Page 45 of Tempted (Heart to Heart Collection #2)

Chapter 45

Matlock April 1901

D arcy waited for the surgeon to open the door to Richard’s room. It was not fear of his cousin’s state that made him pause—it was terror of himself, his own face and reactions to the man who was husband to his heart’s better half.

The surgeon did, at last, emerge to Darcy’s knock, and he cut a polite bow. “The colonel is awake now if you wish to speak to him.”

“How is he?”

“Well, the fever is still upon him, though considerably less so than it was. He is refusing more morphine, so he is in his right mind more often than not now.”

“And what of his mind? How sound is it?”

The surgeon frowned. “That is a harder question. Only time will tell, Mr Darcy, but he has been asking rather urgently for you since morning. I believe something troubles him deeply, and just relieving that burden will prove a cure of sorts.”

Darcy looked long and sceptically at the door. Elizabeth had been with Richard earlier. His aunt had told him... and in the next breath, she had warned him to stay away, not to race to her rescue. Because, presumably, Elizabeth did not need to be rescued from her own husband. It was a bitter hour that he prowled the halls until he heard her depart Richard’s room, going immediately to her own. He had not spoken to her at all.

There was nothing for it. Things must be said, trials canvassed, history and the future disseminated. If Richard were agitated now, he would only grow more so with delay. He thanked the surgeon and opened the door, bracing for the hardest conversation of his life.

The bed had been turned—sensibly, because this way, Richard could see anyone approaching from his good side. Darcy wondered if that was at Elizabeth’s suggestion, for surely the earl would not think to disrupt the established order of the room for such a consideration.

His cousin was propped up on a pillow and roused to full alertness at the sound of his footsteps. He grinned. “About time, old chap.”

Darcy lowered himself into a chair. “You look better than twelve hours ago. Feeling any stronger?”

Richard tried to lever himself up higher, and the tension in his voice belied the ease of his expression of a moment ago. “Darcy, you have to help me get out of here. Reginald will never hear of it, but you have more sense. Every day I spend here, and every person who hears of my presence hastens my hanging.”

“Hanging!” Darcy gaped at him. “Then it is true—you were not a prisoner. You were running, a deserter!”

Richard’s eye glittered in sudden fury. “How dare... Say that again, and I will club you in the mouth!”

“If you were not a deserter, why are you in fear for your life?”

Richard shifted and propped his arm on the pillow. “Because they think I am a traitor. I’m not, Darcy, but if caught, I would not give two bits for my life.”

“But why?”

“Kitchener and his camps.” Richard sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“During the ambush at Roodewal, I took some shrapnel to the eye. When the Boers ranged the field the next morning, I was unconscious from pain, covered in blood and filth, and would likely have died of infection in a day or two. A ranking officer—I shall not tell his name—had me taken to his tent and tended as one of his own men. The reason, he told me later, was because he had seen me during the battle trying to help my men above myself, and I suppose he thought my life worth sparing.”

“So, he turned you? Asked you to spy on your own countrymen?”

Richard snorted. “Adorable, Darcy, how simple you think everything is there. No, I was quite as much a prisoner as any other British soldier, but I was imprisoned alone for medical attention, sometimes eating at the table of my enemy. It took two months, but I fairly recovered and was about to be sent to the main prison camp. Then...” An agonised sigh left him. “Robertson’s men conducted a raid on the Boer settlement. They took everyone—women, children, elderly and infirm. Rounded them up in a camp outside Pretoria and sent word to the men that they could have their families back, if they laid down their arms.”

Darcy stroked his jaw. “I heard about this. A dirty sort of leverage, capturing women and children.”

Richard grunted. “My Afrikaner benefactor was mad with rage and grief. His family were among those taken, and one night he marched up to me in a frenzy, demanding—not asking, but demanding—my help in freeing them, in exchange for my liberty. Of course, I could not refuse, even if all I gained was a chance to run.”

“What did he expect you to do? Negotiate the release? Did he mean to trade you?”

“Hardly. I am not that valuable, and as I said, he was a high-ranking officer. His family would be the last released and the first to be killed if Kitchener had pleased it so.”

“Good Lord,” Darcy breathed.

“Aye, we prayed that often. My... friend, I suppose, for despite his personal beliefs I found him to be an honourable chap and a reasonable man, too—we shared more drinks than I ought to confess. He desired me to infiltrate the guard and effect the release of his wife Annie and his four children. To cut a long story excruciatingly short, I was successful, but I was seen and fired upon. They called me by name, Darcy…. and a British corporal died in the escape. After that, I could not go back to my own ranks unless I bore my benefactor’s head on a platter.” He leaned his brow on his hand. “A thing I refused to do.”

“So... where the devil have you been? All these months!”

“Skipping across Africa, more often than not begging help from traders and smugglers and trying to stay ahead of any British soldiers.”

“And you could not have found a way to send word? We thought you dead. I even went to Pretoria looking for you!”

Richard lifted his head. “You did? Of course, you did. I oughtn’t to be surprised. That is why, Darcy—if you ever think to ask me why I trust you with my life, or with hers —”

“Before we speak of that,” Darcy interrupted with a pained grimace, “tell me how you got out of the country.”

“Oh, as to that, the man I spoke of proved a resourceful ally. He tasked a commando in his forces with my safe extradition from South Africa. He saw me as far as Victoria Falls, and I was only shot at half a dozen times by my own countrymen.” He snorted. “I tell you, Darcy, nothing will dishearten you like that. A man starts to question everything.”

“Such as?”

