Page 44 of Homeless

“We need papers to travel further.”

Elizabeth let Darcy help her from the cart — a form for propriety’s sake, to be sure, not a necessity — and dusted off her skirts. “We have papers. We paid well for a drunken priest to forge them.”

Darcy reached into the cart for his valise as the carter came around to drag out their trunk. “And it will now need to be countersigned and recorded in Calahorra. Roads inland are more controlled, so we will need authorisation to proceed. We need to find the local authority and present ourselves, wherever he is.”

In Calahorra, that was a former merchant's house, inhabited by three clerks, two guards, one sweating official in a blue coat gone shiny at the elbows, and a waiting room full of wives and creditors and men who attempted to out-shout one another for attention.

She went in beside Darcy, wet hem and dusty boots and all, wearing her new respectability about her like borrowed armour. They waited some thirty minutes before it was their turn to step forward.

The clerk looked first at Darcy, then at Elizabeth, then back at Darcy. “Señor.”

“Salvoconducto,” he said. And that was where he gave up on his attempts at Spanish. “We require travel permissions inland.”

The clerk only stared at him. Elizabeth cleared her throat and translated. By the flicker in his eyes when she spoke, she judged that the clerk had more English than he preferred to let on. She translated, anyway.

The clerk took out his pen. “Sus papeles, por favor. ¿Con qué autorización viajan?”

Darcy looked helplessly to her, but he seemed to understand enough to present his license to travel. He laid it on the clerk’s desk.

“He wants to know on whose authority we travel,” she supplied.

“No one’s authority. We travel on lawful business and require safe conduct. Tell him that.”

She did, and the clerk blinked up at her. He made his objection in Spanish, and she translated. “The señor's papers are in order, but there is nothing with the señora's name. If she is to be entered on the pass as your wife, the marriage must be shown and entered here.”

Darcy made a point of looking imposed upon as he drew the marriage document out of his valise. He laid it down before the clerk with an air of affronted dignity.

The clerk examined the paper, then laughed outright. “No hay sello, y la tinta aún está fresca. Con prisa se casaron, ¿eh?”

Darcy had donned his most imposing look, but he slid his gaze to her. “Is his objection what I think it is?”

“He says there is no seal, and the ink is still wet. Like as not, he thinks we are some sort of fraud.”

The corner of Darcy’s mouth turned up… just a little. “Tell him I got you pregnant and we had to marry before returning to England so your father does not kill me.”

She whirled on him. “But that is not —”

“I doubt he cares. Just tell him that”

Her cheeks flaming, she did. The clerk laughed again, hooted something to the soldiers at the door, and two of them cheered.

Elizabeth covered her face. “They want to toast you. Heaven only knows for what.”

“I would rather leave that to the imagination.”

The clerk took out some sort of ledger and copied the information from Darcy’s travel permit, followed by Elizabeth’s name beside it. Then he put his own signature beside Padre Tomás's, pressed a large stamp on several papers, and handed them back, with a positively amused glance at Elizabeth’s middle.

“Aquí tiene. Todo en regla.” He grinned at Darcy. “Un hombre que trabaja rápido y corre más rápido todavía. ¡Salud, señor!”

Darcy tucked the newly signed and stamped papers back into his valise. “Dare I ask?” he whispered under his breath.

Elizabeth cleared her throat and turned into him to murmur, “‘A man who works fast and runs faster still. Your health, señor!’”

Darcy made a tight-lipped smile and tipped his hat, then offered his elbow to lead her out. But Elizabeth pulled him to a stop. “What about my uncle? Might he know something?”

Darcy sighed and turned back to the clerk. “Ask him. Say your uncle was entered under Captain Llorente’s escort this morning. Foreign merchant. English. We require the record.”

She asked, and the clerk spread his hands and answered. Records required authority. Authority required time. Time, from the look of him, also required money.