The Colonel

by Beau North

  Bingley handed him a glass of whiskey and took a seat opposite him in the lofty-ceilinged room that served as his study.

  “What is it like then? You know I care for you, Richard, but you’re in my house, and you’ve upset my sweetheart.”

  “I am sorry. I should probably leave.”

  He knew he wouldn’t get far. Now that he’d seen her, he knew leaving would be impossible.

  Bingley cocked an eyebrow at him. “You won’t leave.”

  “You know, Will really does not give you enough credit,” Richard said, raising his glass.

  This seemed to amuse Bingley. “Tell me about it. But for what it’s worth, I don’t want you to leave. If you’re going to drop in and make a mess, I’d appreciate you sticking around long enough to clean it up.”

  Richard sighed. “He’s in love with her, isn’t he?”

  Bingley considered. “That’s really for him to say. But from what I’ve seen with my own two eyes, that does seem to be the case.”

  Of course that would be the case. How could Darcy not have fallen in love with her on sight? He certainly had. He shook his head. “What a disaster.”

  “Can I ask…?”

  “Why?” Richard preempted the question.

  “Well, I was going to ask how but I suppose why is the bigger question. Sure.”

  He stood and began pacing, trying to expel the last of the nervous energy keeping him awake.

  “How is a longer conversation. But as for why…” He swallowed the whiskey down in one. “I…wasn’t well. Sick in my heart and in my mind. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly and made a mistake. Maybe I was thinking clearly and did her the biggest favor I could.”

  Bingley frowned. “If I thought you really believed that I’d beat your ass right here and now.”

  Richard laughed bitterly. “I probably deserve a lot worse, Charles.”

  A faraway look came over Bingley. “The past has a way of catching up, doesn’t it?”

  Richard looked out of the window, feeling like an intruder. “That it does.”

  Outside, the sun was beginning to set, painting the sky in colors like fire. Richard wondered again where the hell Darcy could be.

  13

  May 22, 1949

  Netherfield House

  Meryton, South Carolina

  Richard looked up from Jamaica Inn at the sound of a car tearing down the drive. The clock over the fireplace told him it was one o’clock in the morning. With a sigh, Richard marked his place in the book and put it aside. A moment later Darcy stumbled into the room, a disheveled mess. His hair stuck out wildly; his shirt was untucked and dirty, the cuff of one sleeve ripped up to the elbow. Richard was fairly certain he spotted blood on Darcy’s lip and knuckles.

  “Have a nice reunion?” Darcy’s words came out slurred. “Was it everything you hoped it would be?”

  “Jesus, D. What have you been into?”

  “Trouble,” Darcy said, throwing himself into a chair and slinging a leg over the arm. He pulled a small glass bottle out of his torn jacket and took a drink, wincing.

  Richard sat forward, elbows on his knees. He’d hoped they could talk rationally, but that didn’t seem likely now. “Will—”

  “Women!” Darcy spat the word, pointing at him. “You never were very good with remembering their names, were you? Oh you never remember them, but you sure as hell make sure they never forget you.”

  How could he feel hot shame and cold rage at the same time? Darcy wasn’t wrong. Richard had forgotten their names, their faces, the pitch of their voices, and the sounds of their sighs. All had been lost to time and memory, swallowed by the black nothingness that had been growing inside him since he was seven years old. He got to his feet slowly, turned around a few times, trying to control the urge to hurt. Even knowing Darcy was drunk and heartsore, Richard could have spit in his eye for the reminder. He reached out to take the bottle from him.

  “I think you’ve had enough.”

  “Stay away from me, Richard!” Darcy shoved him roughly away.

  Richard’s heart sunk. Is this what it will come down to? The two of us fighting?

  He straightened his shoulders and glared down at his cousin. “William Darcy, get ahold of yourself!”

  “Richard Fitzwilliam, get lost,” Darcy said mockingly, making a face.

  Richard wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or throw a punch. He felt deflated, defeated, too anxious to rest until they’d come to some kind of détente.

