The Plight of the Darcy Brothers (20 page)

Grégoire did what he was told with a grunt of pain, exposing a wounded back of raw, broken flesh. There were scars as well, running down his back, from older wounds… It made Darcy sick, but nonetheless he poured some ointment from the jar onto his hand and began to apply it to the boy's back. “There. Does that feel better?”

“It is—cooling.” Though uncomfortable with the concept, after some time, Grégoire did look relieved, if not totally out of pain. Darcy wished for some of Maddox's miracle drug, if only to help him sleep. “Thank you, Darcy.”

“I would offer my services again, but I never wish to do this again,” Darcy said, rising. “Now get some
real
rest. For all of us.” He waited, with arms crossed, for Grégoire to lie down before leaving and seating himself on the bench outside the room. Now
he
felt exhausted, if only from the stress of facing the unfathomable. What century was his brother living in?

“Darcy,” came his wife's voice, obviously concerned about his awkward position of tension on the bench. “How is he?”

“Recovering,” he said, finally taking his head out of his hands as she sat down next to him.

“Does the doctor have an explanation, or was he merely overexhausted? He has not been eating much.”

“No.” He did not clarify what part of her question he was answering. “Lizzy, he is a monk. From a very strict order.”

“This I know.”

Whatever annoyance she had at his reluctance to reveal the details was tempered by his unease, so she put her hand over his, even though it was so much smaller, and leaned on him. He usually went through great measures to hide his unease, and she always saw through them anyway, which at times could be very convenient, because her touch did something to settle him. “He is… a flagellant.” He hoped he would not have to explain that. Elizabeth was well read. She was so good at surprising him with knowing of the existence of improper things.

She needed time to dredge up whatever memories she had of the meaning of this word. It was a moment before she answered, “They are
still around
?”

“It seems we are very far from England. And the Reformation.”

“So that would explain—”

“—his exhaustion and collapse, yes. Apparently from pain.”

“And the blood on his robes.”

“I did not mean for you to see that.”

“Which is probably precisely why I saw it.”

He somehow managed to crack a smile.

There was another contemplative silence before she continued, “What are we to do?”

“I have already spoken to him about it. Perhaps not in the most… understanding of fashions, but still. We are not medieval. I told him, quite honestly, that if this was to continue, obviously to the point where he would permanently injure or kill himself on some kind of religious obligation, then I would take him no further and find another translator with less masochistic
tendencies,” he said. “I also added that I would regret doing so, as I would probably never see him again, if he returns to Mont Claire.”

“So you do not wish him gone?”

“Hardly.”

With the way she was leaning on his elbow, her expression was hard to see and read. “So you accept him, then?”

“As a backwards local with barbarous customs?”

“As a brother.”

This, he could not answer. At least not immediately. But Elizabeth seemed willing to wait. She stroked his back, which was stiff from all of the riding and from the tension.

When he was soothed, he said, “Yes, I suppose. This does not mean I will willingly extend this courtesy to every child my father may have sired.” Of course, there was only one known other, but his name would remain unspoken until Darcy spoke it. “Grégoire is perfectly amiable and highly intelligent, a kind, generous man who is too hard on himself—somewhat literally, extremely literally. But that is his upbringing, so I suppose it cannot be unexpected.”

“Darcy,” she said, “we cannot let him go back.”

He had been thinking the same thing, but he was too tired to express it. He took her offered hand. “Our trip will be delayed.”

“A few days will hardly make my sister any more or less with child,” she said. “Or even a week. However long it takes.”

He was not eager to disagree with her.

“Geoffrey! Geoffrey Darcy, you get back here this instant!” Nurse had already given up. She had chased Geoffrey around
enough times that she was huffing and puffing, but Bingley shooed away the other servants. “He's my responsibility,” he said. “Geoffrey! I meant what I said!”

But Geoffrey giggled and disappeared behind a corner. Georgie was standing there, so Bingley leaned over to his daughter. “Which way did he go?”

She pointed.

“Thank you,” he said, and broke into a full run, nearly crashing into half a dozen servants before he found Geoffrey struggling with a closet door that was locked, obviously intending to hide in there. Bingley picked him right up. “There you are. Do you have any idea what you're doing to us?”

The boy, who was slowly returning to his normal coloration, merely giggled.

“Come now. It's time for your bath.”

“I'm not dirty!”

“Still, you must—and I feel suddenly as though I'm a terrible hypocrite when I say this—you
must
bathe.”

“I
hate
bathing.”

Bingley thought laughing broke his supposed authority a bit, but he did anyway. Geoffrey was still stuck in his arms as Bingley carried him back to the nursery. “Ah, karma. Listen, I promised to take care of you, and that means seeing to your general cleanliness. If that means I must bathe you myself, I will!”

His announcement did not go unnoticed. Jane was standing beside Georgie at the door to the nursery, holding a hand over her face at the sight of it.

“Auntie!”

“Auntie will not aid you in this one,” she said firmly.

“Georgie!”

Georgiana Bingley shook her head, mainly because her mother was giving her a stern look.

“Don't exasperate yourself too much on this one, Husband,” Jane said, and Bingley shrugged and carried Geoffrey off.

