The Plight of the Darcy Brothers (25 page)

“An' I know ye'll do it. 'Cuz you're all proper like, but not in the way she's proper,” she said, pointing to his wife, which was a very improper thing to do. “Yer proper, right proper, because yer a decent man, all moral and carin' 'bout people. And if yeh don't do this… I got nothin.' 'Cept a royal kid I gotta feed.”

Caroline meant to say something, but Maddox did something he had never done before and held up a hand for her to be silent. Maybe her condition was making her out of sorts, but she actually stopped before she said anything and allowed him to speak in a calm voice to Lilly. “While I must first discuss this with my wife, as my very life is in danger if I do this, I will
consider the matter and do… what is within my discretion to do.” He swallowed. “May I inquire…?”

“Three months to go, we think. Hard ta tell.”

“Then we must settle the matter—if it can be settled—with all expediency. Is there somewhere I can contact you privately?”

“I ain't a very private lady,” Lilly said, and apparently excusing herself, gave a half-curtsey to Maddox and Caroline without naming them. “Good 'ay.”

“Good day, Miss Garrison,” he said, watching her leave. As he turned, his wife was giving him the most severe look she had ever given him. “What?”

AS FRANCE DISAPPEARED INTO the mist, Darcy decided he was happy to see it gone. As beneficial as their long journey had been, it had come with its share of horrors—one brother he wanted and one he did not, but both ill gotten. The fact that they were visibly moving toward their initial goal put him at ease. He stood on the bow with Elizabeth, who was fascinated by the coloration of the Mediterranean, slightly different than that of the Channel. It was a shame that they would have to move into deeper waters and not see the coastline as they passed. He wished Elizabeth to see Greece with all its ancient majesty, one of the few places on his own trip he had truly enjoyed, but that was not to be.

The calm lasted about an hour. Then they made an interesting discovery: monks were apparently not made for the sea. Grégoire, not a man of great health in the first place, had no sea legs at all. Darcy quite literally carried him to the side of the boat to get him there in time before he lost his stomach. After the fifth time, Grégoire could no longer stand and slumped against the side of the railing.

“Now I very much wish your brother was here,” Darcy said to Brian Maddox. “You didn't happen to peruse any of his literature—?”

“I know something about scurvy, but he doesn't have that. We've only been on the boat for a quarter of a day.”

They looked at each other.

“Maybe if we kept him below…”

“Maybe if we had let him walk, like he wanted to do,” Darcy said, watching his brother murmur in Latin as he fingered his rosary. “He would have arrived a few months late, but—Oh, there he goes again.”

Darcy ran across the deck, which was not excessively long, and hoisted his brother up again so he could lean over the side. Brian Maddox remained in place and bowed to Elizabeth approaching him. “Mrs. Darcy.”

“Mr. Maddox.” She curtseyed a little unsteadily, considering the rocking of the boat. “Whatever are we doing to that poor monk?”

“What is that poor monk doing to Mr. Darcy? He hasn't had a moment's peace for a few hours now,” Brian remarked with a smile. “Brotherly affection is unconditional. At least, when one is not in competition with the other. Usually it requires a great age difference.”

“You are a prime example of that, if I may say, Mr. Maddox,” Elizabeth said.

“My very life hinges on my own stupidity and Danny's intelligence. I won't deny it,” he said. Brian Maddox was known for a former life of gambling, ruination, and being poor in a fight. “I'm very happy to hear that he's doing so well. At least now he can support Caroline on his own, which must be a great
load off his mind. Me, I could hardly have the courage to bring myself to such a high-class woman. No offense meant to a sister, of course.”

“It is hard to deviate from the truth,” she said. “Though I cannot say I have seen much of them since they were married, as I am so rarely in Town. But, to be honest, there was some surprise in the family when we discovered she was considering a man without a great inheritance.”

“Or a title. As long as he doesn't ruin it, he'll have knighthood eventually. But Danny is very good at being diplomatic to his patients.”

“So that's it?” Caroline said. “You would have your own head on a spike and me a widow because of some prostitute?”

“No! Of course not! I mean, if it comes to that—,” but honestly, Daniel Maddox didn't know what it would come to. He didn't know what he could say to the prince that would possibly persuade him or keep himself from being fired. “But—she is a woman in need. What am I supposed to do?”

“She is a whore, Daniel.”

“That does not change her physical composition. Or the fact that she is carrying a royal child.”

“So she says. Do you believe her?”