  “What can you be thinking?” Richard asked, running a hand through his hair. “Do you have any idea how fucking crazy you look right now? What’s Charles going to say if he wakes up to see you like this?”

  “I’m guessing I look ready for the nuthatch, not that I give a damn what you or anyone thinks.”

  Darcy stood, tottering over to the window. It took a minute of fumbling with the latch before he was able to lift it. Richard waited in stony silence, afraid to open his mouth for fear of what he might say.

  “As it happens, I don’t care for your good opinion at the moment, Cuz. Or Bingley’s. Anyway, this”—Darcy waved a hand in front of his own face—“this is all his fault. Charles fucking Bingley. His fault for dragging me to this godforsaken backwater in the first place. He could have gone anywhere! Raleigh, Atlanta. But no, he had to come here. And then he got that sickness… Do you know the one I mean? The one where you can’t eat or sleep or act like a sane, rational person because you are so full of her? A fever in the soul, that’s what it is. Well, I guess I’m cured now, ain’t I?”

  Oh yes, Richard knew that fever all too well. It was only in the past few months he’d thought himself cured of it. Cured of her.

  “Damn you.” Darcy groaned. “Damn all of you.”

  “You can damn me all you want,” Richard said in a quiet voice. “Would you damn Elizabeth as well?” Elizabeth who had never asked for his love, who deserved so much better, so much more. She was not an icon made to sit atop a pedestal, not a symbol of what could have been, but a flesh-and-blood woman. He’d held her in his arms, felt her warm, smooth skin against his, tasted the salt of their intermingled tears.

  Darcy turned away, wiping his face with his arm. “Damn her most of all,” he said in a strangled voice.

  “You don’t mean that, D.”

  “Don’t I? I knew right from the beginning that it was a mistake to have any kind of feelings for her. I should have just done what you did. I should have taken her to bed and forgotten about her.”

  Richard was a sympathetic man but even he had his limits. White-hot anger blinded him as he grabbed a handful of Darcy’s shirt, pulling his cousin roughly around to look at him. Darcy didn’t know, didn’t understand, but Richard couldn’t think of that now.

  “Is that what you think, you son of a bitch? That I forgot? Would you like that better, you arrogant asshole?” He shoved Darcy away from him. It wouldn’t be enough just to hurt Darcy. The wound would have to be a mortal one. “Have it your way.” The words came out like ice. “Is that what you want to hear, Will? Fine. She meant nothing. Just another inconsequential fu—”

  His words were cut off by Darcy grabbing him around the waist and tackling him to the floor. Pain roared to life in the small of his back, a perfect bookend to the unrestrained fury that raged under his skin. Luckily—maybe for both of them—Darcy’s next move was to punch his lights out. He’d never know how close Richard had come to really hurting him.

  “Will you stop looking at me like that?” Richard snapped at his cousin, who couldn’t seem to stop throwing him guilty looks. He’d woken up with a splitting headache and black eye, still seething from his tussle hours ago. He was angrier at himself than he’d been at Darcy. The words he’d used to wound his cousin sickened him; his pounding head buzzed with shame and regret. Bingley seemed to think the whole thing funny, though Jane had seemed far less amused as she looked them over with the detached calm of a professional nurse. They’d brought coffee into the study and
decided to once again attempt what had been so impossible the night before—a rational conversation, just the two of them.

  “Richie—”

  “Shut up.” Richard cut him off. “I know I look like shit, possibly for the first time in my life. Don’t think I’m too happy about that. But this”—he gestured to his black eye—“I earned this.”

  Darcy sighed and flexed his bandaged fists.

  “Just tell me you didn’t mean what you said, Richard. For your own sake. Please tell me that.”

  Richard looked at him flatly. “I can see how you might think that. I know what kind of man I was before.”

  “Before her?”

  Yes. No. It went further back than that. He could trace this wasteland inside him back to an ordinary afternoon in 1924, the day he was thrown off his pony. He bit that back. Darcy was no stranger to the family history.

