Page 59 of The Marriage Articles

When it was done and the doctor gone with his instructions for the night, Richard lay in the bed in clean linen with his hair still damp. He looked, Darcy thought, like a man restored to the human race against his own expectation. Outside, the harbour sounds had thinned to the occasional voice and the water against the quay.

“That is better,” Richard said. “That is so much better that I forgive you the carriage.”

“You are generous.”

“I am. It is my finest quality.” He turned his head on the pillow. “They have written to my father, I suppose. My mother will come down from Scotland like a dose of salts. You know how she is.”

“I know.” Darcy did know. Lady Matlock’s affection showed itself in constant attendance, and when she attended, she attended without reserve. “They were in Scotland when your father’s express reached me, meaning to come on to Portsmouth. I shall write tonight and urge them to travel no further than Matlock.”

“You are a good fellow.” Richard’s eyes were closing. “She means well. She will sit by the bed and hold my hand and ask every hour whether I am feverish, and I shall be feverish from pure vexation. And then where am I to go, after? Not Matlock House. I beg you. My mother will fuss over me there until I cannot bear it.”

“Pemberley,” Darcy said. “It is quiet, the air is good, and there is no one in it who will fuss. Georgiana will read to you and I will admire your wound from a respectful distance.”

Richard considered this from within his pillow. “Pemberley,” he said. “Yes. You are not so bad a cousin as you appear.”

“I shall treasure your good opinion.”

Darcy left him and went down to the inn drawing room, where the inn-keeper had laid out paper, wax, and a decent pen. He sat to write to his uncle while the house settled around him.

My dear Uncle and Aunt,

I write from Portsmouth, where I arrived this evening and found your son in good spirits and as loud as ever. I have seen him and spoken with his surgeon, and I give you my report plainly. Richard has a wound in the leg above the knee, taken in action and cleanly treated, but worsened by the voyage home, and the wound is at present infected. There is a risk of fever over the coming days, and I will not conceal that from you. Barring fever, the surgeon is satisfied he will do well, keep the leg, and very likely recover the greater part of its use.

I have removed him this evening from the hospital to chambers at the inn, where my own physician, Dr Baillie of London, attends him from tonight, and where he is now bathed, laid in clean linen, and asleep. He and I have talked, and we are agreed. He will remain here a few days, until he may travel without hurt, and then come on with me to Pemberley, where he will convalesce. It is his own choice, and I believe it a wise one.

He wishes me to say that you are not to come south. Remain at Matlock. You are both of you welcome at Pemberley the moment he is fit to receive you, and sooner if you wish it, but there is nothing to be done here that is not being done. I beg you will not worry. I shall write again the moment there is anything further to tell. One copy of this is directed to you in Scotland, to be forwarded from such inns as you may use. A duplicate goes by express to Matlock, in case the first miscarries.

Your affectionate nephew, Fitzwilliam Darcy

He folded it, sealed it, and gave it to the inn-keeper with money for the express rider and instructions that a fresh horse be waiting. Then he sat a moment in the empty drawing room with his hands still, and let the day be over.

His own room was the next to Richard’s, and he left the door between them ajar. He undressed slowly, worn out in a way that had nothing to do with sleep, and lay listening past his own fatigue for any sound beyond the wall. There was none. Then a small stirring, and Richard’s voice, muffled and already half asleep.

“Darcy. Are you sitting up like a nursemaid?”

“I am not.”

“Go to bed.”

“Good night, Richard.”

“Good night. And, Darcy... I thank you.”

Darcy lay in the dark of the inn room, with the sea going out beyond the harbour wall. He thought of the library at Pemberley, of a kiss he had not asked the reason for, of how the question had ridden all the way to Portsmouth in his breast pocket beside the fear. The fear was folded away now. The question sat where it was. He listened once more for the next room, heard nothing but quiet, and slept.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Darcy answered the third of his steward’s letters at the inn table in the next chamber, with the door open between the rooms. Through the open door, Richard lay as he had lain for four days, with his leg propped on pillows and his fever low and breaking. He could not bear weight on the leg, and he resented the stillness more than the wound. Dr Baillie dressed the wound twice daily, and pronounced himself satisfied, which Richard took as a personal affront.

“He said satisfactory yesterday, and satisfactory again this morning,” Richard called. “I begin to think it is the whole of his learning.”

Darcy finished the line before he answered. “He is satisfied. You need not be.”

The reply from the next room was a sound between a laugh and a growl. Darcy signed his name, folded the letter, and carried it to the mantelpiece, where the sea air through the open window stirred it gently. Portsmouth lay beyond the roofs, all masts and noise. The smell of the harbour came up with the breeze, tar and salt and fish. It was not a pleasant smell.

He took his coffee into the sickroom and sat in the chair by the window. Richard had pushed himself half upright against the pillows and glared at his elevated leg with the expression of a man reviewing a subordinate found asleep at his post.

“Three days I have been telling you,” Richard said. “If I may sit in the yard for an hour, I shall mend the faster for it. The sun is out. I can see it from here.”