughed once and then fell silent. Elizabeth had gone very still beside him.
The jailor stopped before a barred cell. “There,” he said. “If that is your gentleman, you may tell him he has better friends than he deserves.”