  “Before the war,” Richard corrected. “I remember how disappointed you were when they wouldn’t let you go. How full of myself I was. We didn’t know a damn thing. It’s not like it is in the movies, Will. All Captain America and Victor Laslzo singing La Marseillaise. In the end, it’s all burning and blood and shit. That changes you. You find you have to kill a piece of yourself just to make it to the next day. You saw it yourself when I came back.”

  Darcy nodded solemnly; his eyes turned back to memory. Richard picked up the cup of coffee that had been cooling at his elbow. “This is kind of a long story,” he said apologetically.

  “Go ahead,” Darcy said. “I’m listening.”

  In the end, he’d told Darcy most of the story. He’d left out the long afternoons spent lying in his bed, listening to her sing along with the radio, or the fact that he’d been writing her desperate, lovelorn letters since the night he left. He saw no need to rub salt in new wounds. He was exhausted by the time he was finished, excusing himself to go lie down before the party, but not before Darcy could ask, “So, what happens now?”

  He pondered that for a minute. “Isn’t that the question?”

  “I’m not so evolved that I would quietly step aside,” Darcy said. “Not even for you, Richie.”

  Richard nodded. “Nor would I expect you to. But whatever happens…it should be her choice, D.”

  “Of course,” Darcy said. “I never implied otherwise.”

  Richard raised his hands, palms out. “Pax, D. I don’t have the energy to argue with you right now.”

  Now, looking in the mirror, he wondered at his earlier calm. The black eye was not so bad as it had been that morning, but it was still an ugly sight, a boorish contrast to the elegant cut of his new suit. Richard grimaced and combed his hair into place. What are you even doing? You don’t stand a chance. His reflection didn’t answer.

  A light knock at the door was a welcome distraction. “Come in,” he called out.

  Jane Bennet peeked her head into the room. She looked stunning in a long gown of blue silk that seemed to match her eyes. “I just came to check on you. May I come in?”

  “Please.” He stepped away from the mirror and opened the door for her. She removed her long gloves and put them on the bureau.

  “Did you sleep today?” she asked as she gently prodded the bruises.

  He gritted his teeth against the exploring fingers. “I tried. No luck.”

  He nearly laughed when she took a small flashlight out of the pocket of her gown, but he dutifully followed the light with his eyes this way and that, up and down, feeling a little foolish as he did.

  “I don’t think you have a concussion,” she said quietly and then―“What are you going to do about Lizzie?”

  He was taken aback for a moment. “W―what do you mean?”

  Her eyes bored into him. “I mean, are you going to make this harder on her? It’s taken her this long to let herself feel something close to happiness again. I don’t want you messing that up for her.”

  He let the words sink in. “I…I only want her to be happy.” He’d never spoken truer words. Even if that meant happiness meant something else. Someone else.

  Jane nodded. “That’s good. Because if you hurt her again, those bruises will seem like a pleasant memory compared to what I’ll do to you.”

  Richard grinned. In another life, in another time, he could have seen himself falling head over heels for this radiant creature. Bingley was one lucky son of a gun. “I like you, Jane.”

  She smiled back at him. “Believe it or not, I like you too, Mr. Fitzwilliam.”

  “Richard, please. I only accept threats from friends who call me by my name.”

  “Richard then.”

  The party was a flawless event, with music and wine that everyone but the Baptists allowed themselves to enjoy. Even the weather was cooperating for the outdoor party, giving them a warm, clear night and a sky full of stars. No doubt Caroline Bingley, who was swanning around in a gown that probably cost more than the party itself, would have been proud if she didn’t consider every single person at the party to be beneath her. For all Richard knew, they were. People were seldom what they appeared on the surface. Maybe Caroline Bingley was warm and generous. Maybe Jane Bennet was cruel. Maybe Will Darcy wanted to be the life of the party. And maybe you’re not broken.

  He laughed privately and shook his head.

  “Laughing at yourself again?” Bingley stood next to him, greeting his guests and introducing Richard to the grande dames of Meryton society.

