Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (106 page)

Darcy observed the young surgeon, himself not more than a schoolboy, making the decisions (each excruciating judgement worthy of King Solomon) with a single nod, shake, or flick of his head. Darcy could but think that he was much more disposed to carry out the dead than be charged with naming who would live and who would die.

Stretcher-bearer was test enough. For he found himself teamed with a half-witted Brobdingnagian named Mott, who, though several pence shy of a shilling, nevertheless had more sense than teeth. The simpleton knew enough to understand, regardless of birth, he was the senior conveyor and took great delight in issuing instruction to Darcy, each command punctuated with a gap-toothed grin.

Though not death duty, theirs was yet grim. For the men they loaded were very much alive, conscious, and all in great pain. No matter how gingerly they were lifted upon and off the litter, all screamed in agony at the agitation, and Mott grinned stupidly each time they did. (As it happened, Mott grinned at just about everything.)

The happy circumstance of his life had demanded Darcy to carry nothing heavier than his walking stick, thus his back ached with unrelenting ferocity by mid-afternoon. Long believing himself to be quite fit (and, for a gentleman, indubitably he was), his ego was somewhat abused to learn that only a few hours of strenuous labour could so thoroughly undo him. As if to attest to that particularly unkind truth, he stopped after the delivery of one rather fleshy son of the British Empire, dropped the handles of their litter and stretched his throbbing back, unintentionally eliciting a groan as he did.

“Need t’rest, Guv’nor?” asked Mott with a smirk.

Obstinate in the conceit of his own strength, Darcy was hence determined that the imbecile Mott best him in neither brawn nor fortitude. Thus, he reclaimed his end of the stretcher and office of beast of burden with renewed vigour (and chose to ignore that he was engaged in the considerable folly of competing in a test of wills with a cabbage-headed behemoth).

He and Mott worked mechanically, lifting on, carrying, and lifting off. Soldier after soldier. Some heavy, some not, but all, by necessity of a defence of sensibility, faceless and nameless. Hence, it was of great coincidence that Darcy happened to pause to stretch his arms over his head before regrasping the litter that beheld to him the wounded body of John Christie.

Taken aback in recognition, Darcy very nearly gasped. Nonchalantly, the surgeon flipped back John’s uniform jacket, observed the gaping hole in his gut and with a flick
of his head pronounced him irredeemable. Abruptly, Darcy put out a restraining hand.

He announced with such finality, “This one goes inside,” that the young surgeon looked at him queerly.

Shrugging, the weary doctor said, “As you wish,” which was less in deference to Mr. Darcy than in lack of will to debate.

Darcy had not interrogated Georgiana about her method of travel to the continent. Once he had found her safe and understood her quest was Fitzwilliam and no other, curiosity of the matter was set aside. Until he saw John’s face, smudged with sweat and gunpowder, he had not once thought of his danger. Even though John had aided Georgiana in eluding her family, now that she was found unharmed, it was far easier to find compassion for him. Mott helped carry John inside to a cot, allowing Darcy to wave the leering giant upon his way.

Putting a comforting hand upon his arm, Darcy spoke quietly to John, who recognised a friendly voice if not its owner and reached out for Darcy’s hand. He strained to see who sat with him.

When Darcy said, “It is I,” John immediately withdrew his proffered hand.

“Is his hate so strong that this boy will not allow comfort?” Darcy wondered to himself, but he saw it was not hatred but recompense that worried John, who was yet of the unlikely mind that Mr. Darcy had come all the way to France to seek vengeance upon a menacing groom.

For John said, “Aye guess yer can find no harsher due than this for me.”

Retrieving John’s hand, Darcy squeezed it in reassurance of no angry intent. It was apparent his wound was grave, but John did not betray the pain. Darcy warily lifted the bloody gauze and recoiled at the severity of the puncture.

“What was it?”

It was a reflex for Darcy to ask that. Immediately he realised it was unlikely John would have seen what hit him, but had no time to withdraw the query before John answered tersely, “Pistol lead.”

“I see.” Conversation dwindling, Darcy observed John’s uniform. “A grenadier. Excellent.”

Happy to have the honour of his service noted, he said, “Yer know yer soldierin’ better’n yer sister.”

However grievous his injuries, the volatility of subject that he had just broached was not lost upon John. If Mr. Darcy had not come to seek retribution, perchance he did not know he had fled Pemberley with Georgiana.

“Georgiana is here,” Darcy told him.

“Hurt?” Alarmed, John tried to raise himself.

“No, no. As a nurse.”

“Of course,” John reassured himself. “Of course she is.”

The only other news Darcy had was of Fitzwilliam, but he believed it would not be a consolation to John to know the good colonel in no better shape than was he. Stymied for a topic, Darcy sat in silence for a few moments. And John, perchance uneasy of his former employer at his bedside (or more likely uneasy because he had sold his former employer’s horse and buggy for twenty pounds), attempted to make small talk himself.

“’ow’re them ’orses?”

“They are quite well.”

That was the final insult upon Darcy’s intrinsic taciturnity. A mortally wounded boy was forced to make pleasantries with him. Under other circumstances, he might have been a little amused at the extent of his own congenital reserve, but not at that moment. Gently patting John’s shoulder, he rose.

“I shall find Georgiana for you. Certainly she will be better company than I.”

