Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

AT FIRST, SHE told herself that she must have gotten the spot wrong, and had come to the wrong place in the road. She couldn't walk back on the road itself, in case of the men from the house finding her. She'd been obliged, therefore, to skirt the back of the house, staying in the wooded area, and then go as close to the road as she dared, while still being hidden within the trees.

But then she found Maria's shawl, discarded, and the place where the carriage had lain, the grass flattened, and also the indentation that had been the body of the carriage driver in the tall grass as well, and she knew.

The carriage was gone.

So, someone must have come along and found them. They'd even righted the carriage and tied it to some other carriage and pulled it away. They were gone, all of them, and there was no help to be found.

She sat down on the ground in the middle of the grass that had been flattened by the overturned carriage and felt flattened herself.

Tears threatened, but then they couldn't seem to rally themselves. She was feeling more and more numbed as the day went on.

She sat there, numb, stunned, horrified.

Then a thought occurred to her that bothered her.

Why hadn't the rescuing carriage come to the house? It was two miles down the road and quite conspicuous due to all the smoke pouring up into the sky and Maria knew that they'd gone looking for help. So, the rescuing party should have stopped and inquired after them at that house.

And they had not.

Why not?

It didn't make any sense.

She got up and marched onto the road, furrowing her brow, hands clenched in fists.

Now, on the road, she looked at the marks there, the freshest ones, and she could see how the carriage had been hauled up and dragged away—

That way.

She turned away from the house, back towards London.

Why would they go that way? Maria would have known which direction she and Mr. Darcy had walked off in, and she would have—

Well, no, that wasn't necessarily true, was it. Maria was young and had been flustered and hadn't even realized she was wearing her shawl, and she might have gotten confused about the direction.

Even so, Sir William, he would have known.

But of course, he'd been in a great deal of pain and might not have been paying attention. The colonel, of course, had been unconscious.

Maybe no one had known which way they'd walked off.

Or maybe the rescuing carriage didn't offer to go and look for them but simply to haul the carriage and the wounded and the… the body of the driver also—no, that seemed like quite an inconvenience. Why agree to all that and not to seeking out her and Mr. Darcy?

She rubbed her forehead, trying to puzzle it out.

She couldn't, however. She couldn't make it make sense.

It didn't matter, anyway. The only reason to figure it out would be to determine what she should do.

Well, she had to go back to Mr. Darcy, that was all there was to it.

Maybe she should bring him here. Maybe they should wait for rescue at the site of the carriage wreck.

No, he could not walk this far. That was impossible.

She let out a shuddering breath and then took off back to where she'd left Mr. Darcy.

"GONE?" MR. DARCY said. He was swimming out in a strange, liminal place right now. As long as he didn't move, the pain was bearable, he thought. He was concentrating entirely on not moving at all. However, the tree trunk at his back was digging into his skin in ways that were unpleasant, and he thought he might like his jacket draped over his shoulders. That, however, would require a great deal of movement, and he was weighing whether or not it was worth it.

Elizabeth was babbling a lot, and he couldn't make much sense of it.

He let her talk. Finally, she stopped. He had been meaning to tell her something. What was it? Oh, yes. "They left."

"That's what I've just been saying," she said. "I know they left, but it doesn't make sense to me, and I'm not sure what we should do."

"No, I mean, the bandits at the house." He tilted his head towards the house. It was late now, and the sun was sinking behind the trees in the west. He was not sure he wanted to spend the night outside in the dark and the cold, but he also never wanted to move again. "They saw we were gone, and they looked around only a little, before the one in charge said to forget about it, and they all left."

"Well, that's good, I suppose," she said.

"Maybe."

"Only because they didn't come after you. I was worried they would, you know," she said. "I thought they might find you and shoot you."

"I don't wish to move, Miss Bennet, let alone to walk."

"Of course you don't."

"So, you don't think I have to?" He felt like a small boy, asking for permission for something of his nanny. Nanny, please, mayn't I stay in bed all day, because I feel poorly.

"I don't see why you would." She tapped her lower lip. "But I wonder if I should go back to the place where the carriage turned over. They must come looking for us, mustn't they? Will they know where to seek us, that's what concerns me the most. And with you, with your wound, time is of the essence. Perhaps I should keep going down the road. I know that Patrick person said there was nothing nearby—"

"It's getting dark, Miss Bennet," he said.

"Right, I supposed that would be stupid," she said.

"The bandits may be somewhere nearby," he said.

"Oh, Lord, I hadn't thought of that." Her voice went high-pitched.

