Page 46 of Homeless

“It is a smuggling corridor. The clerk is right, we would be prisoners or dead ourselves before we got to Bilbao. We will take your uncle’s advice in part, and not chase after him more than is necessary to ensure that he remains alive. We go inland to Estella and look to my claim. That is all that remains for us in the country.”

“You cannot mean —”

He took her elbow again. “We should discuss this elsewhere.”

The shiny-coated official, who had been listening from the doorway, now approached and addressed them in good English. “The señora is worried for her uncle, yes? He is with Don Ibarra?”

Elizabeth stepped back… a little closer to Darcy, though she chose to ignore the heat radiating off him as she drew in. “Yes,” she said with a slight nod. “You speak English?”

“I serve with many English,” he said with a tip of his hat. “I tell you, señora, Don Ibarra is no butcher. He is a… eh… man of business. That may comfort the señora.”

“It does not. I would prefer a man of honour.”

The official laughed. “There is no dishonour in business! Ibarra has men to feed, yes? They have families. The señora should listen to her husband.”

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes and sent a swift glance toward Darcy. A muscle ticked in his jaw, but he did not look down. Darcy stepped a little nearer, altering the geometry of the room so that she was less exposed to every eye in it.

“If we did try to follow, can they be overtaken?” he asked.

“The Encartaciones road is no place for gentle Ingles.” The official shook his head. “It is thick with uniforms who have learned that foreigners carry coin and that coin is… eh… patriotic when it is surrendered to the right hands. Don Ibarra travels under their protection.”

Elizabeth’s posture sagged… and she found Darcy’s arm braced behind her. She straightened again. “What are we to do? What happens to men Ibarra has taken?”

The official laughed again. “He will wait on the money. Have you money, Señora?”

She glanced at Darcy again. “In England.”

“Then you must see it is sent. That is all. Adiós, Señora.”

Papers and patience. The words proved prophetic before they had quit the building.

When they came out under the eaves at last, the daylight had flattened into a sticky, clinging sort of rain that did little to even drown the biting midges that had chased them in the door.

Darcy turned to her and began to speak, then suddenly found a cough. “You are… ah…” He gestured to her gown, which was already soaking up the afternoon rain. “You look… cold.”

She could not fathom why he suddenly refused to look at her, or why his face had gone red, but the peculiarities of one Fitzwilliam Darcy were the least of her furies. She clenched her fists at her sides and marched from the office. “I am murderous.”

He fell into step behind her. “That also.”

“One man entered as profit. One woman entered as respectable property. Spain has an ingenious way with ink.”

“Indeed, it does. But at least that marriage document has another layer of credibility now. It may, in the end, prove to be worth the price we paid for it.”

She stopped and turned to him. “Then you confess now that I was not mad to propose it?”

“No,” he agreed. “Only right earlier than I was.”

“Come, now Mr Darcy, I am not used to you capitulating so easily. I had readied myself to win an argument, yet you will not even draw your sword.”

He shaded his eyes from the rain, still curiously avoiding looking at her, and then pointed up the street to the inn where their luggage had already been carried up. “Some other time. You may depend on it.”

Elizabeth let him guide her, and for the first time, she thought she could look up at that stern visage she had disliked so well in Hertfordshire and find something of kinship with him. Little as they liked one another, he had done well by her, in two days of marriage.

But then, she had not honestly expected less. She had not married blindly. Desperately, yes. Improvidently, perhaps. But not blindly.

The innkeeper’s wife had one upstairs room left and hot water for a price that ought to have shamed a bishop. Darcy paid it without argument. By the time they climbed the narrow stair, rain was driving at the shutters, and Elizabeth’s grey merino was soaked to her stays.

The room itself was not indecent, merely… less than might have been hoped. A bed large enough for comfort only in theory. A washstand. A screen that promised privacy and would certainly fail to keep it. One chair with a rush seat that was already too far broken down to even support something as light as Darcy’s hat.