Page 32 of Homeless

“Visitors may be admitted briefly this morning if they come respectably and do not look likely to create a riot.”

“Then you shall stay here.”

She did not even bother to look affronted today. “On what authority?”

“On that of reason.”

“Which, as you know, has never been sufficient to govern me.”

“I am very sensible of the deficiency.”

“Good. Then we need not rehearse it.” She walked to the basin and began to unbraid her hair. “I must see my uncle. If he can send instructions, names, papers, or even curses to the proper quarter, I mean to have them.”

He took a step toward her and stopped, because Pilar was there and the tray still steamed between them, and because marriage, it seemed, did not come with a rule for every quarrel ready-made.

“If the prison is crowded with guards and riffraff, I do not choose you in it.”

“Choose away. I shall still be there.”

Elizabeth went to her valise, opened it, and drew out a fresh fichu and gloves. Her hands had quieted — they always did, the moment she gave them something to do. “What papers have you besides the ones you already showed me?”

“My card case. Two letters of introduction, one damp. A notebook. Very little.”

“The bond papers come too. And the belt.” She was still looking into the valise. “Everything comes with us. We do not leave a paper in this house that has your name upon it.”

“They are documents. They are not banknotes.”

“They are better than banknotes.” She shut the valise. “A letter of introduction from a gentleman in Derbyshire to a banking house at Madrid tells a man in this town who you are, who will pay for you, and how long he may wait to be paid. Vega would have read my uncle’s letters of credit before the afternoon had gone cold. Do you suppose he was reading them to admire the hand?”

“I do not suppose carrying a purse full of dubloons into a prison to be very practical.”

“You are not just carrying money, Mr Darcy. You are carrying an invoice with your own name on it and a note of what may be got for you. If the Spanish crown owes you money it would prefer not to pay, and someone might very well be thanked for making you disappear.” She drew on the first glove. “So we take it all, and if we are stopped on the road, you will let me do the talking before you reach into your coat and hand a stranger the paper that prices you.”

His attention had snagged on her hands at the fichu and would not come loose. “You are intolerable in the morning.”

She met his eyes over the knot. “I rejoice to hear marriage has made us candid.”

Pilar made another small burst of Spanish, this one more hesitant. Elizabeth turned. “What?”

The girl glanced at Darcy, the truckle upon which one of them had clearly slept, and then back.

“She says,” Elizabeth translated with care, “that a respectable married lady ought to go upon her husband’s arm if she means to be treated seriously.”

“Very well,” said Darcy.

Elizabeth would have preferred another two seconds in which to prepare for the phrase, the arm, the public, the whole machinery of appearing to have belonged to him long enough for it to be natural. She got none.

He picked up his coat, settled it onto his shoulders, and held out his arm as if the gesture were no more remarkable than opening a door.

“If they are to be convinced,” he said, “let them be convinced properly.”

She took it.

XII

Coin by Coin

The gaol had once been part of a merchant’s house, and still looked indecisive about its profession. The lower rooms were stone-vaulted and sooty; the upper windows retained carved lintels that were hardly even shot. Outside stood two soldiers who looked as if they had drunk their breakfast.