8. Fear

CHAPTER 8

Fear

T he following day began far more gently, with no alarmed awakening, and no panicked flight under a pile of bags of flour. Instead, they rose when the sun lit their loft, slowly and with a sense of relief at having spent a peaceful night. Elizabeth announced she would stare at the wall whilst Darcy dressed, and he scurried down the ladder to see to the wagon whilst she prepared for the day. They filled their bellies with hot porridge in the Neelers' kitchen, and departed when the men were just heading off to the fields, the sun still low in the sky. Mrs Neeler had filled their basket with some bread and fruit, and Darcy had thanked them for their kind hospitality with a handful of coin to compensate them for the food for themselves and for Dobbin. Armed with directions and landmarks, they moved with more confidence this time, knowing how to find their way without venturing onto the better-travelled roads.

They continued west and slightly south, using the sun to guide their way. The countryside, always green and lush, grew hillier, their narrow lane darting through thick growths of trees, then breaking into wide fertile valleys, sometimes edged by ancient stone walls or wooden fences, other times running along well-tended farmland or through the occasional village, cradled between river and hillside.

In one such place, they stopped to allow Dobbin to rest and eat and purchased some more bread and cheese and some early apples. Darcy counted out the coins from his purse. Each one was precious.

"Have we enough?" Elizabeth asked when they returned to the cart. Darcy did not miss the import of the word we. They were in this mess together; she was no longer his adversary, but his companion. It made the awful situation a little less dreadful.

He tested the weight of the purse in his palm. It was not as heavy as he would have liked.

"I cannot say. I know not how long it will take us to get there, or what obstacles we might meet along the way. If we are lucky, if fortune smiles on us and we—" He swallowed at a dreadful thought. "If we avoid encountering our foe and eat sparingly, we might manage. But whilst I am prepared to forego a meal or two, we cannot ask the same of Dobbin. He must eat well."

"And rest well," Elizabeth added. "It will slow our progress."

"That might help us. The longer we take to arrive at the lodge, the more likely Wi—our adversary is to believe us elsewhere. I hope, I pray, that a delay will be to our advantage."

He tried to keep his voice dispassionate, but Elizabeth must have heard something in it.

"You are afraid."

"I? I was raised to face anything with no fear. It is unbecoming to a gentleman, to an Englishman, to be a coward." He straightened his back and thrust out his chest.

"It is not a disparagement. Fear is natural, for it shows that you are a thinking man. Only a fool would not be afraid of someone making such dreadful threats against you. Furthermore, fear does not make you a coward. It makes you a man."

She reached out a hand and let it fall gently atop his own. That small gesture of compassion was a seed that planted itself within his soul. Once more, like her observation about the dwindling coins, it told him that he was not alone.

His heart tightened at the thought. When last had someone looked to him not to lead or to provide, but to offer comfort? When last had someone given, rather than taken? Elizabeth could not offer a fast horse or a pocketful of coins, but she could offer her presence, and it meant more to Darcy than he would ever have imagined. He turned his hand over, so their palms touched, and he laced his fingers with hers for a brief moment before turning his eyes away. But he did not miss the small smile that touched her soft lips.

They set out again on their path, one plodding mile after another. Dobbin, as promised, walked steadily onwards, stalwart and seemingly untiring. The silence between them was comfortable and unforced, but the thoughts churning through Darcy's mind eventually forced their way out in words.

"I am afraid," he said, as if the hour between Elizabeth's statement and this continuation of the conversation were merely a second. "I am afraid for myself, of course, but also for everybody relying on me. My tenants. My sister. They depend upon me." He lapsed back into silence.

Elizabeth's hand covered his own again. She said nothing, but her silence was compassionate.

"I have been called proud," he said after a moment. "It is not always intended as a compliment, but I take it as such."

Now he noticed her eyebrows flicker upwards on her smooth forehead.

"Indeed." It was half-statement, half-question.

"Pride is often conflated with vanity, but I see them as very different things. I am proud of what I have achieved on my estate. Pemberley has always been prosperous, but its stewardship was thrust upon me at the age of three-and-twenty, most unexpectedly. My father, an excellent man, had a weak heart, although we did not know it. I thought… I hoped he would live another twenty years, that I could take over management of the estate slowly, as I learned more about it. But one moment I was carefree and enjoying a house party with an old friend from university, and the next I was responsible for the lives and welfare of thousands of people.

"And," he added after another pause, "a ten-year-old girl."

Elizabeth's voice was as soft as the breeze that riffled through his hair. "It must have been terrifying. I am sorry your inheritance came upon you so tragically."

