Page 16 of The Magic of Pemberley (Fitzwilliam Darcy, Mage #2)

Chapter 16

D arcy’s icy hands trembled as he piled up the last of the brush and driftwood he had collected. The great serpent in the cave had been correct that he would not drown, but he had said nothing about nearly freezing. Each time Darcy had sunk beneath the waves, he had been able to breath as easily as in open air, a truly miraculous experience. But swimming through the cold, rough Channel was still a battle, leaving him exhausted, sore, and chilled to the bone.

The land under him was dead to his Talent, so he reached deep inside for the power of Pemberley, drawing it over hundreds of miles through his tie to Elizabeth. It was weaker than what he was used to, but it was there, more than enough to let him create flames in the heap of sticks. Fire, his earliest mage skill, the one that still came to him more easily than any other. He groaned with relief as the heat reached his aching fingers.

What next? The serpent had told him to speak to the people on the shore, but he was on a deserted stone beach with a white chalk cliff rising far above him, one that stretched as far as he could see in either direction. He was going to have to do some serious walking if he wanted to find anyone, and that would be impossible with his sodden clothing hanging heavily from his shoulders.

There was no help for it. He stripped down to his shirt and underclothes, dumping the seawater from his boots and wringing out the rest before putting them back on. They were lighter now, at least. And his satchel looked intact, though if the water had soaked through the oilcloth enclosing his safe-conduct, there would be trouble. An Englishman with no papers would not get far in France.

If he even was in France – and could find his way past these cliffs.

Then he spotted a distant figure atop the cliff. Friend or foe? It hardly mattered if he could not find a way off this cursed beach. Darcy waved to catch his attention. The man swung his arm, pointing to Darcy’s left.

At least it gave him a direction, though with no guarantee he would not be arrested at the end of it. He stomped out the fire and set off, the effort of walking on the uneven gravel warming him. Finally he came to stream that cut through the cliffs, creating a narrow ravine down to the sea.

He climbed along a steep path worn beside the stream, his thighs aching as he scrambled over rough boulders. Was he actually off English soil? That meant he could try to reach Elizabeth tonight using the dragon scale the Eldest had given him. It had only been six days since he had seen her, but it felt like forever.

And he needed to tell her about the sea serpents. The dragons would want to know – and the War Office, too, though how Elizabeth could explain it to them without involving the dragons was unclear. If, in fact, he could communicate it to Elizabeth at all.

The ravine gradually widened, the path becoming smoother. Then the man he had glimpsed on the cliffs came stomping towards him. A man who would either help him or turn him into the authorities.

Life or death. Success or failure. He was growing tired of this choice.

The man was short, his skin wrinkled with age and leathery, as if he spent all his time out of doors. His clothes were heavily worn and hung loosely, and he seemed displeased by the sight of Darcy. Not a good sign.

Darcy’s heart pounded. “Je suis envoyé par les serpents de mer.” The serpents sent me .

The man gave a sharp nod, jerking his thumb to indicate that Darcy should follow him .

He exhaled in relief. Two problems solved, since the man both knew about the serpents and spoke French. But he needed to be certain. “Suis-je bien en France?” he asked. Am I in France?

The man averted his head and spat on the ground. “Normandie.”

Normandy? Well south of where he had intended to land. All the hours of planning from the War Office, the routes he had memorized, the names of the towns and potential contacts – all useless now.

Now he had to find a way to Paris, and his map of France was in his trunk at the bottom of the Channel, along with his other clothes – including the power-infused shirt he had intended to wear when he confronted Napoleon, the one Elizabeth had sewn for him from the fabric made by his half-sister. At least he still had the two handkerchiefs Elizabeth had embroidered, even if they were soaking wet. He had kept those in the pocket closest to his heart.

Somehow he would have to find attire suitable for a gentleman in this desolate land. If he ever managed to get dry, something which seemed impossibly distant.

The man led him to a hut built into the hillside, a spiral of smoke rising from the narrow stone chimney.

Darcy ducked his head as he went through the door, an unpainted slab of wood hanging on leather hinges. The acrid smell of burning peat assailed him in the dim interior, a smoky single room with rough furnishings. But beggars could not be choosers, and he was indeed a beggar now.

A stooped old woman stood by the rustic hearth, looking for all the world like a witch in an old tale. She stared at him in shock. No doubt he clearly came from a different world, even when disheveled and soaking wet.

The man growled in a thick accent, “Envoyé par les serpents.” Then he stomped out, the door falling shut behind him.

The woman burst into a flurry of words, as voluble as her husband was silent, but Darcy could barely understand it. “Je ne comprends pas ce que vous dites,” he said tiredly. Would this dreadful day never end?

She cocked her head, then spoke more slowly, but he still made out no more than one word in three. Some local dialect, no doubt. But she brought out a rough nightshirt and gestured to him to remove his wet clothes.

