“I would ask,” Darcy said coldly to the naval officer, “that you might keep your language under some regulation whilst there is a lady present.”
The seaman looked Darcy up and down. Darcy smiled pleasantly back at him, standing tall and firm, and unwilling to be challenged on this matter.
“Damnations, man, I am watching my language for her sake. Damnations isn’t a curse. It’s nothing like…” He blushed, which rather surprised Darcy. “None of that nonsense in a lady’s presence. Quite outside of what should be said to her.”
Elizabeth’s merry laugh rang out. “Captain, I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I have a quite particular and personal desire to be out of England soon as might be possible. Are we able to leave?”
“Set sail, set sail.” The captain busied himself for half a minute giving orders that Darcy was not quite convinced were in English, but the crew of the ship moved with alacrity, and the sails were unfurled, and movement of the ship started. A prim man of about thirty and five with overly greased blond hair and what seemed like a perpetual sneer stood at the rudder, occasionally calling out his own instructions to the crew. Darcy presumed him to be the harbor pilot.
“Damn — dash it, man.” The ship’s captain turned back to General Fitzwilliam, since he would have no further business managing the ship till they were out of the shifting and low waters of the Thames. “Ordering a ship hired for a regiment of the king to depart before time to help a tart leave England with her lover?”
“Sir, I will not hear Miss Bennet insulted,” Darcy said in a quiet voice.
“I did not insult her. What are you talking ’bout? Besides, why else would a tart and a gent like you flee so quickly?”
“Elizabeth is not a—”
“Cousin,” General Fitzwilliam placed his hand on Darcy’s shoulder, “I dare say that our friend here thinks that tart is the name you give the most respectable sort of woman.”
“Well… not the most respectable sort.” The sea captain winked broadly and in what seemed like a grotesque attempt at salted charm at Elizabeth, who blushed and winked back at him.
General Fitzwilliam pointed at Elizabeth and then said in a mighty whisper, “She bashed the head of a different cousin of mine in, and beat him near to death. This cousin is an earl, who wants to bring the law against her.”
“Oh!” The captain brightened at this. He now smiled at Elizabeth broadly, showing that two of his teeth were gold, and the rest tobacco stained. “You bashed in a true milord? What was he doing? A little handsy?”
“More than a little. I also broke his nose with my forehead.” Elizabeth tapped the fading bruise on her forehead. “A real milord too.”
The captain peered at Elizabeth’s forehead, and then he laughed gaily. “Damnations. Damnations and tarnations. Suppose that really be reason to get out of England fast and quickly. You hit him hard?”
“Hard as I could. I did break his nose.”
“I’ve seen him,” General Fitzwilliam confirmed. “Warms the cockles of my soul, it does.”
“Damnations and tarnations. Well, well, well. Was the stupid of a milord that gave me this scar.” He took off his hat to show them the thick line of the scar that went all the way back to the surviving fringe of hair in the back of his head. “By the sea, worthy reason. But still.” He turned to General Fitzwilliam. “Cost me a good deal to get the pilot here. Cost me a good deal.”
General Fitzwilliam had a blazing smile. He poked his finger towards Darcy. “Our good fortune is to have a patron present. He has been quite willing to tell me to hand him bills, and he’ll pay without asking. So he’ll give you a much better bottle of whiskey, and that bottle will have a dozen fine partners to keep it from being lonely, than what you gave to the pilot, and whatever else you need. Mr. Darcy here is your friend in that respect…”
Darcy rolled his eyes and sighed. He owed Richard a great deal, and in a way he owed this sea captain as well. “Yes, whichever Epicurean pleasures a reasonable sum of money can provide are yours for the picking.”
“Don’t be put off by that caveat!” General Fitzwilliam cried out. “He’ll consider in gratitude a quite unreasonable sum reasonable for at least a fortnight more.”
“Tarnations.” The sea captain bowed his head. “At your service, Mr. Darcy. At your service.”