"This is the double-edged sword of wealth. The cost of my fortune was tremendous. People look at me with envy and whisper about my great luck. But I would give it all up in an instant to have my good father back."

They rode in silence for a few minutes longer. Dobbin strained up a rather steep hill, and the two travellers dismounted to walk beside the horse and lighten his load. How much like this horse he was, Darcy thought. Struggling against the unseen pull of the earth, hoping that somebody would act to lighten his load. Like Elizabeth did without a conscious thought. The notion buoyed him, somehow.

"I learned to manage the estate, and with my improvements, it is more prosperous now than ever," he said at last. "Changes are coming, and I hope to balance industrial development with agriculture, so we can prosper into the future. I shall not bother you now with these details, but I am proud of what I have done. I, and my advisors and tenants. We are all partners. That, I believe, is not vanity. But they depend upon me and my management of the estate. At the moment, Georgiana is my heir, with my cousin as her other guardian. What does a fifteen-year-old girl know about managing Pemberley? What does a soldier know? Without me, I do not know what will happen. That is the weight of my pride, if such it is."

Beside him, Elizabeth nodded her head. "It is pride, indeed, but not misplaced. I commend you, sir, on your achievements."

"And for them, I am afraid. If I… if I do not return, what will become of them? What will become of my dear sister? She is fragile, still, and so young. My aunt is a good-hearted woman and will keep Georgiana's body and soul together, but her spirit will be destroyed. If the man who tried to misuse her ends up killing me," his voice broke, "it will utterly destroy her. I am afraid for her as well. No. I am not afraid. I am terrified."

All Elizabeth did was squeeze his hand once more, but it helped far more than she could ever have imagined.

With these melancholy thoughts, they continued their journey. The heavy skies matched Darcy's mood, and even Elizabeth's comforting presence could not keep the blue devils from tormenting him.

At last, with the sun ready to kiss the horizon, they happened upon a small village, somewhere beyond Gloucester. They were sore at heart and exhausted, and the modest inn was as welcome to their sight as the finest palace. They begged a stall for Dobbin at the stables, and then proceeded to the inn itself to find accommodations for the night. It was easier to procure shelter for the horse than for themselves, for the inn's proprietor looked askance at Darcy's request for a bed.

"Don't see I've room for ones like you," he muttered. "This here's a respectable establishment."

For the third time in as many days, the once-esteemed Master of Pemberley was taken for nothing more than an itinerant ne'er-do-well. The Neelers, to give them their due, had not looked down on him, even though a plate of stew and a cot in a barn was nothing like what he had learned to expect. Now, this innkeeper was sneering at him, eyeing his less-than-pristine clothing and judging him as unworthy of taking a room for a night.

A glimpse in a cracked mirror by the stairs told him something of the truth of the matter: two days unshaven, two days unwashed, and looking more than impecunious in his old borrowed clothing, his appearance quite belied the essence of the man he knew himself to be.

How different this was from Darcy's accustomed treatment, when he arrived in a grand carriage pulled by a matched team, and descended in his fine London clothes, his liveried servants already having made the arrangements. On those occasions, he was treated almost like royalty, rooms cleared for his use, and food prepared to his liking. How unlike those days this was.

Was this how he treated others? The notion hit him with force. Did he look at a man poorly dressed and judge him accordingly? Did he take the measure of a stranger based more on what he saw on the outside than on the man's character? He sent a glance towards Elizabeth, herself looking quite as disreputable as he, and wondered once more how he would have regarded her if he first saw her dressed as she was, looking nothing like a gentleman's daughter. He had been forced into company with her now; he was beginning to discover her true worth. With no such requisite upon him, he might well have turned up his nose at her muddy skirts and put her entirely from his mind.

Once again, he began to understand how much the loss would have been his.

Now, that supposedly inconsequential piece of trouble he had unintentionally acquired stepped up to save him once more. She gave the suspicious innkeeper a dazzling smile and, in the sweetest words Darcy could imagine, she told him something of their plight, rather embroidered at that. A runaway carriage, a need to visit an uncle, such a pity about the loss of their trunks. It was a grand tale, and eventually, she coaxed the proprietor of this small inn into accommodations for the evening. The flash of good coin from Darcy's dwindling supply helped matters considerably, and at last, the man agreed to show them to a small room facing the stables at the back. They signed their names in the register as Mr and Mrs Williams, which seemed to surprise the innkeeper simply because he clearly did not expect them to be able to read and write at all.