He would wear anything that was blissfully dry. Once he had changed into it, she ladled up a bowl of fish stew and pointed to the table. Chatting incomprehensibly throughout, she collected his soaking attire and took it outside.

Only then did he realize how hungry he was, having eaten nothing since leaving England. The stew was delicious to his starving tongue. He would happily have refilled it several times, but he doubted these poor fisherfolk could spare even this much.

Regretfully he pushed the empty bowl aside, taking stock of what little remained to him. His watch was ruined, of course. Fortunately it was not his own, a gift from his father upon developing his land Talent, but one the War Office had given him with ‘E. Harcourt’ engraved upon it. His satchel held a surprise, though, a happy one – everything within it was completely dry. It was as if the seawater had never touched it. He said a silent word of thanks to the sea serpents for their magic.

His boots, turned upside down to dry, would never be the same, and his hair was sticky with salt. How did people without servants deal with these things? He would have to wash it in the stream. No one would believe him to be Mr. Darcy of Pemberley if they saw him now.

His stiff muscles groaned as he rose and padded barefoot outside to the brook. The old woman was hanging his clothes on a line. She pointed him to where the water collected in a pool, no more than a few inches deep, but enough that he could collect it in his cupped hands and rinse out the worst of the salt. It was a far cry from the ewer of hot water his valet would pour over his head.

If he ever made it back to England, he would never take his valet for granted again.

When the woman offered him a rough cloth to dry his hair, he asked, “How do I get to Paris from here?” He enunciated each word slowly and carefully .

“Paris?” She sounded as shocked as if he had suggested traveling to the moon.

Perhaps he should lower his standards. Only a path led to this hut, not a road, nor even a cart track. “Somewhere, an inn, perhaps, where a diligence stops,” he said using the French word for stagecoach.

She shook her head, baffled.

“The nearest town, then.”

She smiled. “Ah oui! Demain.” Then she went off into a spate of words, from which he took the meaning that she would direct him to the town tomorrow, when his clothes were dry.

She was right, of course. Even if he managed to find the strength, he could not set off in soaking clothes. And it was almost sunset, when he could try to reach Elizabeth through the dragon scale.

It took Darcy three days to reach civilization. First a long, wearying trudge in boots that pinched abominably after their soaking to reach the so-called town. It consisted of five small cottages. He hired another old man – France seemed completely depleted of men of fighting age – to take him to the next town in a slow ox-drawn wagon. He had not realized how much he would stand out simply because of his age and good health. His newly ill-fitting boots proved a boon in the end; the farmer seemed to think his limp was a war wound.

They did not reach their destination until dark, where the promised inn proved to be a widow who let out her spare room to visitors. But it did have a diligence which came by once a week.

By sheer luck, he only had to wait two nights.

He remembered the diligences from his trip to France when he was ten, not that his mother had allowed him to ride one, but he had been intrigued by the odd shape, like two stagecoaches mashed together over four wheels, often with a small cabriolet attached for those who preferred to ride in the open air. Now, when he finally had the chance to ride in one, he spent the journey pretending to doze to avoid conversation until they arrived in Rouen.

Thank heavens! It was recognizably a city, even if the pointed spirelets above the famed astronomical clock and the colorful half-timbering made it look obviously foreign to his English eyes. And everyone here seemed to speak recognizable French.

The diligence was greeted by a crowd of boys shoving advertisements for hotels on the unwary travelers. Darcy chose one for its address on the Grande Rue St. Jean, which seemed likely to be in a better part of town. The Grande Rue, though, proved to be barely a yard wide, but the hotel seemed acceptable enough, if not the sort of establishment a high-ranking gentleman would patronize. Fortunately, his rooms looked out the back, with a view so that he could see the setting sun. He would not know the exact moment it touched the horizon, which was when the dragon scale would become active, but he would be ready.

If only he could go straight to Paris! He had lost too much time on this journey already, thanks to the sea serpents and landing in a singularly unpopulated part of France, but there was no way around it. He could not arrive in Paris with no luggage, only one set of suitable clothing to his name, and that having been more worn for the better part of a week. He would have to stay in Rouen long enough to obtain a few more clothes if he was to make the appearance of a gentleman.

He had paid an extra fee for a private manservant. When the man arrived, Darcy explained his situation in clipped French, with the tale of a shipwreck and lost luggage. He would need new clothes, but also a map of France and one of Paris.

It was almost sunset, so he sent a servant off to begin making the arrangements, telling him he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances for the next half-hour.

Because this was his chance to communicate with Elizabeth, and that took all his concentration. The first night, at the hut, the shock of feeling her vibrant presence within him was so astonishing and welcome that he forgot what he needed to say. Her words sounded in his head – Are you safe? – as if she was speaking aloud, and it was all he could do to say yes and that he loved her before the connection faded, leaving him bereft.

After that, he had prepared his messages more carefully. The Eldest had not misled him – a simple sentence or an image was all he could hope to convey. Which was quite a challenge, when he needed to communicate a complex concept like Napoleon using sea serpent eggs to force them to do his bidding.