By now they were exiting the controlled water of the dredged dock for the main line of the Thames River.
The Bow Street Runners in their caped coats and red uniforms at last ran up to the dock where the ship had been and they incoherently yelled for them to stop. Of course the ship did not, and they knew themselves the entire matter was much too late.
Mr. Blight joined them, and he looked straight at Elizabeth with a vicious snarl that made Darcy protectively put his arms around Elizabeth. There was something of a brutish borderer’s violence in the man’s face.
“I am quite all right,” Elizabeth said, unperturbed. “I have already downed him once. And he is there, not here.”
Mr. Blight glared across the water at them. He raised his fingers in an obscene gesture and spit into the rushing water of the Thames. He shouted something across, but it was too faint to be heard across the distance.
Elizabeth turned to Darcy, and she laughed exultantly. “Zounds, I hate that man!”
Chapter Eight
The February sun had already half set as the ship floated down the continuously widening Thames towards the sea. The buildings of London were left behind, and on either side was countryside, and eventually fens and marshes.
Elizabeth remained outside the afternoon entire upon the ship deck, with Mr. Darcy stood by her side watching her anxiously for any sign of a relapse, or faintness. Elizabeth feared greatly this would be her final sight of emerald England. And she knew not what next would follow.
If she dared not face the charge against her levied by Lord Lachglass at this time, when would be a proper time to face the claim of such a crime?
At least, Elizabeth smiled to herself, she spoke some French.
The wide river with Thames estuary opened up on either side. The bramble and trees lined the banks, mostly dense brown sticks grown high at this time of year. Elizabeth had read in journals that her father had subscribed to about the peculiarities of this large area where different fish than those in either the rivers or the seas lived, fish that could survive in both the salt water of the ocean when the tides came in, or the fresh (except for the sewage tossed into the river in London) water that poured out from the Thames.
The large cargo ship passed many fishing boats, whose busily working occupants ignored them. Other freighters worked their way up the river towards the greatest city in the world, and occasionally a faster ship, built for speed rather than efficiency, passed them on its way down to the ocean.
Elizabeth’s face was cold and chapped from the wind, but Darcy had found a thick blanket to wrap around her shoulders.
He kept her warm.
The reddish sun setting was a beautiful sight, the light gleaming almost painfully off the waves created by their wake in the river.
She had not been scared the entirety of the passage through London. It was strange. But now she felt like shaking and crying, and becoming entirely maudlin. She had not even killed a man, and she was safe, and she trusted Darcy to see she was cared for.
Elizabeth glanced from the corner of her eyes at him.
Darcy stood a few feet away, his powerful forearms propping up his chin on the rail of the ship. A slight manly shadow had appeared on his face. He had a thick head of rich dark hair, and a muscular neck. His face was carven finely, with noble and aristocratic features. He looked less proud when he smiled at her, but she liked the look of him now, as he stared out towards the seashore, thinking thoughts Elizabeth could not guess.
She remembered the smooth feel of his hands gripping her as she thrashed from side to side in her fevered delirium.
She had called his name in that fever. She remembe
red calling his name.
He turned to her, perhaps realizing that her idle eyes had turned to stare at his glorious features, thus missing the glorious setting of her last British sun for an unknown time.
And he smiled at her, that grin making him even younger than he had appeared when she had first known him as a Miss Bennet of Longbourn. It transformed his face, and made her breath catch. There was something in his eyes that made her heart race, and yet at the same time made Elizabeth to feel entirely relaxed, happy and calm.
“Miss Bennet—”
“Elizabeth,” she interrupted, shuffling consciously so that she stood just a fraction closer to Mr. Darcy. “You prefer to call me Elizabeth, and you have saved me so many times now.”
“Today was the product of General Fitzwilliam’s intrepid quickness.” Darcy looked back out at the passing riverbank sliding relentlessly away. “I ought to have brought him into the matter immediately. It was his relation to Lord Lachglass that made me hesitate, but…”
Elizabeth softly smiled at him. “You are far more my hero than he is.”
