by Beau North
Should you find anything, I have instructed my secretaries that I am available to take your call day or night.
Sincerely,
William Darcy
encl
Darcy sighed heavily and looked down at the letter on his desk. His fingers itched to reach out and pick up the telephone, to call Inez and ask if he could drive out to see her that weekend. But Inez was no longer in Knoxville. She’d packed up and moved to Memphis a week ago. Not that he blamed her really.
He picked up the address book and turned it over in his hands.
“Just look at the two of us,” he muttered to himself. “Womanizers.”
He’d always hated Richard’s talent for leaving lovers as quickly as he’d found them. Darcy had looks, wealth, an air of quiet mystery, but Richard always had one thing he lacked: charm. It’s true that some women flocked to him when they heard the name “Darcy” or saw the expensive cut of his suit, but he never had the talent for wooing a woman with nothing more than a wink and a grin.
Now, he’d give anything to hear one of Richard’s infamous tales of his own exploits. Or hear him calling Darcy an uptight prig, or teasing Georgiana into conversation. They were an awkward bunch―the lot of them―and needed Richard’s easy manner to make them more…accessible. Personable. Likable.
“Still fussing over that old thing?” Georgiana came in, flouncing down into the chair on the other side of his desk.
Darcy looked at his sister, nearly fifteen now. She was still in her riding clothes, a pair of dungarees and one of their father’s old flannel shirts. She would have looked boyish if not for the two long braids that hung just past her shoulder, tied neatly with ribbon bows. The ghost of his mother looked out from her blue-green eyes. Darcy thought it criminally unfair that Georgiana would never remember her, never experience her tenderness over skinned knees or bruised feelings. Never remember the sound of her voice or the shape of her hands, the way they’d fly over the piano.
“I can’t decide what to do with it,” he admitted finally, banishing all thoughts of Anne Fitzwilliam Darcy. “On the one hand, if I send this letter, they may find him. But I wouldn’t want to be the guy who has to go to all these women asking about Richard.”
“Maybe they should wear body armor,” Georgiana joked. “And on the other hand?”
“On the other hand, I don’t know if we’d survive the scandal if this falls into the wrong hands. Marriages would end. Families would be torn apart.”
Georgiana shook her head slowly. “Oh, Richard.”
“He wasn’t always that way, you know. He used to be…I don’t know, honorable, I suppose.”
“What changed?”
“Why would you bring us here?” The sound of Richard’s voice carried back, across miles and years. A puzzle piece. The strangest, most lurid and unsettling night of Darcy’s life. The night his uncle took them to a DC townhouse that was unremarkable from the outside. Inside, women of all shapes and sizes lounged in elegant poses, wearing filmy slips and gauzy robes with no more substance than breath. Their lips were ruby. Their eyes beckoning.
“He was…disillusioned. And don’t ask me more about it because it’s not suitable for me to say or you to hear.”
“It was Uncle Earl, wasn’t it?”
“Isn’t it always?”
While John Darcy had not particularly liked either his brother or sister-in-law, he had demanded that his children, and the admiral’s own children, give them nothing but the utmost respect.
“She lost her husband and he lost his wife, in all the ways that matter. And he may be a tyrant, but he has his reasons,” his father said to him after Darcy ran into his office in tears, having just watched the admiral switch Richard’s palms over some minor offense. “I hate him,” Darcy had cried, and meant it at the time. Not because of the switching, though that didn’t help, even while Richard took the punishment with an amused sort of stoicism. Darcy’s new dislike, distrust, his outright fear of Richard and James’s father, had come about because he’d seen it in his uncle’s eyes (so like his mother’s) that the admiral really and truly hated his own son. If Richard’s father could hate his own son, what was stopping Darcy’s father—his hero—from doing the same? Grownups were supposed to love and protect their children. That’s what he’d always been taught. That’s all he’d ever known.
It was James, James the peacemaker, who had calmed Darcy down that day after his father had so spectacularly failed to, and the three boys ended the day playing checkers on Darcy’s bedroom floor, rather than the game of pop-up they’d planned to play. The welts on Richard’s palms were red and blistered, but he just grinned in that usual way, and everything was okay again.
But he’d never fully trusted the admiral after that.
“He scares me,” Georgiana said, bringing his attention back to the present. “Uncle Earl.”
“He scares me a little,” Darcy admitted. “But you know he’d never do anything to harm you. He’d move heaven and earth to help if anything happened to you.”
“Me, maybe. I’m the baby. But Richard’s been gone for months, and he doesn’t even care.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Darcy said, remembering the furious transatlantic call he’d received from the admiral just shortly after Richard vanished.
His fury hadn’t been a hot torrent of words but short, clipped sentences so cold that Darcy could have sworn he felt frost forming on the telephone. “I will have him disowned. He can fend for himself if he can’t grow up and act like a man.”
“He almost died!” It had been a struggle not to scream the words. “The board doesn’t meet until the end of summer. Give him the time!”
Since then, he had done the only thing he could think of to keep the admiral at bay. He’d lied.