  “Always,” Richard said. “The fool thinks himself wise, but the wise man knows he’s a fool.”

  Bingley grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Sounds about right.”

  Richard laughed and looked back out onto the party, and there she was: her eyes fixed on him. His heart leapt at the sight of her with her hair pinned up and her arms bare. The young lady he’d known in Charleston had been replaced by…not an angel, that word was too ethereal…she was on and of the Earth. Her expression was troubled but not angry. She looked away quickly, a becoming blush touching her cheeks. His eyes were drawn to the loose lock of hair that curled down her nape. He’d kissed that spot once, a memory that made him suddenly flushed. He remembered the raspberry birthmark on her hip, the small constellation of three moles on her shoulder. He cleared his throat and looked away. Bingley elbowed him and nodded toward another woman. Jane Bennet stood with another of her sisters, speaking with a quiet intensity that made Richard think she was comforting the girl, who was pale and pretty but also silent, severe.

  “Isn’t she an angel?” Bingley said to him. Richard startled, wondering if Bingley could read his earlier thoughts and then remembered that most men just weren’t that original in their thinking. Women could be angels, sirens, she-devils, or whores, but how often did his sex allow that they could be all these things, or none? He’d known so many women in his life, and this had been a slow lesson even for him. Women weren’t just what men projected onto them. He looked over and saw Elizabeth speaking to a young man with a round, pink face who Bingley had introduced to him as John Lucas. He’d been as guilty as any man of projecting his own image of Elizabeth over the real person who stood before him. She was nothing so flat, so one-dimensional as that. He thought of his cousin Anne and her insatiable need for escape through his exploits, of Georgiana asking him how she would know if she was in love. He thought of Caroline Bingley with her hungry looks and cold eyes. Saints, sinners, virgins, whores―it was all bullshit―archetypes that should be tossed in the bin with yesterday’s scraps. Richard wasn’t proud of himself for this epiphany, because it shouldn’t have been necessary. He should have always seen women as his equal. Not better, not worse. Men, women…they were all a goddamned mess in one way or another. It was something he wished he could teach all men.

  He gave Bingley a sidelong glance. He pulled his friend aside so they wouldn’t be overheard.

  “You know, Charles… Angels can’t be touched.”

  Bingley made a face. “Something you’ve already tried, I assume.”

  “Fin
e, I deserve that. I just meant that Jane isn’t just this exalted creature. She’s a woman. She’s your equal.”

  Bingley looked at him like he’d lost his head. “Are you drunk? She’s not my equal. She’s far superior to me. Far superior to you too.”

  Richard raised his hands in surrender. “Without question.”

  “And as much as I’d love to stand here all night discussing women’s equality, I think I’d rather be dancing with my fiancée.” And with that Bingley walked away, leaving Richard standing there alone.

  All around him was music and laughter, dancing and conversation, and yet he felt set apart from it. Always apart. He remembered the sense of belonging he’d felt when his brother was alive and then again in those precious months in Charleston. It was what Richard wanted more than anything, to belong.

  He tried, he really tried to resist the pull, but he found himself drifting over to where Elizabeth stood talking to Darcy. He didn’t know what Darcy had just said, but he saw her lip curl in a lopsided smile.

  “A fine pun, sir. I never would have thought you had it in you,” she said.

  “Oh, I think it would surprise you what Darcy is capable of,” Richard said from behind her, making her jump. She whipped around and looked up at him, wide-eyed. There was no malice or pain in that look, only surprise, and he felt a gentle smile fall across his face.

  “Hello, Slim. You look pretty all dressed up like that. Care to dance?”

  She looked up at Darcy, her unspoken frustration so obvious Richard nearly laughed. Well I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit this one out. He took her hand and led her away, leaving a stone-faced Darcy behind them.

  Again he felt the shock of familiarity, the way his arm fit around her just so, the lure of her unclouded gaze. They fell into step with ease, as if they danced every day. Whatever else had happened between them, their bodies still recognized and gravitated toward the other, acting and reacting in perfect time.