The Plight of the Darcy Brothers (17 page)

“Your Highness.”

“Doctor,” the prince replied, without the same formality. “I suppose we should get this bloody business over with.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.” He gave his normal instructions for clean water and soap to be brought for him, and began unpacking his bag as the prince undressed, looking more like the person he had first encountered and not the grand host of a royal ball (and future ruler of England). But Dr. Maddox was a surgeon with a surgical task at hand, because no good doctor in England would touch their patients, out of propriety, much less operate on them. In these motions, he was comfortable, as he rolled up his considerable sleeves and washed his hands.

“I had a surgeon, once who did not believe in soap,” said the prince, now sitting on a chair with his cravat removed and his shirt open.

“Not all soap is beneficial. You can usually tell its inherent qualities by the smell, unless it has been disguised by being mixed with spices and is not, in fact, soap.”

“You are familiar with this?”

“I believe in cleanliness, yes.” He turned his attention to the wound, removing his glasses and hanging them on his breast pocket to do so. “It has healed very well. I would recommend removing the stitches now.”

“Another one used gloves instead of his bare hands.”

“That I cannot recommend, unless they were new gloves,” Maddox said, removing his tools from the kit. “Leather gloves are not washed, so they are exceptionally good carriers of disease.” He pulled up a stool beside the prince. “This is going to be a bit uncomfortable. My apologies, Your Highness.”

“At least the first time around, I was soused. I can hardly remember it.”

“Putting them in is a much different experience,” Maddox said, peering close to locate the first knot and then cutting it with scissors. “Excuse my closeness. I am nearsighted.”

“I know,” said the prince, who grunted as Maddox began to slowly weed out the snipped wire, which was similar to fishing line. “Your eyesight began to decline in your teenage years, did it not?”

“That is true,” he said.

“How long before you lose it?”

The question would be outright rude from anyone else, especially from a sober patient. But this was the prince. He could say whatever he pleased, and apparently he did. “I hope very much to see my children go out.”

“Yes, congratulations are in order for your wife.”

Dr. Maddox was an experienced enough doctor to be able to maintain his work when he wanted desperately to pause. “You have done your research very well.”

“Not me, my intelligence, of course. It's easier for them
when I hand them the card. They had practically everything on you by—ow—morning light.”

“Apologies.”

“No, it's my own poor countenance.” There was a bit of blood from the hole where the lacing had been removed. Maddox wiped it away with a towel. “Your brother, they did not find.”

“My goodness. Is he being sought after by the Crown?”

“No, just the local authorities. Still, do you know where he is?”

“No,” he said, and pulled out another snipped cord.

“You are willing to lie to the Prince of Wales?” the prince scoffed, but in a playful manner.

Dr. Maddox, in his serious doctor mode, was not as playful. He was neutral, until his given task was completed. “I am willing to go through considerable lengths for the man who raised me and paid for my education.”

“And ruined you, apparently.”

“Gambling is a vice that has destroyed the best of men,” was Maddox's quiet reply.

“But you are very well educated. Cambridge, Paris, Rome, and all the right licenses from the Royal College. You would be a fine doctor if you were not a surgeon.”

“Then I would not be much good to my patients, if I was of too high a class to treat them,” Maddox said before he realized that perhaps social commentary in front of the future king of England was perhaps not the best of ideas.

The prince managed to laugh though it was subdued by the experience of the stitches, no matter how carefully Maddox took them apart. “I will make no complaints about your patient list.
Though, it would not be suitable for a royal doctor and surgeon to be visiting whorehouses. Unless, of course, I was there.”

Dr. Maddox stopped.

The prince just continued, “This would require, of course, a considerable shortening of your patient list, and you would have to be on the University's medical board. That could be arranged, though it might require you to attend a lecture or two. But I suppose that with your level of scholarship, you are not adverse to the idea of being invited to lectures? Especially if you were a paid guest?”

Maddox stammered, “No, Your Highness.” He needed to focus. He still had a task before him—the removal of the last two stitches and then the stopping of the small trickle of blood and the bandaging of the wound. Fortunately the flesh had healed nicely and was free of infection.

“It would tie you to Town rather strictly. I know your wife has a brother in Derbyshire who is related in marriage to the Darcys of Pemberley and that crowd, but for the most part, you would be required to remain in the general—ugh—vicinity. Was that the last one?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” he said, pressing the towel against the wound. “Please press down until I say to stop.” He set his pocket watch next to the bowl and washed his hands again.

“Thank God for that. How long is this to be?”

“About three minutes. Time for the blood to clot,” he explained. “A very simple procedure. Avoiding infection is really the most difficult thing.” He turned back to the prince.

“You haven't said anything about my offer.”

“It—I am working, Your Highness, and your immediate health is my first concern,” he said, too shy to admit he was
shocked by the forwardness of the offer. Caroline had suggested it multiple times over the weekend as a possibility, but just because he had removed some stitches? Did he want to be tied to the royal service? He would finally be able to provide for Caroline properly, not using up his savings as he currently was. It was the ideal position. “There. Let me see it, if you would.”

The prince removed the towel, and no blood came up. Maddox took a very careful look, checked the cloth for anything other than blood, and then pronounced him relatively healed. All that was required was a quick bandage to keep any possible blood from staining the prince's shirt, and he was done.

“Will it leave a scar?”

“A very small one,” Dr. Maddox said, repackaging his bag. “In response to your offer… I don't know quite what to say.” He replaced his glasses and this time looked more generally at the prince, who was straightening his shirt.