“Georgie, I’m going to trust you with a secret. You should probably know anyway, in case our uncle ever calls or drops by.”
Georgiana sat up in her seat, eyes alight with interest.
“Uncle Earl…well…I might have fibbed a little bit. He thinks Richard is here, staying with us and learning about the business.”
“You lied?” A wide grin spread across her face. “Oh William, that’s marvelous.”
“You know that I try never to lie, and you shouldn’t be so pleased that I did. But…well, you know how strained that relationship is. But now I need to find Richard and bring him home before the board meets in September. Which brings me back to this.” He held up the address book. “I still don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t send it.” She answered without hesitation. “It’s too much of a risk. He’ll stick his neck out when he wants to be found.”
Darcy sighed and put the book and the letter in his desk drawer, making sure it was locked.
He stood and stretched, feeling lighter now that a choice had been made and a burden shared. He grinned and offered his sister a hand up.
“Come on, Georgie. Let’s go see what Mrs. Reynolds has cooking.”
* * *
May 1945
Folly Beach Fishing Pier
Charleston, South Carolina
Richard watched the girl on the end of the pier with detached interest as she put her feet up on the railing and looked down into the water some thirty feet below. The ocean wind, turning cool with a coming storm, played with her skirt, showing off a shapely pair of legs.
Shifting his gaze to the steel-colored waters of the Atlantic, Richard wondered whether today would be the day. All the preparations had been made, his last will and testament, some deeds, letters for his family—all put together in a packet back in his room. His life, tidy at last.
Georgiana and Anne would get everything he had which, thanks to his investments with Darcy, was considerable. It quieted that nagging voice of guilt. His father would be the last Fitzwilliam. The thought gave Richard immense satisfaction, petty as it was.
He hadn’t seen his father since Liverpool. The admiral’s instructions had been clear: Richard was to
return to Annapolis and assume his father’s place as head of the family while the admiral refocused on the Pacific.
Richard had returned to Annapolis long enough to pack a bag and get on a train to North Carolina. He stayed with Darcy and Georgiana for a few days but found even their cautious, quiet presence to be suffocating. He left early on a Tuesday while everyone still slept, slipping away like a thief. He hadn’t seen or spoken to any of his family in over five months. For all they knew, he was dead already.
A loud cracking noise and a high-pitched scream interrupted his reverie; he looked up to see that both the girl and the railing had disappeared.
Forgetting his own troubles, Richard ran down the pier. He reached the edge and looked down to see part of the wooden railing still dangling off the side. The girl was clinging to that precariously hanging bit of wood for dear life, her legs kicking wildly at the open air. Richard could see a number of large rocks in the shallows below her. She was probably forty, maybe fifty feet up. He knew there was no way she would miss those massive lumps of stone if she fell.
“Hold on!” he shouted, pulling off his belt. He looped it through what he hoped was a sturdier post, hooking his foot through it. He lay on his stomach, hanging over the edge as far as he dared, holding out his arm.
“Take my hand!”
The girl’s eyes were wild with fear, but there was a stubborn determination in them as she reached up and grasped his arm. With a heave of effort, Richard pulled, agony exploding through the still-tender scar tissue he’d brought back from the war. He was glad that the months of working construction had helped him rebuild his strength.
A moment later, they both lay gasping and shaking on the pier. Cold drops of rain began pattering down on them.
“You…you just saved my life,” she said between heaving breaths.
“It’s my pleasure,” he said, still trying to catch his breath around the incredible pounding of his heart. There was still a deep throb from the mass of scar tissue on his abdomen. He touched it gingerly just to make sure he was still in once piece.
The next thing he felt were a pair of soft lips pressed against his, making him forget the pain for a moment. Sometimes a moment is enough. It felt natural for him to wrap his arm around her small waist like it belonged there, had always belonged there. Daringly, he tasted her lips with his tongue: ocean salt, raindrops, and cotton candy. She pulled away, looking at him with deep ebony eyes.
“Thank you,” she said without a trace of embarrassment, her breath still labored.
“Well, I don’t usually get thanked nearly that well when I rescue pretty girls.”
“Oh? You do this often, do you?” She laughed shakily as she struggled to stand up, inspecting the bloody scratches on her arm, the worst of her injuries.
“Let’s just say it’s a good thing you’re so skinny or this might have gone very differently.”
“Skinny? I’m not skinny!”
“Whatever you say, Slim.”
Richard looked at his hands again. They were calloused, work-roughened from the odd construction jobs he’d taken since his return to the States. He liked construction—the simple pleasure of seeing a pile of lumber and metal become a wall. It was also the kind of job that didn’t demand much outside the physical. Richard could go entire days without speaking a word to anyone. He found it restful. In any case, he much preferred holding a hammer to holding a gun, and now that he remembered what it felt like to hold a woman, he was sure he preferred that most of all.
She’s too young for you.
