Page 35 of Homeless

“It holds.”

“And he knows what it is? What you meant by it, and what you did not?” His eyes went past her to Darcy for half a second and came back. “Is it meant to hold, Lizzy, once you are clear of this country? Or to be undone the moment it has served?”

“Undone. The moment you are free and we are safe, it is undone, and no one in England the wiser. We were clear with each other. Entirely clear.”

Something in him eased, and grieved, both at once. “Undone.”

“Yes.”

“A marriage you mean to walk out of before the ink is dry. And he agreed to that? A man of his name and station agreed to be married and unmarried at your convenience?”

“He needed someone to speak for him as much as I needed the safety of his name. It is a fair bargain, Uncle. It is the only fair thing in the whole of this morning.”

“Lizzy, have you also thought of…” Her uncle’s eyes went back to Darcy, then he lowered his voice still more, as if he meant for even Darcy not to hear. “There is more to a marriage than a piece of paper. If you mean to be free, then does he… will he regard certain… liberties as beyond the bounds of —”

“We were entirely clear,” she repeated. “We, neither of us, are much good for one another back in England, but so long as we are here, I would rather trust my safety to a man whose dignity and reputation is his chief source of pride than some random soldado with a grudge.”

He shut his eyes. When he opened them, the fear was still there, only banked now, made usable. “Then it was well thought of, and quickly, but I would to God you had never had to think of it at all.”

He nodded faintly towards Darcy, then turned back and took her hands. “Lizzy, you should not have come here. I hid you so you would be no one to them. Nothing worth the asking. And you have walked your face into the one room in this town where every man wants paying —”

“I had to know you were living.”

“I am worth a great deal more to them living, and they know it better than you do. When they took me, they said it plainly — I am to write to the house in London and tell them where to send the money, and until it comes, I am kept sound, because a corpse fetches nothing.”

“Where are they sending it?”

“Estella.” He said it low, close to her ear, his back to the guard. “Do not ask me why there, for I cannot tell you — they named it, and gave me the pen, and I wrote what I was told. The house in London, the sum, the money to Estella. Nothing of where they take me. Nothing of when. Only that.”

“Estella is on the north road.”

“Is it? Then you know more of the geography than I was granted. Whoever holds me has something there, or wants something there. That is the whole of my understanding.”

“Then we go to Estella. Mr Darcy has letters of credit —”

“No! You will do nothing of the kind.” It came out sharp, and he pulled it back with a glance at the door. “Hear me, Lizzy, for you are not a merchant who will fetch a price. You are a handsome woman, and marriage, even marriage to a fellow as imposing as that one there, may not save if you make too much trouble of yourself. They have set my price at four thousand pounds, because that is what they believe a Cheapside merchant can be squeezed to raise. Four thousand. If a gentleman of ten thousand a year is seen chasing after me with my niece and a purse — asking, paying, letters of credit in his hand — they will conclude in a day that I am worth a great deal more than they asked, and the price will not stay at four thousand. And they will look at the man who paid it, and see a second Englishman, richer than the first, standing loose in their country with no one to protect him. You would not be rescuing me. You would be raising my ransom and handing them the next one in the same hour.”

“Mr Darcy has made himself a rather troublesome man to hold, Uncle. And if he can vouch for you —”

“Put any such ideas out of your head, for they will help no one. The money will be paid from London, by men who have done it before, through banks and papers, and never a face shown. That is how a thing like this is survived. Not by the two of you carrying gold up the north road like a lamp in the dark. You will not go to Estella. You will go to the coast, and you will go quietly, a plain married couple of no particular fortune. Every hour you are in Spain, you are a second Englishman with money, and a woman beside him worth taking to reach him. If they lay hands on him, they have you, and then there is no name and no priest and no God that helps you. Do you hear me?”

Her cheeks were hot with fear and shame, but she nodded. “I hear you.”

“That is not the same as promising me.”

“And leave you?”

The guard’s knuckle struck the door. One minute.

Her uncle did not let go of her hands. He looked at Darcy over her head.

“I cannot undo what a priest has done, and I have no hours left to learn your character. So, you will answer me one thing, and I will watch you say it. When it costs you — your purse, your business here, your neck — will you keep her safe?”

“With my life,” Darcy said. “It is a stranger’s word, and I know what that is worth to you. I have nothing better to give, or I would give you that instead.”

Her uncle looked at him for a long moment. Then he shut his eyes, and when he opened them, the necessity had won out over the doubt, because it had no choice.

“Go, then. Both of you, and quickly.” He crushed her hands once and let them fall. “And Mrs Darcy —”