Darcy swallowed.
“You do not mind that I title you my hero? My champion. I expect you to slay any dragons I may face. General Fitzwilliam of course may be your second, and he can bring up a cannon from his regiment, but you will need to be the one who puts the final stab to the creature.”
“I would happily kill any dragon that might torment you. If only…” His voice faded away.
“Yes?”
“You are very much under my protection at this time. It is not… I cannot speak on certain matters while you are under my protection. But I will, again, and, and… I will then want you to know that gratitude has no place in such a matter. I have done nothing for sake of gratitude or because…”
“Fitzwilliam.”
He looked her deep into the eyes. They stood so close, and in the cold winter’s evening, she could feel the warmth of his breath brushing against her cheeks. An albatross leapt over them from its perch on a railing, cawing and flapping its wide wings.
Elizabeth smiled at Darcy. “I will say yes, and not for gratitude’s sake.”
“I ask you, say nothing, make no promises now. Once you are safe, and once you have some hope of making your way without a dependence on me, and—”
Elizabeth laughed. “You are such a dear man. But as you insist, we shall do such as you wish for the moment.”
They stood silent together, so close that their elbows and wrists brushed against each other. The night became dark and darker, and as they left the relatively tame waters of the Thames estuary for the open sea in the channel, the light faded completely, and no more was there sight of England.
All they could see was lit by the swinging brass lanterns of the ship that waved side to side with the rocking motion of the ship, and the brilliant spangled stars high above, as clear as on one perfect night in Longbourn, when she and Papa had taken the carriage late at night to Oakham Mount to test out a telescope he had purchased, and they were able to see the moons around Jupiter, and the rings around Saturn.
That night they had lied there together, with a picnic packed by cook for this expedition, on a warm summer evening, looking up into the sky as Papa told her stories about the constellations, and their meanings, and about the history of astronomical discoveries, from Copernicus, to Galileo, to Kepler, to Newton, to the more recent greats such as Herschel, Laplace, and Lagrange.
Tonight was freezing cold, the constant sea breeze bit through her, and though Elizabeth did not want to leave the deck, she shivered despite the heavy blanket Mr. Darcy had given her.
Fleeing England. Her home. Her life had been overturned and near destroyed. A peer of the land wanted her judicial murder. There was so much wrong.
Yet with the man standing next to her sharing this beautiful clear night, Elizabeth felt as happy as she had that night with her father.
*****
As it happened Elizabeth did not stay so happy the entire night.
Not long after they hit the open sea, the far worse rocking of the boat proved to Elizabeth that she did not at present have her sea stomach.
She’d been persuaded by Darcy to go into the galley where it was far warmer from those clever stoves that allowed sailors to heat the inner space and cook their food in the shaking seas without more than the slightest chance of lighting the tarred and oiled wooden decks aflame.
Within moments of entering the warm (comparatively) room in the back part of the ship — the stern, as the almost offended sailor firmly explained when she called it the back part — Elizabeth was offered a cup of hot grog as a proper welcome to a real ship.
The story had gone round the ranks of what she had done to the earl, and her use of violence both reduced the usual distance and deference men, especially men of a lower class, treated a lady with, and at the same time meant they thought of her with deeper real respect.
Elizabeth sat on her rolling seat next to Darcy and she half closed her eyes. She calmly sipped the grog and listened. She was terribly tired and cold from the day, and happily relaxed in a warm room with Mr. Darcy seated next to her.
Unfortunately when three minutes had passed from when the rocking of the ship increased enormously, she began to feel quite uneasy, and her skin became clammy and she felt dizzy.
Elizabeth shut her eyes, and wished the sensation away with all her power.
Something spun about her. She did not feel right. She pressed her hand against her sweat beaded forehead.
“Lizzy, Lizzy. Are you well? Jove, I should not have let you stand out so long. Not after your illness. You are so pale.”
