Page 33 of Till Death Us Do Part: Book 2
Darcy wanted to tear the letter open and read it immediately, but he found the short conversation had exhausted him, so he fell asleep with it clasped in his hand.
13.Dear Darcy
5 March, 1812
Hospital La Grave, Toulouse
Darcy,
Darcy here—an earlier Darcy anyway. If you are reading this, you arenotdead, but probably not in particularly good condition either. Nurses Dashwood and Babette (of the unknown surname) have been your salvation, and if you managed not to offend them this time, that was well done. In the more likely case where they are ready to strangle you, I suggest serious and immediate grovelling, as they have kept you alive all this time through sheer stubbornness.
It is decidedly odd writing to myself, and I hope it will prove an exercise in unnecessary prudence, but since I can just barely make it to the privy with the help of the orderly, writing this letter seems all I can manage at the moment. The pronouns are the most confusing, so try to keep up.
Nurse Dashwood says it will take two to three months to regain my strength, but she worries about a relapse, which she has seen from time to time, hence the letter. Perhaps I should introduce your companions, if they have not already done so.
Nurse Dashwood is English/French and very capable. There is a physician assigned, but he defers to her regularly. Her parents are dead, which drove her into the profession. She is exceptionally good and dedicated to her craft, but you will obviously have to find some way to thank her properly.
Babette is younger, wilder, and sometimes shows signs of melancholy when she thinks I am not looking. I would not presume to pry her story out of her, but I believe there is some real sadness there. She somehow reminds me of a crossbetween Georgiana and a Viking. You are also in her debt, but several efforts to ask for a way to repay it have been rebuffed so far. You should keep trying.
I would assume Mlle Dashwood has explained that you have typhus. It tends to hurt your memory, and at least temporarily your thinking, but she thinks it mostly comes back later if you survive, so this letter is more to save time than to change the outcome. Here is what you need to know.
First off—if you have forgotten, you aremarried. You wed Miss Elizabeth Bennet on the 23rdof December in Hertfordshire. I will not go into the details of how this came about. They will come back to you eventually (or not), but I must say this: Your wedding day included a great many arguments, and you sent her off to Pemberley in a terrible position. If someone treated Georgiana as you treated your wife, you would call him out. You will have some real fences to mend when you return. You wrote her a letter on New Year’s Day that she should have received some months ago. You wrote another, longer one later that one hopes will go some way towards softening the blow if it ever arrives. The safety of the February letter is suspect, since the regular mail service to England has been suspended, and all the money you carried on your person has been stolen, but the January letter should have made it. (Note to self—do notevertravel without a valet again. What were we thinking?)
I came to believe, and you will eventually agree, that the former Miss Bennet is an excellent woman, probably your superior in every way that matters, and she will be a fine wife if you can get past the difficulties of your beginnings. It will not be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is. Just in case you have trouble remembering, we found ourselves half in love with her, but allowed our pride to look at her family situation (stillcringeworthy, but no worse than Lady Catherine) and to judge her unworthy. We are a couple of right idiots, you and me!
There was a situation that prompted you to offer for her, but I have reason to believe she was not at all enthusiastic about the match. Even if she had been, our behaviour would have snuffed out any nascent affection she might have felt, like a bucket of ice. She has also had several months to build up a good store of well-earned resentment, so gird your loins for a difficult homecoming.
I suggest you make another attempt to write, but again, the chance of success seems minimal, since you need to depend on privateers. You can do nothing now, but once you start fulfilling your mission, things should get better.
Second—you are in France to try to ransom your cousin Richard. He has been a prisoner since late November, but as far as we know, he is considered high-value, so his accommodations are probably not any worse than on campaign, and are in fact likely to be as good as he would have at Pemberley—aside from the minor inconvenience of waking up each day knowing there is a reasonable chance he will be dragged in front of a firing squad.
It is the next day, and I spent the bulk of last night wishing I were Richard, so someone might put me in front of a firing squad. Babette refuses to communicate in anything but French, and it feels odd calling her by her given name, but if there is someone in the world capable of making her change her mind on any subject, nobody in this hospital seems to be aware of it. She claims she cannot speak English, but I think she told me she liked my sense of humour at the end of yesterday’s efforts—or maybe she told me to stop jesting and get on with it, since Iam likely to be dead tomorrow. As you can see, our old French tutor would want to kill himself if he were here.
Speaking of dead people, I suppose it is time to quit messing about and tell you something. As I mentioned yesterday, you are here to ransom your cousin Richard. Since he saved your life that time Wickham pushed you into the river (another note—do something about that bounder when and if you return to England), and again that time Wickham goaded you into a race—well, you get the message. You are in Richard’s debt, and a firing squad seems poor repayment.
Aside from all that, you really have no business chastising your wife over her family, as ours is atrocious (you can see I still have not worked out the pronouns).
Another day, another page. Nurse Dashwood says I should try to finish before I die or relapse, so less chaff and more wheat—or something like that. She said it in French, just to see if I could follow her.
Richard’s elder brother is about to die, ironically enough, of the ‘french disease’, which has nothing whatsoever to do with France. He has already entered the madness stage, so it is only a matter of time. Richard’s father is also fighting some sort of cancer, and does not expect to see another summer, though he is as unreliable as ever, so he may live another fifty years for all we know. His next elder brother also met a bad end. That makes Richard last man standing, and if you cannot remember what that makes him, then you do not deserve to rescue him.
I wrote to Major Boucher as soon as I had my wits about me. I do not expect a reply for a fortnight at best, so perhaps you will never have to read this blasted letter.
Four days to write this letter, but sometimes I feel as if I am turning the corner—but as Babette says, there is more than one kind of corner, so there is that. I have covered the most important points. You allocated fifty units for Richard, but a hundred would also be workable if necessary. I will not be more explicit—work the units out.
You probably wonder how we got here. The story is fragmentary, but it appears to be typical military bureaucracy and the covering of hind quarters. You came in on a privateer ship, though I cannot remember the name. They received us from the British Navy in mid-January. You had a sum of money on your person that would be a great deal for some people, but will not do more than inconvenience your estate. Major Boucher was called for, but you fell ill before he returned from Paris to collect you. Your ‘hosts’ knew you were important to Boucher, so they sent you to a military unit nearby. They apparently ‘felt’ that they did not have the skills to handle such an important case, so sent you to another hospital twenty miles away by flying ambulance. Repeat that story a half-dozen or more times, and you end up in Toulouse. I never discovered who all the idiots in between were, but personally, I think we should be grateful for Nurses Dashwood and Babette. I doubt we would be having this odd conversation without them.
Not much time to write. I feel another fever coming on, and I may not survive. I have asked Nurse Dashwood to try to get this letter out if I succumb, so let us begin.
Elizabeth,
If you are reading this, it means I did not survive. I know I do not deserve it, but please allow me the privilege of tellingyou that I am so sorry for all the things I said on our wedding day. You were right. I didnotact like a gentleman, and for all the hurtful things I said, and all the embarrassment and pain you will have felt, I can only hope that you may someday forgive me.
The second page of this letter contains explicit instructions for Mr Knight. If he is unavailable, talk to my valet, Bates, or stablemaster Longman. You can trust any of them implicitly. They will see that your plight is made right, or as right as I can make it.
I am having a relapse of typhus, and I can only pray that you did not catch it from me on our wedding day, an idea that gives me nightmares.
Should this letter be delivered by a nurse named Babette or Miss Dashwood, pray instruct Knight they are to be set up properly. He will know what you mean, but just to be clear, they are to be treated as honoured people I owe my life to. Knight and Longman will also see that you get what you should have had in the first place.