Horrified at John’s injury, Georgiana hid her tears from him. That not a difficult deed, for he was growing increasingly weak, it being somewhat miraculous that he had lived as far as the steps of the hospital. She sat with John for some time, talking softly to him and listening to his ramblings. As he watched his sister sit and partake in easy conversation, Darcy found reproach in himself. Possibly, Elizabeth was right. If his shy sister could talk with such facility, perchance he should practise it more himself. For times like these, if nothing else.

But as he had not the time to practise, he turned his thoughts to a subject he knew well—that of detail. He saw now that they would have two wounded men for whom to care. It would not be a great problem, he reasoned; they would both fit in the back of the waggon. And Georgiana could probably be persuaded to stay at Roux’s and not return to the hospital if she had two patients.

He refused to acknowledge either man’s wounds were mortal. He would not have it. Out of the filthy hospital, they both might repair quite well. All this planning went for naught, however, for Georgiana came to her brother directly with a sorrowful report.

“John, I fear, will not last long. He gets weaker with each breath.”

Darcy, who had compleatly forsaken (and already forgotten) his most recent employment, had been sitting as if in ecclesiastical vigilance over the entire ward. Thus, his solemnity was already in place as Georgiana related the gravity of John’s condition. Had that not been daunting enough, there was further disquiet.

“John said a British officer shot him, but he is not entirely coherent. Perchance you can make better sense of it.”

True, John rambled, and as Darcy sat next to him, he heard the telling of a battle that he did not want to envision. But, he heard quite clearly John say that his commanding officer shot him when John caught him in the act of stealing away under the colours of corporal.

Darcy said, rather than asked, for he thought the other not possible, “Pray, this was by way of a mistake?”

John answered the question only indirectly, “Aye thought ’im friendly enough,” he said. “’e said ’e was from Derbyshire. ’e said Kympton was the living he should’ve ’ad. Aye should’ve known no officer befriends no corporal.”

Stunned, Darcy silently shook his head in disbelief. Yet he knew that no other man could have uttered those words.

They had become Wickham’s mantra, announced to anyone who would listen, “Kympton was the living I should have had.”

It was not an unmitigated surprise for him to show a white tail-feather in the face of fire; Wickham’s keenest instinct was, indeed, that of self-preservation. But Darcy could not believe that even Wickham would be so cowardly as to shoot a conscript
who witnessed it. Thereupon, with uncivil clarity, it dawned upon him the magnitude of Wickham’s treachery. Unknowingly, he had killed his own son to buy his silence. Worse was unimaginable. In time, Darcy would find gratitude that he had not had the opportunity to tell John of his true paternity. At least the lad would not have the additional misfortune to die knowing his own father was his murderer.

Increasingly, John’s voice took upon a meandering turn, utterly unintelligible, until he drifted asleep altogether. As he watched John’s chest struggle for breath, Darcy could think of nothing but the night he thought Elizabeth was dead, and it compleatly usurped his will. In defence of the possible mortification of actually weeping, he fled outside to gather himself.

Leaning against a wall, he gradually slid to a sitting position, his head betwixt his knees. He reached up to loosen his cravat, for he felt as if he was choking. His hand fell back, however, for his tie was not what constricted him. He had already surrendered it for use as a tourniquet. Ruthlessly, he tore at his top shirt button, determined to get more air. Although the button was not what strangled him, conquering so lowly a thing as that was a victory at that moment.

It took him a while to regain some sense of control, if not of circumstance, at least his own countenance. It was apparent to him that Georgiana did not know of John’s earlier misapprehension about being his son. Darcy was exceedingly grateful he was spared the particular mortification of explaining the whys and wherefores of that situation to his sister. With renewed resolve, he returned inside and he and Georgiana both watched through the afternoon as John slowly and painfully died.

It was but one more Derbyshire youth vanquished, but John’s death allowed Darcy to put a face on the multitudes that went before him.

Unable to bear the thought of his interment in the mass grave behind the hospital, Darcy decided to see to having John buried upon Roux’s property. As he moved to make those arrangements, he saw another man, shot only in the leg, wearing a uniform and insignia identical to John’s. He stopped and inquired if his officer was Major Wickham.

The man said, “Yea, but dead he is. Aye saw his body. He had a good horse—Aye donno what happened to him, but he were worth twenty of the major.”

There was, no doubt, more than one British major of smaller value than his horse, but because Wickham always liked to be well-mounted, the sergeant’s summation of his character seemed particularly keen to Darcy. He thanked the man mildly and walked on. So mildly did he respond, had anyone observed the exchange, the level of acquaintance betwixt Darcy and Major Wickham most certainly would not have been inferred. Those within the full ken of Wickham’s dubious morals, however, would have understood Darcy’s ambivalence.

Darcy did not investigate his own feelings upon the matter. He wondered only if the dead body the soldier witnessed was indeed Major Wickham or simply a corpse in his uniform jacket. It was obvious that query would lay unanswered, regardless how diligently he speculated. The single thing Darcy knew as true thereupon, was his own mind. For if he ever again saw Wickham alive, he intended to do everything within his ample power to render him not.

A messenger was hastened to Roux alerting him of need of a gravesite. Belatedly, Darcy realised Roux would ready a final resting-place befitting of Fitzwilliam’s station, not that of a Pemberley groom. As he thought of that particular misunderstanding, it was with more amusement than he knew he should; but at the moment, black humour was the only kind to be had.