Elizabeth clenched her hand to her stomach and stood. “I think I may be relapsing. I feel terrible. Though not like a fever.”
Darcy pressed her forehead. “No fever,” he said in a relieved voice.
The sailor who had given Elizabeth the grog cackled. “Ain’t nothing but a landsman’s stomach. You can beat up a gentleman, but can’t handle our lady the sea. But ain’t nothing to worry about. You’ll be sick today, but well tomorrow.”
Elizabeth nodded. She pressed her hand to her mouth, and her stomach churned inside.
“Outside, lady. Best off the stern side of the ship. Don’t want to hurl out when the wind is blowin’ in your face. That be right unpleasant. You believe me.”
Elizabeth believed him.
She hurried out back onto the cold deck, with Darcy holding her hand and helping to guide her. She saw the side of the deck and ran, noting from the corners of her eyes at least two dozen sickly pale men from General Fitzwilliam’s regiment leaning over the railings and staring sickly out at the sea as if life had betrayed them unexpectedly.
She barely reached the edge when the vomit hurled out. And then the acid came up again, and out.
Her throat burned from the pain of that. She stared out at the sea behind them, the sliver of the moon high in the air. The deck lanterns of another ship swung perhaps half a mile away. Her forehead was so cold and sweaty but she did feel much better with all of that out of her stomach.
Why did anyone ever voluntarily go sailing if this was considered a natural and normal part of the process?
A thick horse-hair blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, and then, after a moment of hesitation, Darcy put an arm around her, holding her against his side. “Elizabeth, do you feel better?”
She took in deep shuddering breaths, and then turned to smile at Darcy. “A little.”
He handed her his handkerchief, and she gratefully wiped around the edges of her lips, getting rid of any remains. She could not see his eyes and could barely see his face in the flickering light of the lantern. But his arm was strong and warm, and she was very glad he was here with her. She snuggled closer to his body and closed her eyes.
“Can’t go back inside yet,” she said. “Need the cold breeze, better than the sick stomach feeling.”
Darcy murmured something soft and comforting, and held h
er close.
Elizabeth closed her eyes, and she concentrated with each breath on Darcy’s strong manly scent as it mingled with the salty wind.
Darcy kissed the top of her head, and he whispered something to himself that Elizabeth could not hear. But the sound of his voice made her, as he always made her, happy.
They both knew the love which bound them together. They both knew that their future would be the two of them together. It was an unspoken thing; it waited for the right moment, a moment when Darcy felt his duty of honor to protect her had been fulfilled. But if he waited too long for such a moment, Elizabeth thought to herself saucily, she would just use her arts and allurements to convince him that it was time.
Chapter Nine
Lord Lachglass stood in the alcove of a mullioned window in his large townhouse. The light from the afternoon sun fell on his back, keeping his face and his broken nose in shadow. Lachglass kept his face impassive as Mr. Blight snivelingly sniveled out his report.
He always kept his ruined face still and impassive now, because it hurt less. And Lord Lachglass tired of the taste of his own blood occasionally dribbling out the back of his nostrils and down his throat.
Why did he keep a man like Blight as his man of business if Blight couldn’t do what was demanded? Spitey Blighty had uselessly trailed the carriage, and waved Miss Bennet a fare-thee-well, as she and Mr. Darcy sailed away. With his cousin Soldier Dickie— Lachglass’s mind, like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand, pushed all thought of General Fitzwilliam away. Don’t remember how he looked. Soldier Dickie wouldn’t ever really kill you, Aunt Fitzwilly loves me too much to let her son do that.
Mr. Blight finished. Spitey Blighty.
The man of business observed his still master, who carefully breathed through his mouth. Blight’s beady eyes looked vaguely worried. He was clearly angry himself at his sniveling failing. Blighty’s cheekbone had not broken, but there was still a giant swollen blue bruise, which made the scar swell up grotesquely. Blight had told Lachglass his father had cut that scar in his face before he killed the man. Lachglass did not believe that story though.
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