“Well, I’m gettin’ one.” Darcy walked over to the sideboard.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Beth’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
Darcy snorted as he poured a brandy. “Nope—not if I gotta talk about that lyin’, no-good son of a… snake-in- th’-grass.” He returned to stand between the couch and the fireplace. “Now, let me remember what it was you said.” He scratched his head, a gesture that seemed very out of place in Beth’s perception of the man. It looked… endearing.
“First, about that there dress. Why did you get so upset about it?”
Beth gasped. “Because you bought it for me! You had no right to do that.”
“Beth, he didn’t,” Anne said quietly.
Darcy frowned. “Annie’s right—I didn’t buy that for you; I bought it for her over a year ago. Remember, Annie? My last trip to Fort Worth?” Darcy grinned. “Huh! Good thing Cate never found out, ’cause otherwise I’d never hear the end of it. Anyhow, I just told Annie I figured that dress would be real pretty on you, is all.”
Beth felt both relieved and disappointed, but she chose to put those thoughts aside. “Don’t you see? It implied that you had a claim on me. I was mortified!”
“Didn’t mean no harm by it.”
“You still shouldn’t have done it.”
Darcy waved off her objection. “I was just tryin’ to do somethin’ nice for you. Didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I’m sorry I did, an’ that’s all I’m gonna say ’bout that.
“Next thing. You said you heard me talk poorly o’ Charles an’ Jane. Somethin’ ’bout that he could have done better if he didn’t move here.”
“That’s right. I overheard your conversation with Caroline Bingley.”
He frowned. “What is it with the women ’round here, sneakin’ about, eavesdroppin’ on private conversations?” Both Beth and Anne blushed at that. “Annie here is always over-hearin’ things. Quiet as an Injun, she is. Huh—an’ they call
He turned back to Beth. “If you heard all that, did you hear what else I said? Charles is one fine doctor. That man saved my life. In a big city, he could write his own ticket, be as rich as Midas! But he don’t want that. He came here ’cause he wanted to go to a place that needed him, and lucky man that he is, he found him somethin’ better than all the gold in th’ world. You know what that is?”
Beth bit her lip. “Jane?”
“That’s right. Charles would rather be poor an’ married to Jane than be rich and lonely in New Orleans, or wherever. An’ if I was in his shoes, I’d choose the same. That’s what I told that… woman.” Darcy nodded as he took a drink.
“What else? Slaves—that’s right, you said I owned slaves. Who th’ hell told you that? Whitehead?”
Beth blinked. “Yes, but… but you can’t deny that. Everybody knows white people owned slaves in the South.”
“Well, well, think you know everythin’, don’t you? Well, you’re wrong, Miss Beth. Annie, did Cate ever own slaves?”
Anne looked at Beth. “No, we’ve never had slaves.”
Darcy paced before an astonished Beth. “Miss Beth, do you know what it’s like ridin’ the herd? A man’s gotta be self-relie… self-relie… gotta be able to look out for himself without somebody else keepin’ a close eye on him. Gotta be able to protect himself, his fellows, an’ the herd from coyotes an’ rustlers. How can you give a slave a gun? No, ma’am, you can’t. I ain’t sayin’ there’s never been slaves on ranches, but there sure ain’t been any in these parts. There ain’t no slaves on Pemberley an’ never have been. One more lie from Mr. Whitehead.”
Darcy grew more agitated while Beth digested his words. They flew in the face of everything she had believed. Everyone up North believed that most, if not all, Southerners owned slaves. It was in the papers. Reverend Goldring preached against it. And yet, she could not refute Darcy’s words. They made too much sense. And Anne backed him up.
Beth colored as she thought of George. He had been here longer; he must have known the truth. Yet, he had purposely misled her—or rather, allowed her to continue to hold to her misconceptions. Why? She had come to the conclusion months ago that George stretched the truth at times—it was part of his charm. But this was an out- and-out lie. Why would he do it? And what else had he lied about?
“Whitehead… Whitehead,” Darcy was mumbling. He stopped suddenly and turned to Beth. “Are you in love with him?”
“No!” The denial flew from Beth’s mouth before she could think.
He peered closely at her. “You sure?”
Beth’s mind began to work again, and she grew irritated at his questioning. “Mr. Darcy, while my personal life is none of your concern, I shall repeat myself. I am not in love with George. He is a friend to my family—that is all.”
“George Whitehead is nobody’s friend. He’s a carpetbaggin’ piece o’ scum. I remember you callin’ him a war hero. Ha! A jailer is what he was.” Darcy pointed at his chest. “My jailer!”
“What?”
“Captain George Whitehead was second in command o’ th’ Camp Campbell prison camp in Missouri, where Charles an’ me were taken after Vicksburg. Now, ole George may have been the assistant commander, but since his colonel spent the better part of every day tryin’ to get inside of a bottle, George had a free hand runnin’ th’ place. For a year we enjoyed his hospitality, us and a thousand other prisoners.” His face grew soft. “At least there were a thousand when we started out. By th’ time Charles an’ me were transferred to Camp Douglas in Illinois th’ next summer, three hundred of us were in th’ ground.”
Beth was shocked. “Three hundred men died? But… but the papers all said that Confederate prisoners were treated well.” She looked at Anne, who also sat with an astonished look on her face.
“You… you never told us, Will,” was all she said.
“It ain’t somethin’ a man likes to remember, Annie. God help me, I wish I could forget.”
“What happened?” Beth asked.
“Three things—mismanagement, malnourishment, an’ mistreatment. Ha, didn’t think I could get all that out.” Darcy looked perversely proud of his alliteration. “Camp Campbell wasn’t supposed to be a prison—it was a way station. But the real prisons weren’t ready. So there we stayed, as more an’ more men came. A thousand souls on a few acres. Sickness an’ starvation took more of the victims.”
“
“Oh, it came, what little they actually sent. We were right by the railroad siding, an’ we saw the Yankee soldiers unloadin’ the freight cars. Funny thing, though—not all of it got into the kitchens. Charles was workin’ in the camp hospital at the time, an’ he made friends with some o’ the guards. He found out from them that a lot of the food for the prisoners was sold to the townspeople.”
“By who?”
Darcy gave her a look. “Who do you think?” Darcy took another drink as Beth digested the implication. “We couldn’t complain about it without bein’ labeled malcontents and bein’ charged with insurrection. But we complained anyway, for all the good it did. George liked that word—insurrection. Most of us were accused of it at least once. He also liked the whip.” An unreadable expression came over Darcy before he turned to the fireplace. “Flogging was a weekly occurrence.”
Beth was having a hard time handling what she was hearing. How could a handsome and charming man like George Whitehead be the ruthless and dishonest monster Darcy was describing? It couldn’t be true, could it?
Darcy continued in an unemotional voice. “By the time they shipped us out, there were three hundred graves in the Confederate cemetery. Some o’ the townspeople didn’t want individual headstones—said it was ugly an’ we didn’t deserve it anyway—but decency won out. An’ as for Captain George Whitehead, he got a promotion to major.
“Camp Douglas[4] in Chicago wasn’t any better. We were crammed in with twelve thousand others in a place designed for half that many. Eighty acres o’ hell. They wouldn’t let Charles serve in the hospital. We never knew how many died—four to six thousand, Charles thinks, most in unmarked graves or tossed into Lake Michigan. An’ unlike Andersonville, nobody was punished for it.”
Darcy bowed his head before turning back to the ladies, both shaken by what they had heard. “All that kept
