Page 73 of Homeless

She lurched to her feet. “Then someone must go after them! How are they permitted to carry on with such lawless ways? Why is this tolerated? Captain, you said you had men at your command. Let us go after him!”

Ferrers looked to Darcy, but Darcy had no help for him. He suffered from an indecent combination of Elizabeth‘s rage and Ferrers’s experience, and helplessness rose in him like bile.

“Mrs Darcy, do be reasonable,” the captain urged. “The law is rather thin on the ground in these parts. War has left only scatterings and rumours of order. Even if I had the men to hand, which I assure you, I do not, for they are all wanted sorely at other duties, I would be quickly relieved of my command and ejected from the country for overstepping my bounds. We are suffered here by the graces of His Majesty, King Ferdinand. A troop of English soldiers marching into Basque country after a few dozen lawless men is rather a bad look.”

“I do not care about looks! My uncle was innocent. The men taken with him were innocent! Do you truly believe they will not be released when the ransom is paid?”

Ferrers thinned his lips. “I believe there may no longer be men to release, Mrs Darcy. I am sorry. Your uncle’s only hope is if he is believed to be sufficiently wealthy to fetch a handsome enough reward, that England may exert herself for him so that some live exchange will be demanded.”

“H-he was the wealthiest man in that inn… but one,” Elizabeth stammered.

“Did Vega know that?”

“He must have. My uncle had come to broker a very large wine contract. He is a merchant. Not only has he his personal fortune, but the support of a prestigious trading house. Word was sent to London. They made him write the letter himself! They wanted four thousand pounds.”

“In that case, Mrs Darcy, there may yet remain hope. Money, and by that, I mean a significant sum of it, is the single article that goes into the Encartaciones and comes out again with a live man tied to it. If they are persuaded that he is worth their trouble, then perhaps not all is lost. But there is nothing for you to do on the matter but go home with your husband. Make your case to the Foreign Office, and perhaps they will be of some service.”

Darcy saw her cheek ticking, the way her eyes hardened, and her knuckles turned white on the arm of her chair. And he began to pray she would do and say nothing foolish, but probably to no avail.

“So I am to go to London,” she said in a low voice, “and be a lady, and write letters, and take tea with people who might be brought to care whether a Cheapside tradesman rots in a Spanish hole in the mountains. Knowing he may be tormented or even killed, all for the impatience and greed of men, I am to go back to London and put on my good bonnet and wait in the anteroom of the Foreign Office. And that is what you call ‘help.’” Her voice crackled and warbled in a way Darcy had never heard. “You will forgive me, Captain, if from where I stand it wants a good deal to look like help at all.”

“It never does,” Ferrers said. “But it is help, all the same. It is, as it happens, the only help there is — which is why men in your uncle’s line often marry their daughters… or nieces… to men with a London bank at their backs, and thank God for the chance.” His eye came, once, to Darcy, and went back to her. “Which I take it is the arrangement here?”

Elizabeth glanced at him, and he tightened his lips as if to say, “Tell him whatever you like.”

“Yes,” she said, looking down at her hands. “Near enough.”

Ferrers dealt them the rest like a hand of cards — Burgos, then Santander, and a ship out of it, and a name at the mole who would carry the letter he sat down at once to write, and a great deal of hard, practical kindness. Not a syllable of it looked like it reached Elizabeth.

When they rose with the captain’s well wishes, she left it to Darcy to thank him. And then, they were out in the cold, blue shadow of the cathedral, with a road to the sea they could not take and a mountain stronghold they could not breach.

“Elizabeth?”

“Do not.” She ignored the arm he held out for her to take and pushed away from him. “Whatever it is, do not. I am in no temper to be comforted by a man whose only loss is a bit of gold!”

He ground his teeth. “You know very well it is a good deal more than… Elizabeth! Will you wait a moment?” He caught up to her and tried to touch her elbow, but she whirled and snapped her arm away.

“Do not lay a hand on me, husband. You have no part in this, so leave me be!”

He let her go. “You will gain nothing by fuming about it,” he said to her back.

“Then I will gain nothing!” She kept walking. “At least that is a situation I am familiar with.”

The widow who kept the rooming house met them in the passage and almost instantly stepped out of Elizabeth’s path. Only a fool would not have. Elizabeth took the stairs two at a time and got to the door first, rattled it against the lock, and paused only long enough for Darcy to drop the key into her other hand before she forced it into the hole and wrenched the door open.

Once inside, she ripped the bonnet from her head and flung it across the room with a howl of rage that probably sounded a good deal more like a sob. She put her hands over her face to muffle her gasps and told herself those were not hot tears spilling between her fingers. Only a bit of sweat and wrath from the heat of the day.

Behind her, she heard Darcy closing the door. “Shall I attempt to comfort you again, or would I do better to burn the building down?”

Her shoulders caved in, and she began to shake. “Just leave me!” was all she could manage.

There was a sigh, a brief hesitation, and the door opened and closed once more. When she turned around, she was alone.

And she was angry with him for it.

He ought to have known she should not be alone! He ought to have fought her, argued with her, and even shouted at her. Let her bang her fists on his chest until she broke into whimpers, then ordered her to sleep with threats of physical restraint if she refused. That would have been something, at least. This was… nothing.

A very empty nothing, with only a bed and a window to answer her.