But he’d shown up anyway to the place where, only a day ago, he saved her life. The pier was gated and chained shut now with a sign that warned it was unsafe. He waited, sitting on the seat of his motorcycle, listening to the sounds of the waves coming in and out. It soothed him. The ocean was patient; he could be too. The packet of letters back in his room was still there. Another day wouldn’t hurt.
Absently, he fingered the scar just below his collarbone where a German knife had tried to cut him open. Half a year later, it still stung if he pressed the spot.
“Hello, again,” a voice said at his elbow. Richard jumped, his hands going for the sidearm that wasn’t there. He doubted he’d ever be able to lose that habit. He turned to see the owner of that voice standing beside him with a curious look in her eyes, her head tilted slightly.
“I wondered if I’d see you again,” she said with a smile. “You didn’t even tell me your name before you rode off into the sunset.”
“It was raining.”
Her lips twisted in a wry half-smile. “And I still don’t know your name.”
He smiled, his first real smile in as long as he could remember. It felt strange.
“I’m Richard,” he said.
She nodded and then pointed to herself.
“Lizzie.”
* * *
June 1945
Dean Street Eats
Charleston
“There is something comforting about diners,” Richard thought. No matter what state you were in, you could count on being greeted by the smell of frying bacon and burnt coffee, the clatter of dishes, and a short order cook yelling from the kitchen. He scanned the room and saw her sitting by the window reading a newspaper. A small smile graced his lips at the sight. He found himself smiling more in the week that followed than he had in all the long, quiet months since he’d come back.
He made his way to her, moving through the busy room as silent as a ghost. She didn’t startle when he sat down but went on reading the paper as if he wasn’t there. With a start, he saw his own cousin looking back at him under the headline: “Darcy Eyes Granby Mills.” Good. Life goes on.
“It’s not polite to sneak up on a lady, Richard.” Her tone chastised, but the twitch of her mouth told another story. She was teasing him again. A waitress arrived with a tray before he could reply. She put a cup of black coffee in front of each of them, followed by two slices of peach pie. Richard frowned at it. He ate for energy, fuel for the long hours of working construction. Peach pie didn’t appeal to him. The idea seemed indulgent. Decadent.
“Everything all right, hon?” The waitress eyed him suspiciously. Richard supposed people didn’t normally scowl at their desserts.
“No, everything’s fine. Thank you.”
When he looked back up, the waitress was gone and Lizzie had put aside her paper.
“If you want to sneak up on someone, you shouldn’t drive a motorcycle. I could hear you coming a mile away,” she said, and the amusement he saw earlier played across her face.
Richard chuckled. He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t even thought of that. He took a bite of his pie without realizing what he was doing.
His fork fell to the table with a clang as the taste of warm summer peaches filled his mouth. With painful clarity, he remembered the last time he had peach pie: standing in the kitchen with James the night before they left, trying to keep their laughter quiet so as not to wake their father or Aunt Catherine, both notoriously light sleepers. He looked down at his plate, struggling to get a grip on himself. When he looked back up, he met her gaze. They were soft with empathy or understanding; he couldn’t tell which. All that mattered was that it wasn’t pity.
“How did you know?” he asked hoarsely. She tilted her head, studying him.
“All I know for sure is there are few complaints that can’t be solved with dessert. You looked like a man who’d gone far too long without something sweet.”
Richard nodded absently. Of course, she hadn’t known. It was still an eerie sensation that this strange girl’s intuition had so accurately suspected what he’d been longing for. It made him wonder what else she knew that he didn’t.
“Did it make you think of someone special?” she asked. “I can’t have orange marmalade without thinking of my granny Gardiner.”
“My brother,” he said, picking his fork back up. “The last time I had this was the last night I saw him.”
“The war?”
He nodded again, continuing to eat his dessert. “What was he like?”
Richard washed the pie down with his coffee. It was an effort to get his hands to stop shaking long enough to lift his cup. He looked back up at her to see that same curious look on her face. He thought for a moment before answering her.
“James was… He’d give you the shirt off his back. He was just good. And funny. A lot of people don’t know that about him, but he was. He was our father’s favorite, but he bore it well. Father and I never did get along.”
“Not even when you were a boy?”
Richard shook his head. “He liked me little as a boy and less as a man.”
She surprised him by reaching across the table and covering his hand with her own.
“It’s his loss,” she said seriously. “And you grew up to be the man who saved my life. He should be proud of you.”
Richard wondered what his father would make of the lovely, intelligent creature now squeezing his rough hand. Would she charm the admiral as thoroughly as she charmed him? It seemed a kind of blasphemy that anyone would ever reject her.
“How old are you anyway?” he asked suddenly.
“Nineteen,” she said, smiling quizzically. “Why do you ask?”
He shook his head. “I’ll never believe it. You’re too damn wise to be nineteen.”
She laughed and squeezed his hand again. “Funny, my mother frequently tells me the opposite.”
June 1945
Fort Sumter Hotel
Charleston
“Come on,” she said with a laugh. “It’ll be fun.”
Unable to help himself, Richard let her take his hand and pull him to the dance floor. His arm went around her waist as if it belonged there.