He walked them to the room, handed over the key, informed them that there was food in the public, and left.

Darcy cracked the door open and stepped inside. The room was plain but it seemed clean, with one bright window illuminating the space with the last rays of the sun. Then he stopped in horror. There was only one bed.

Elizabeth seemed to read his thoughts. "He does believe us to be a married couple," she soothed, "and we could hardly tell him otherwise." Her eyes betrayed her discomfort, however, and Darcy was struck by a need to comfort her. Until this moment, he realised, she had been the one reassuring him, despite the unhappy fact that her predicament was his fault.

He took a step towards her and opened his arms so she could fall against his chest as his sister always used to do. But as she accepted the tacit invitation, he acknowledged that the sensation of having her pressed against him was nothing like Georgiana's affectionate hugs, and that his feelings were far from fraternal. He fought his rather alarming and not entirely unpleasant inclinations. He would not frighten her. He scolded himself severely, but their predicament remained.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, he tried to sound dispassionate. "I am a gentleman. You have nothing to fear from me. Your name, too, will remain unblemished. They know us as Mr and Mrs Williams, and will never associate Lizzy Williams with Miss Bennet from Hertfordshire." His eyes flickered to the single bed, taunting them from its place near the wall. There was no chair in which to sleep, and little space on the floor. Still, the floor would have to do. He was, as he had insisted, a gentleman.

She nodded against his chest and stepped back. His arms felt so empty without her in them, although their embrace had been seconds long at best.

"I trust you," was all she said before she drew her one night rail out from the small bag she carried and laid it on the bed.

They went to the public for their dinner—simple stew and bread and ale—and returned to their room to prepare for the night.

Darcy excused himself to check on Dobbin before joining Elizabeth, to give her time to change, but like the previous night, his re-entry into the room was fraught with uncertainty. Once again, she was under the covers, a soft shape in the faint light from the moon and lamps around the stable yard.

"My eyes are closed," she assured him again. "I, too, promise never to divulge that the great Mr Darcy has arms and legs like the rest of us." The shape on the bed shifted, presumably as she rolled to face away from him, and he slid off his coat and changed his day shirt for the nightshirt he had, before fumbling with the buttons at the sides of his trouser flap.

The previous night he had removed his trousers, since he had his own cot and blanket in which to sleep. But if he were to lie on the floor, and possibly need to rise at any moment, such a shocking state of undress would be… awkward. On the other hand, how long could he remain in this same item of clothing? It could be days, possibly over a week, before they arrived at the hunting lodge and he could beg for new garments.

Modesty won out, and he started to roll his coat up to make a sort of pillow on the floor, as far away from the bed as the small room would allow. They had brought in the blankets from the wagon, and these, too, he began to arrange for his undoubtedly uncomfortable night.

"Will," Elizabeth's voice whispered through the dark room. "This bed is large enough for two. You cannot sleep on the floor."

"I can, and I must. My honour demands it."

"You need to sleep. That cannot be comfortable."

"I have slept in worse places," he lied. Even his tramp through Wales with Richard several years past had taken him from one friend's estate to the next, with a carriage trailing close behind them should the walk grow too tiring.

"Will…? Oh, very well. Good night."

He eased himself onto the floor and kneaded his folded coat into shape under his head. Heavens, but the floor was hard. Perhaps if he shifted this way, or if he padded the blanket differently. He stretched out and willed his muscles to relax, but an uneven nail in the wooden floor kept irritating his arm. He moved a bit, but now every time he shifted, his foot hit the leg of the bed. He forced himself to lie very still and breathe slowly and deeply, hoping sleep would follow.

This he did for perhaps a quarter of an hour, growing less and less comfortable with every moment, until he heard Elizabeth whisper once more. "Come to the bed, Will. I shall not molest you, this I promise. It is wide enough for two, and if you feel safer, we can roll the blanket into a barrier between us.

By now, his back was aching and his head starting to throb, and the twinge in his shoulder was nagging all the more loudly. He could ignore them no longer.

"Thank you," he murmured, doing as she suggested.

The bed was nothing to his fine mattress at Pemberley, but it was a marked improvement to the floor. He rolled onto his side as far to the edge of the bed as was comfortable, and once more closed his eyes, hoping for sleep. But now a different distraction intruded, for all he could hear was Elizabeth's soft, even breath, and all he could feel was the slight sag of the mattress that betrayed her presence, so very close. He could, if he desired it, reach out and touch her, and he had to force his arms to remain as they were.

It was a very long time before he finally slept, but these were tortures of the most pleasant kind, and he could not regret her presence.