Page 74 of Homeless

An hour later… perhaps a good deal more… she was awakened from a muzzy, drooling sort of stupor by a knock at the door. She blinked and pushed her face up off the pillow. It was damp and clammy from her tears, and she swiped at her cheeks. Swollen, and probably red and creased by the pillow. She would look an utter fright.

The knock came again. Darcy, surely. He had given her the key and left without it when she ran him off.

But when she opened the door, she found the widow who kept the house. “Por la Señora,” she said, offering a basket.

Elizabeth took it without quite understanding what it was. “Gracias,” she mumbled.

The widow looked pleased and said something about how the señor asked for some comforts to be sent up, and also that he had sent a message for his wife that he would be tending the mulas.

Elizabeth looked out of the window. It was fully dark. He was not tending any mules. He was hiding from her.

She closed the door and lifted the cloth from the basket. A fresh loaf of bread, still warm, and a greasy, very large skin of thin, cloudy wine.

She devoured the loaf first, which was only the size of both her fists together, inside two minutes. It was brown and coarse, and there was no butter or cheese for it, but it tasted like manna.

The wine was less appealing, but perhaps the more satisfying of the two. The first taste was sharp, aggressively so. She nearly gagged on it, but forced herself to swallow. It left a sour flavor on her tongue that was only washed away by another swig from the skin. This was nothing at all like the wine her uncle had come here to purchase. Rather, it was the rough, bitter drink of the muleteers.

And, with any luck, it would make her forget this day ever happened.

XXVIII

Rough Wine

The house had gone entirely quiet outside her door when, at last, it opened again. Apparently, she had not locked it. Or he had another key. Or it might not have been closed at all.

Elizabeth was reclining on the bed, the wineskin now more than half depleted and her mood less than half improved. Darcy turned to hang his coat and hat on a hook by the door and stopped when he saw her.

“You are still awake.”

She toasted him with the wineskin. “Are you sorry?”

He finished hanging his hat. “Perhaps you should tell me. Am I quite safe?”

Elizabeth rose from the bed and offered him the wineskin. “You will not be if you drink this. I daresay your gilded tongue has never tasted anything so vile in all your silver-spooned existence.”

He grimaced and took the skin. “Still insulting me, I see. At least you did not lace the insult with profanities.”

“The wine is its own profanity.”

He lifted the skin to his lips. At his first swallow, he coughed. At his second, his face contorted into a spasm of sweat and agony. He did not take a third.

“Good Lord,” he wheezed as he handed the skin back. “That swill has turned to pure vinegar.”

“Mr Darcy, the common man lives on this ‘swill.’ But I suppose you would know nothing of that, would you?”

“I may be forced to,” he retorted, with that face that said he thought himself clever. “If that clerk never finds evidence of my bond.”

“Ah! There it is. I wondered how long it would be before we were back to talking of your fortune.”

She tipped the wineskin and splashed more wine into her mouth before he could answer. It was rough, hot, and unpardonably welcome.

Darcy’s head came up. “Steady on. How much have you had?”

She held the skin by its spout so he could see for himself how loose it was. “You may command carts, clerks, and border towns if it amuses you. You shall not command my drink.”

“God forbid I should aspire so high.” He took the skin back from her, drained a short measure into his mouth, and swallowed with a grim sort of determination. “There. Proof that I stand in no judgment over you, Mrs Darcy.”

“I never said you did. From the smell of your breath, you already had some.”