He was not far enough along before he heard it. Two things, one in response to each other.

First, Georgie turned to her mother and said, quite clearly and with no failure of pronunciation, “
What's he going to do to him now?
”

Second, at the sound of her daughter's long-delayed first words, Jane fainted dead away.

After three days, Grégoire was fit to travel again. His diet kept him barely more than skin and bones, and his health had not been at peak upon his injuries, whenever they were incurred. Darcy took matters into his own hands, practically force-feeding the monk bread and meat and everything that was available and making him stay in bed.

“He would do the same with Georgiana,” Elizabeth assured Grégoire. “He is most protective of her.”

Darcy also hired the local priest so his brother could hear Mass without rising. He did this without being asked, and when asked why, merely shrugged and said to Elizabeth, “I do not think he would appreciate me reading from the Book of Common Prayer.”

What he did not share with Elizabeth, as they prepared for their journey once again, was that he had thoroughly searched the small sack of Grégoire's things and had removed the knotted-cord whip, which had several steel bits in it. The whip was stained with
blood, and looking at it made Darcy sick as he tossed it in the garbage pile outside.

“It belongs to the abbey,” his brother protested. “Not to me.”

“I will personally pay for the abbey to acquire a new one if they press me on it,” Darcy said. “You will have to find a new way to torture yourself. Try falling in love with a woman who despises you.”

Grégoire was confused enough by this comment that he did not request an explanation as they joined Elizabeth in the carriage and made their way back to the main road.

After merely a day, they reached their long-awaited initial destination of Paris. With Grégoire's help and Darcy's obvious bag of coin, they were able to situate themselves quite easily in a fine hotel meant for ambassadors and people of rank. Grégoire was given an adjoining room and ordered to at least sleep on the mattress, even if he insisted on moving it to the floor. Tired from their travels, Darcy had their dinner sent up and found a British manager who would begin making the proper arrangements and acquire directions to Mary's seminary. The man, Mr. Arnold, was a former courier for the army and did extremely good work. By nightfall, they had all the information they would need for their stay in Paris.

“Look, Darcy,” Elizabeth said, passing a letter to him as he devoured his own half of the pile alongside his food. “From Geoffrey.”

“From Geoffrey?”

“He told me to wait until we arrived in Paris to open it.”

Darcy took it and squinted at what, at the bottom of Jane's letter, was a scrawled “GD” and what was quite possibly a stick figure of a person, with blue ink scribbled all over the black
limbs. “Huh,” he said with laughter. “Well, at least his education is coming along. Grégoire, here. From your nephew.”

Grégoire reached into his robes, pulled out his cord glasses, and tied them around his ears so that the lenses were situated so he could see the drawing. “He is—how old?”

“Two,” Darcy said. “I suppose you'll put up a huge fuss if I offer to buy you proper glasses. But, ah, I'm already a step ahead of you. Would your monkish pride be insulted if I bought a pair of glasses for myself and you happened to borrow them because they matched your own eyes so well?”

His brother answered with a red face, “It is not pride. Pride is a sin.”

“And so is having possessions, of course. I suppose the glasses belong to the abbey.”

“They do.”

“Can you read without them?”

“If I try very hard, but I hear it is bad for my eyes.”

“Well, I suppose Darcy, who I never to this day knew was farsighted and required reading glasses, will have to buy himself a pair,” Elizabeth said with a sly smile.

“You are attempting to undermine me,” Grégoire said, but his tone was not entirely accusatory. “Why is he blue?”

“He and Georgiana—not your sister, our niece—put ink in their bathtubs. They found some amusement in it. Georgiana's father is Charles Bingley. Bingley is my brother-in-law,” he explained to Grégoire. “Elizabeth's sister married him. He is taking care of Geoffrey for us, as well as Mary.”

“Oh,” Grégoire said. “Mary is—”

“The woman with child, yes,” Elizabeth said. “My younger sister. It is confusing, because I have four, and two are married.”

“Yes,” Grégoire said. “The one with a child.”

Darcy and Elizabeth exchanged glances before he turned to his brother. “Do you know what I mean when I say, 'with child'?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Because I don't mean
a child
. I mean one
in the future
. She is in a delicate condition.”

At this, Grégoire stared in blank confusion. This stare was met with roars of barely contained laughter between husband and wife.

“Perhaps before we go about our inquiries, dear husband, you should properly explain to your brother what that
means
.”

“What? I assumed you would do it!”

“How could I? It would be most improper for a woman to explain it to a man, especially a monk!”

She had him, and he knew it. “This is true,” he grumbled. “Brother Grégoire, I will have to explain to you where… babies come from.”

This, the monk could answer. “They come from marriage.”

Holding himself up by his elbows was all Darcy could do from going face-first into the table with laughter. Of the two of them, Elizabeth recovered more quickly. “My sister is not married. Therefore, we may conjecture that they do not come
only
from marriage.”

“Oh,” said Grégoire. He added, even more confused, “Oh.”

Elizabeth got up from the table, taking her letters with her and patting her husband on the shoulder. “This one is yours, darling. Enjoy.”

“Lizzy! Lizzy, don't leave me here with this—horrible duty!”

But she did.