“Most men would jump at that offer for the reasons that I have already given.”

“This is true. I do not say it is not enticing. But I cannot, in good faith, refuse a patient I have been treating for some time. I can shorten my list and stop visiting those houses, but I still have those I treat who are perhaps not proper patients of a royal physician.”

“And for that, you would give up a lifetime of financial security and probable knighthood at the end of it, if you didn't accidentally kill me with some prescription?”

Dr. Maddox considered it. “I suppose I would. How very foolish of me.”

“Or how very noble of you. Well, my offer stands, Doctor.
Whatever your patient list may be. Infect me with cholera, though, and there will be severe ramifications.”

“Of course.” He collected his things and was getting ready to bow when he realized the prince was offering his hand. To shake. He was shaking hands with the Prince of Wales. He was touching him in a nonsurgical way. “Then… we are agreed.”

“I will have the papers drawn up, and if they are to your liking, you may consider yourself a royal doctor, Dr. Maddox,” said the prince. “My father wants his staff treating me, of course, but as his staff can't treat
him
, I'm eager to find my own.”

“I am honored, Your Highness.” This time, he did get his chance to bow.

The most direct route was not a terrific one to travel, especially with the state of the roads that had endured decades of revolution and government mismanagement. The Darcys spent many a night in a roadside inn, the two of them on a bed that barely fit one person, much less them both. That was the only part of the accommodations that seemed to bother neither of them. Neither did they complain about the food, which was fantastic.

Grégoire did not break bread with them during the day, instead maintaining the rule of contemplative silence during his meal, which was rarely more than bread and plain cooked meat. He joined them separately for their dinner, because then he could talk, and they quickly discovered he was most convenient for sniffing out—literally—wines. That was, after all, his main occupation at the monastery, even if he didn't partake of wine
himself, except when there was nothing else to drink. He put his very discriminating nose in many a glass before they found the best wine in the tavern, and Elizabeth and Darcy tasted the finest vintages of their lives.

One night, Darcy indulged himself in an extra glass beyond his norm, and they retired early. In their tiny room, in whatever nameless travelers' inn, Darcy sat before the fire, not drunk but with his eyes red and his mood more at ease than it had been since their trip to the old d'Arcy estate.

“Darcy,” Elizabeth said, taking his hand, which was warm and inviting. “There is something I would be remiss if I did not discuss, but I fear it will not be something you want to hear.”

He waved off her concern with look that he gave people when he wanted them to keep talking.

“Grégoire said something to me in innocence, not knowing the ramifications. And his memory may not be perfect, please keep in mind–”

His mind seemed to click on. “What is it, Lizzy?”

“He said that you—the two of you—are not your father's only sons.”

At this, Darcy began to smolder quietly. She knew this. She had expected it, but she had yet to see him in a better mood, so she decided to chance it. She detested keeping secrets from him, especially secrets he had every right to know.

Hiding his emotions, Darcy replied quietly, “And he chose to tell you over me?”

“It was by happenstance. He assumed you knew.”

“How would I know? I am only just discovering this.”

“Because—Darcy, because you know your other brother. Because Georgiana is named after him, and because he, too,
received a generous living from Mr. Darcy while he was alive and was left one after his father's death.”

Not working at full speed, Darcy's mind had to turn over the various possibilities before saying, “Impossible.”

“That Grégoire said so, or that it could be?”

“It is impossible,” he said with more force. “You will recall, there was a Mrs. Wickham, married to a Mr. Wickham until the day she died, giving birth to George.”

“And your father kept a picture of her in his dresser in Hôtel des Capuchins. Along with a picture of young Wickham.”

“Mr. Wickham did often travel with my father. Some of those things could have been his.”

“I am not saying it is true. I am only saying that, considering the evidence, it is perhaps possible—”

“Evidence!” Darcy said, raising his voice slowly as did his body from the chair. “What evidence is presented before me? The accusations of a mere boy of a man, who must have heard it from my father years ago, when he was but ten?” He did not bother to hide his anger, as it was not really directed towards Elizabeth. “I will not accept such slander!”

“Darcy—”

He was already storming out of their room and down the hall, where he found his half brother in his room with his items spread out on the floor beside the unused bed, preparing himself for evening prayers. “Monsieur Darcy—”

Grégoire was no match for Darcy. He had age, but not strength or intent. He was nothing to Darcy, full of rage and an accomplished sportsman, who grabbed him by his holy robes and hurled him against the wall. “Did you say this lie to Elizabeth? Did you slander our father further?”

“I—I cannot—”

“Darcy, don't!” Elizabeth shouted, trying to pull them apart, although she was altogether unsuccessful. “Listen to me. I made him promise not to say a word. I wanted to tell you. I thought you would accept it better if you heard it from me.”

“That does not free of him of my questioning!” Darcy shouted. “Do you believe my father told you that George Wickham was also his son?”

“Yes,” Grégoire said meekly.

“Why would he say such a thing?”

“I—I do not presume to be in the mind of my—our—father,” he said, gasping for air, as Darcy was pressing on his neck, unintentionally strangling him.

“Darcy!” Elizabeth said in her sternest voice. “Release him! He is not at fault here!”

Darcy looked at her coldly.

“
Mr.
Darcy,” she said, returning the glance with equal fervor. “Please do unhand my brother-in-law.”

He hesitated, but at least he did release Grégoire, who dropped to the ground with a thud and had to be helped up by Elizabeth. “I did not mean to speak ill of anyone, Monsieur Darcy. I thought it was common knowledge.”

“What—
exactly
—did Father say to you?”