He scratched his head. “I don't know… mostly. Look, I have a moral obligation—”

“You have no such obligation. She is exploiting you—”

“So she is! What is she to do? She is desperate! Do you think women become prostitutes because they like letting men use them? Do you think they don't get horrible diseases that they
eventually die of? Or get with child and are possibly killed off when they go to the married man who impregnated them? Do you think most of them have any
choice
?”

“Don't sermonize to me!”

“I am not sermonizing! I am not repeating something from a passage I read in the Bible! I'm saying this because I've seen the life, and I have a chance to help this poor, mad girl with a future child—and for some reason, I am very receptive to the pleas of expecting women at the moment.”

He softened his tone, kneeling before his wife and taking her hands. “I am serious, Caroline. If you wish me to turn her away, I will. But I don't wish to. You will never have to see her again, but I want to go to the prince and tell him what damage he has wreaked, though putting it much more politely than that. But not without your consent.” He touched her cheek. “I will do as you command.”

Caroline seemed to be softening. Or, she seemed to be beginning to cry, either one. “I will not be a widow over this. It is not fair.”

“I would not make you a widow. Or, I try my best, despite my profession.” He embraced her, which was getting to be a more difficult prospect at this point. “Say the word, and Lilly's request will be forgotten.”

“Will
you
forget it?”

He sighed. “No. But it will not be spoken of again.”

“You're just like Darcy,” she said. “Always the hero. Why can't you just be stupidly naïve like Charles? Or asleep like Mr. Hurst when someone rings at the door?”

“Charles is not naïve. He just appears to be. In—some respects.”

“I know that!” she shouted, pounding him limply on the
chest. “I would ask you why you care about this woman so much, but I know you're only going to give me the most noble of answers and mean it—and then I must consent or be a horrible woman for not doing so.”

“You would never be a horrible woman.”

“Despite rumors otherwise. There was a reason I was unmarried until I was one and thirty.”

“Well, by the same logic, since I was unmarried until one and thirty, so I must be one horrible woman as well. Though in my case, it makes sense.”

This was enough to bring laughter out of Caroline, which stopped abruptly as she put her hand over her stomach.

“Are you all right?”

“The baby just kicked,” she said, and Maddox pressed his hand against her sizable belly. “You can't tell it, of course.”

“The gender? No. That must be a surprise saved for the end.” He kissed her. “I love you.”

“What good are you as a doctor if you can't even tell the gender of your own child?” she said, her mood noticeably altered from just a few moments before. “Just don't you dare make me a widow.”

“Never.”

“And try not to lose your commission as well.”

“Then it is agreed?”

Caroline had no response but to hug him tighter. He took this as an affirmative.

The Darcys rested a day at a small port town that could have been quite pleasant, if Grégoire's health hadn't become a
serious risk. When they got him on shore, he was quite weak, but he recovered quickly with food, drink, and soil beneath him. Maddox, who knew Italian as well, hired a carriage for them and a horse for himself, and guided them until they were nearly in view of the ancient city of Rome itself.

“Here we must part ways for my own safety,” Maddox said. “If you need me, send for me at an inn named Bella Notte to the east. I would point out that I am considered an excellent courier—must be all those years of running away from people that put me into such shape.”

And with that, he took his horse in another direction, going north.

To Grégoire's great delight, he did get to make his proper walk to Rome, if not all the way. The path they had taken was so bumpy that the carriage had to proceed at a slow pace, and Grégoire was enough recovered to walk the last remaining miles as the Holy City appeared in the distance. At the sight of it, he dropped to his knees and bowed.

“His ardor may be decreased when he sees the reason we travel here,” Darcy said.

“You are just grumpy because you know you'll never talk him out of monasticism.”

He decided he was willing to give her that. “Perhaps.”

And so the Darcys went down the hill and into Rome in the early summer of 1807.

Rome was unlike any other city. It had been built on mystic origins instead of a trading port, as London had been. Rome had seated the Roman Republic and then the Roman Empire for
a thousand years, and had become the seat of the church that ruled all of Christendom before Martin Luther and John Calvin and Britain's own John Knox. Rome was full of hills overlooking the Tiber, covered with abandoned ruins and ones reused to build newer structures, so that even with all his studies on Roman history, Darcy could not point out precisely the origins of every place they found on the road. Nothing looked new, nor precisely old, and they saw as many barons and wealthy merchants as tonsured priests and nuns.