Page 54 of Homeless

He made a flat edge out of his hand and swept a sorted pile of copper coins to one side. “As you say, I wear a full collar up to my neck.”

“Mine is nearly there, but it does not seem to matter. I have bites in places I will certainly not be telling you about, and I daresay you have the same. You are just too stubborn to confess it.”

Darcy’s lips were moving as he sorted the remainder of his coins. He had cleanly lost the count twice now, because she kept swiping at her neck or her arms, and there was a loose fringe of hair ill-used by her bonnet and now clinging to the salt of her skin, and…

Aye, yes. Her skin. Yes, it did taste like salt, and a curse on his soul that he could not forget that detail. His eyes skipped up quickly from the coins under his fingers. She was wincing as she scratched something under her thigh, through the skirt of her gown, when she thought he was looking down. Yes, yes, looking down was a much better idea.

He swallowed and blinked at the dwindling pile he had laid out on the mattress. The silver was long gone. The gold was harder to spend, but it was going. For now, at least, the copper was keeping up the brave pretence of a reserve, but not for long.

He had come into Spain a rich man; Vega’s raid in Tudela had taken the bulk of it. After that, he had paid for bribes, lodging, food, a marriage, and more than a dozen checkpoints. Each expense had eaten the rest a real at a time, until he had almost nothing left but what he could not exchange or spend in the towns they had passed through.

His thumb came to rest on the last coin and did not move it into the pile. “I need to exchange the last of the dubloons.”

Elizabeth unfolded herself from the chair and came to stand over him. “How bad is it?”

“We can reach Vitoria,” he said, “or we can eat until we arrive in Vitoria. Not both, at this rate. And not at all, if the river makes us buy our way across it.”

“How do you know we even need to go to Vitoria? Perhaps you will find the commissioner, and he may even be able to advance…” Her brow furrowed, and she shook her head. “Never mind, it sounds even sillier out loud than it did in my head.”

He raised a brow. “Even if we do manage to find the right man here in Estella, and even if he admits he is the man with the authority to authenticate my claim, we will still need to make the coast afterwards. Unless you mean to make a permanent establishment here, among the midges.”

He said it just as she was swatting her elbow. “I do not understand it. My uncle was adamant that we should not be troubled by them in the higher country. Tudela was besieged by them, but we should have left them behind us by now.”

“Wet spring, hot summer,” Darcy commented as he swept the coins back into his leather purse. “We are near the river. You should be rejoicing at the notion of going to Vitoria, for it is farther north.”

“Yes, but Estella is where my uncle’s ransom was to be paid. London will be sending word, I may be able to learn —”

“That will not be for weeks, perhaps even months, and do not suppose you will be permitted to see anything they send. It will go straight to the hands of men who… well, suffice to say, it would be better if such men never saw you. No, we do what we can to forward my affairs and continue on to Vitoria, then Bilbao, and eventually Santander. Perhaps we may meet up again with the men who have your uncle when they come out of the mountain pass.”

She sat down heavily on the nearest surface… which happened to be the mattress beside him. “If they do come out of the mountains. I daresay they could stay there for years up in those strongholds.”

Darcy sighed and got to his feet. “That is not impossible.”

She looked up to him with an expression that was almost beseeching. “Do you think…?”

He thinned his lips. “They want their money,” he reminded her.

She closed her eyes and nodded, then kneaded her face with her fingers. Her skin had grown ruddy and parched from the sun, a little worse than his own had. New freckles had begun to sprinkle her cheeks, but they were mostly blended now with the day’s heat in her face. And something about the flush of travel, combined with days of too much walking and too little eating, had made her lips seem fuller by comparison. For a certainty, her eyes stood out larger than they ever had in Hertfordshire.

He cleared his throat and looked away. “Well. I shall see if the lady of the house fancies my gold in exchange for some wine and bread.”

She looked up. “For that price, you should be able to buy an entire hung beef.”

“I would settle for a spent laying hen.” He closed the door.

“Esto no se tramita aquí. Reclamaciones de guerra en la Intendencia.”

Darcy glanced at Elizabeth. Her jaw had set hard, and she made some sharp-sounding reply to the clerk, but he only repeated himself.

She sighed. “He says that sort of thing is not handled here. War claims are taken to the Intendancy.”

Darcy’s fist clenched behind his back. “Tell him we went there. The building was gutted, half-burned, and he knows that very well, or he would not have such a smug look on his face. No, do not tell him that last part.”

Elizabeth looked up at him. “Why not?”

“Because you are like to say something salty, and then we shall get nowhere. Ask him what happened to the papers and officials who were supposed to be there.”

She turned back, but he put his hand on her arm and stopped her. “And say ‘please.’”