He had decided to divide the message over three nights. The first time he had sent an image of Napoleon stealing eggs from the sea serpents. The second was a French Emperor giving the eggs to the High King. Tonight’s would be the trickiest.

He can only pray that Elizabeth would make sense of it.

He slid the scale from the leather pouch around his neck and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. For some reason it always felt warm to the touch, warmer than a human. And then Elizabeth was there.

He did not let himself get distracted by her beloved presence, much though he longed to. He sent his image, Napoleon handing an egg to a serpent with a sinking ship in the background.

Her shock was palpable. He could practically hear her indrawn breath and could imagine her stunned look. She had understood!

I will tell the dragons , she sent.

The scale went still in his hand. Would he grow accustomed to this, that sense that she was there and then vanished?

Tomorrow he would use his message to tell her how much he loved her.

The bored ticket-seller at the inn where the diligences stopped leaned on a crutch as he studied Darcy’s papers. “Good enough. Coach or cabriolet?”

The sudden memory assailed him of his first journey to France, as a boy of ten who wanted only to be back in his silent cottage at Pemberley, away from the noise and conversation and too many changes. He hated the entire trip, but Jack had loved it.

Jack had chattered endlessly, full of questions. Why did they have to travel in that stupid private carriage when anyone could see it would be more fun to ride in the cabriolet perched on the top of a diligence ? Why could he not play with the French boys out in the street?

His mother’s answer was the same every time. “Because you are an English gentleman and a Darcy of Pemberley.”

Jack had been curious about everything – no, not everything. He had been bored by the grand cathedrals, the vast quiet spaces where Darcy had finally felt a little peace. In the bloodthirsty way of little boys, Jack had been disappointed by the lack of guillotines and tumbrels carrying aristocrats to their deaths. At least he could gawk at the square where the Bastille had stood and imagine the fighting in the streets.

Even then Jack had wanted to be a soldier. Their mother had indulged him by taking them to a review of French troops, going so far as befriending a French general. She invited him to dine in their suite, where Jack had pestered the poor man into telling him about the battles he had commanded.

Jack had never had the chance to ride in the cabriolet of a diligence . He begged to go back to France when the Peace of Amiens was declared, but by then Lady Anne was lost, presumed dead, and their father had refused to allow fifteen-year-old Jack to travel with only servants. Darcy, who by then also had to fear repulsion, had no interest in the trip.

Had he known how little time he had left with Jack, Darcy would have dropped everything to go with him.

All he could do for Jack now was to purchase a seat in the cabriolet in his honor.

He was joined in the open-air seat by an old dowager and her female companion. The young woman gave him a shy smile that reminded him of Georgiana, but once the diligence was moving at speed, the wind rushing past made conversation impossible. Another advantage of riding in the open cabriolet .

It gave him a wider view of the countryside, too, as the diligence sped from town to town. So many fields left fallow, and the ones under cultivation worked only by women and old men. He had seen few younger men on the streets of Rouen, apart from the ones missing arms or legs. France was paying a high price for Napoleon’s wars.

From écouis to Gisors and finally on to crowded Paris, its imposing stone edifices towering on each side of the streets like the imperial capital Napoleon had made it. He steeled himself to have his passeport questioned, but when he disembarked, no one seemed to care about the incoming passengers except a ragtag group of young boys offering to carry trunks.

He let one of them lead him to the H?tel de Suède, the Sweden Hotel, which the War Office had recommended because its staff and most of its guests were Swedish. Darcy’s accent would not stand out as much there. The innkeeper, who was indeed Swedish, examined his papers carefully before agreeing to provide Edward Harcourt with a suite of rooms and a manservant.

After his all-too-brief sunset moment of loving connection with Elizabeth, Darcy spent the evening penning his letters of inquiry, the ones that would alert his co-conspirators to his presence in Paris. In the morning, he would give them to the innkeeper to post.

Only then, when there had been nothing left but to wait, did it occur to Darcy that something had been distinctly odd about his early trip to France with Jack. Why had Lady Anne decided to take her two young sons on a tour of revolutionary France, when only a year earlier there had been blood running in the streets of Paris as the Terror raged? She told them it was for their education, to broaden their horizons, but that made no sense, either. She had never taken them anywhere before, not even to London.

Had Lady Anne disguised a secret diplomatic mission for the government by taking her children with her? Possibly, but she had not been the King’s Mage then. Perhaps she had only wished to escape her sister, the traitorous Lady Catherine, for a time. Certainly his mother had seemed more at ease on their journey, as if a great worry had been taken off her shoulders. Rather unusual, given the dangers that lurked in France at the time.

What was his mother thinking now? She had already lost Jack at Salamanca and her true daughter had been stolen by Faerie. Did she have any regrets over sending off her only remaining child to what the government saw as an almost certain death in France? Unlike Elizabeth, she had given him no advice on how to try to survive.

If he lived through this, he intended to be a very different parent to his own children.