Richard covered his mouth and heaved a broken sigh. “Do you know how long the horses last there? Within a month, most of them are dead. Every bloody one of those noble animals I uprooted from the States lies somewhere out on the Transvaal, little more than bleached bones now. You think that does not crush a man, seeing those poor beasts suffer and knowing you were the cause of it? Try watching soldiers in your company, mere boys, most of them, sweating out the last of their life’s strength in a delusional nightmare with no possible cure. Or seeing the man beside you drop mid-sentence with a sniper’s bullet in his back. All for a strip of land that happens to be beneficial for trade! It is enough to make an anarchist out of the most loyal patriot.”

Darcy pursed his lips. “Richard, you should not excite yourself overmuch just now.”

“Excite myself! These sentiments are hardly fresh,” he retorted bitterly. “I’ve done with the Army, with Britain and her Empire, with the whole blasted world. I’d like nothing better than to catch a steamer to Greenland and take up whale fishing or disappear into the Nordic frontier with a pack of sledge dogs. Someplace I will never be seen again. It is just... I suppose I have Elizabeth to think of. I wonder if she would care for Switzerland.”

Darcy’s gaze dropped to the floor, and he raked fingers into his hair. “Richard, I cannot advise—”

“You must have got to know her by now. Bully of a girl, isn’t she?”

Darcy’s voice refused to cooperate. He opened his mouth and only succeeded in blinking at the whiteness of the window as his eyes blurred, and his throat ran hot and useless.

“Did she... did she tell you how we met? A bit of her story?”

Darcy groaned out an approximation of a response and managed to nod. “Everything.”

Richard’s face brightened in relief. “I know it is strange, marrying a girl in a moment like that, but I figured I would never regret it. Anyway, I honestly thought she would do well enough after I left. She told me a bit earlier, about why she had to leave... Do you know, she said she wrote to me, but I never got the letter. They must have opened it after I had to run—hoping to find me that way, I suppose.”

Darcy nodded silently. Yes, the Army would have tried to track Richard by learning where his wife was.

“I wish I had seen the letter!” Richard continued. “The things that poor girl has suffered! I think I must have dropped off in the midst, so I suppose I shall have to ask her again. Did she tell you any of that?”

“I—I know all about her.” Even how soft she was in his arms, the way her lips seemed formed for his own. How she knew his most private of thoughts, how she could light up a room with one of her saucy quips or give rest to a stricken soul with the barest caress.

“You probably know my wife better than I do.” Richard craned his neck as if to stretch it, then gazed up at the ceiling. “It won’t be an easy life for her,” he confessed soberly. “She cannot go back to America, and I am not safe anywhere in the Empire. Tell me honestly, Darcy. Can she do it? What is your feeling on the matter? You know, a wife was the last complication I expected, but I cannot very well leave her. And to be perfectly honest... well, a man wants a woman to cradle his head from time to time, and she will make a damn fine wife. By-the-by, did you ever marry Anne?”

Darcy shook his head, and his voice emerged as a rough, fragile thing. “Richard, these questions of yours—I am not qualified to answer them.”

“But you will help me, won’t you? Before you run to my brother and it becomes a family brouhaha, I mean. Let me quietly kiss my mother and board a train for the coast before anyone comes looking for me!”

“What, and send for Elizabeth when you have settled?” Darcy snapped in agitation.

“No, I rather hoped she would come with me. It only makes sense, after all. You all have sheltered her long enough, and I am grateful for it, but—”

Darcy jerked from his chair and paced away. “You can barely sit up in your bed! Heaven only knows if any of what you are telling me is true, or the result of some fevered hallucination.”

Richard’s countenance flashed dismay, and his lip curled. “Does this look like a hallucination?” he barked, stabbing a finger at the bandaged orb where his left eye had once been. “What about this?” He jerked down the front of his nightshirt, exposing more shrapnel scars, slashes that looked like razor cuts, and one gnarled pit in his shoulder. “That is an English bullet there, Darcy. Still buried under my collarbone, and it aches like the devil whenever the rain comes. Does that look like a hallucination to you?”

“You are only proving my point. You are so battered in body and spirit I would not trust you to walk across the house, let alone board a ship. You expect me to help you strike out on your own? Take her off on some misadventure on the far side of the globe, where neither of you will ever be seen or heard from again? Insupportable!”

“I asked you to help save my life, Darcy. Thought that might mean something to you.”

Darcy clenched his fists, his shoulders bunched and a hundred protestations and accusations boiling in his breast. “More than you will ever understand, but helping you leave…” He shook his head and turned around, crossing his arms. “There must be another way.”

“There is, if you happen to be good friends with King Edward. No? Then for God’s sake, man, do me this one last service. Or if you will not do it for me, for all the old days between us, do it for her .”

Darcy looked over his shoulder. “You mistake me. She is the reason for my refusal.”

“Then you are a witless pig. I thought better of you, Darcy. I looked for you to be the one man I could trust, who might think of my best interests instead of his own.”

“And you think dragging a woman you scarcely know around the world, always hiding and living in hardship, subjecting her to the worst kind of uncertainty and loneliness, the best answer?”

“I would protect her,” Richard muttered defensively. “And besides, she is tougher than you know.”

Darcy rounded on his cousin and set his fists on the edge of the bed, staring down into the face of a man dearer to him than life. “I know precisely how strong she is. And I know it would not be you protecting her , but the reverse. You have no business asking it of her!”

“What do you expect me to do? Leave her here? A fine thing that would be!”

Darcy stood back. He was panting, his blood coursing hot through his limbs, and, unfortunately, his tongue. “What were you going to do if we had never found you? Disappear forever, with no one the wiser? You did not mean to look for your wife, I warrant.”

Richard frowned. “No, but I did not know she was in trouble.”

“She was not, until you overturned her life again and started blabbering about dragging her off to parts unknown. Better for her if you had remained dead.”

Richard’s face purpled, and an obvious wave of enraged dizziness overcame him. Darcy would have felt wretched for it… except that he was already on his way out, and the door was slamming behind him.