A/N: Sorry for the panic the last chapter caused, but I had not the vaguest idea that anyone would jump to conclusions about Babette. I think a lot of you are just pissed off about Red Darcy taking off and leaving Elizabeth stranded, but I do humbly ask to give him a bit of latitude. This is his Hunsford Moment. Babette was actually intended as a pseudo-Easter Egg, though I may well have a place for her in the story that I haven't quite worked out yet. I know where Darcy is now, and where he will end up (and when), but the intermediate details are being cooked right now.

A thank you to the reviewers who corrected my French. I was going to ask for help, but I ran out of time and just translated those two sentences with Google Translate. I assumed they were terrible but most of us wouldn't notice. I now have a volunteer to do it properly next time.

Wade


GREEN

5 March, 1812
Hospital La Grave, Toulouse

Darcy,

Darcy here – an earlier Darcy anyway. If you are reading this, you are most likely not dead, but probably not in very good condition either. Nurses Dashwood and Babette (of the unknown surname) have been your salvation, and if you managed to not offend them this time, that was well done. In the more likely case where they are ready to strangle you, I suggest some serious and immediate groveling as they have kept you alive all this time through sheer stubbornness.

It is decidedly odd writing to myself, and hopefully it will be an exercise in unnecessary prudence, but since I can just barely make it to the privy with the help of young M. Barbeau, writing this letter seems about 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 worries about a relapse, which she has seen from time to time, so 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 seems to defer to her on a regular basis. Her parents are both dead, which drove her into the nursing profession. She is very good at it, and dedicated to her craft, but you will obviously have to find some way to properly thank her. Babette is younger, wilder and sometimes shows some sort 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 cross between Georgiana and a Viking. You are also in her debt, but several efforts to ask for a way to repay the debt 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 are married. You wed Miss Elizabeth Bennet on the 23rd of December in Hertfordshire. I will not go into the details of how this came about. They will come back to you eventually, but to say this. Your wedding day included a lot of arguments, and you sent her off to Pemberley in a very bad position. If someone placed Georgiana in the same position you placed your wife in, 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 hopefully will go some ways to 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 not ever travel without a valet again. What were we thinking?)

I have come to believe, and you will eventually come to 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 (still cringeworthy but no worse than Aunt Catherine), 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 behavior would have snuffed out any nascent affection she might have felt like a bucket of ice. She will also have had several months to build up a good store of well-earned resentment, so expect a difficult homecoming.

I suggest you make another attempt to write to her, but again, the chance of success seems to be 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 a high‑value prisoner, so his accommodations are probably not any worse than he regularly had 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 was 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 humor at the end of yesterday's efforts – or maybe she told me to stop jesting and get on with it, since I am likely to be dead tomorrow. As you can see, our old French tutor would want to kill himself if he was here.

Speaking of dead people, I supposed 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 probably 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 perhaps 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 over 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, although he is as unreliable as ever so he may live another fifty years for all we know. That makes Richard the heir, 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 like 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' to be spent 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 beaurorocacy and 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 lot 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 figured out 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 can 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 telling you that I am so sorry for all the things I said on our wedding day. You were right. I did not act 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 has explicit instructions for Mr. Knight. If he is unavailable, talk to my Valet, Bates or Stablemaster Longman. You can trust any of them implicitly. He will see that your plight is made right, or as right as I can make it.

I appear to be 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, please 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 honored people whom I owe my life to. Knight and Longman will also see that you get what you should have had in the first place.

Yours, in eternal hope that this letter will never be necessary because I have returned and made things right myself,

Fitzwilliam Darcy