He sagged into the tree trunk, shutting his eyes.

A few moments passed, and neither of them spoke.

Finally, though, he had to say something. "Miss Bennet, I have been bleeding quite a lot."

"That's true," she said. "Have you soaked through my petticoat, because if so, maybe I can—"

"We are in the woods, and there are animals that can smell such things," he said. "If it's birds, we're probably all right, but at night sometimes… wolves."

"Oh, dear," she breathed.

"I think we must go into the house," he said. "Only I don't wish to. I don't want to get up. So, I'd like you to convince me, if at all possible, that there are no wolves out here, that we can simply stay here in the forest and—"

"Oh, Mr. Darcy," she wailed. "No, I can't. We must go into that house. You're right."

"I was thinking you might say that," he muttered, very chagrined.

She suddenly began to sob. It happened out of nowhere. One moment, she was sitting there, looking at him very gravely, the next, she had doubled over and was shaking all over with the force of the sorrow working its way through her.

He let her cry for a while.

He wanted to cry, too.

It would be nice if he had a nanny right now, some large and self-important woman—or maybe his housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds. Yes, if Mrs. Reynolds were here at this moment, she would fix everything, he just knew it.

"Miss Bennet."

She lifted her tearstained face. "I'm sorry. I simply… it came over me… it has been a very horrible d-day and I am overcome."

"You can cry once we're indoors," he said.

She sniffed hard, hiccuped, and then nodded sharply. "You're right, of course." She got to her feet. "All right, I shall help you up as we did before."

He grunted. "I don't wish to. Let me stay here. I don't care, really."

"Mr. Darcy, you do care. You told me that you don't wish to die."

"Maybe I do," he said. "Maybe it'd be easier at this point. Everything is very, very painful, you see, and I think I'd like that to stop and—"

"You do not wish to be ripped apart by wolves!" This was very stern.

Well, she had him there. He reached his hands up to her.

She seized them.

Then, together, struggling, using the tree trunk behind him to help, they managed to get him to his feet. He screamed like a woman, and it echoed against the setting sun, and then she staggered under his weight, and he would have apologized if he'd been able to make words, but it all hurt far too much.

Tears streamed down his face, but he ignored them. "All right, let's walk now," he panted.

She supported him.

Laboriously, they made their way back to the house. He thought of how stupid it was that he'd had to move at all, but he supposed it had saved his life, and he supposed that was a good thing. God, but it hurt.

Inside the house, it was dark and the walls were blackened from the fire. Everything smelled like soot, and the air was damp because water had been flung all over everything.

They veered into a room on the side of the house where the fire had not been burning. It was a sitting room. They staggered over to a couch and then both flopped down on it.

He moaned.

She leaned over and put her head between her knees.

Then he passed out, he thought, because she wasn't there anymore and the sun was down, and it was dark.

Her voice carried from the other side of the room. "I can't find any flint, but I have a lamp. I simply can't light it. There's no way to light it."

"Pocket," he managed. He always carried flint. Except his jacket… "Oh, dash it all, we didn't bring my jacket inside, did we?"

"You have flint in your jacket pocket?" she said.

"Aye, I do. But it's outside—"

"I'll get it. Here, you take this."

He opened his eyes to see that she was shoving a bottle into his hands.

"It's laudanum," she said. "There was willow bark, too, but I thought it would make you bleed too much, so this is better. You might welcome the sleep." It was a known side effect of chewing willow bark. It thinned one's blood.

"Oh, you're an angel," he said, giving her a smile. "Christ in heaven, thank you." He uncapped it and tipped it to his mouth.

"Not so much, Mr. Darcy." She yanked it away.

He reached out for the bottle again, angry. "The devil take you, you idiot woman."

"You're just calling me names because you're in pain," she said.

She was right. He settled into the couch, tears pricking his eyes again. "Apologies, Miss Bennet," he breathed.

"I'll go out and find your jacket," she said, and she was gone.

He was asleep before that, though, sucked out on the tide of the opium, which was a welcome world of dreamy strangeness, where he floated, happy, weightless, detached.

When he woke, it was light outside again.

She was gone, but there was a note written on a piece of charred parchment, saying she'd gone to seek help. She'd left him some water in a bucket drawn straight from the well with a cup to drink it out of.

He wished she would have left the bottle of laudanum.

She hadn't.

He sat up and examined his wound. He thought he likely needed a new bandage, but there wasn't anything here, and he didn't think that getting up and looking about to seek some linens or anything of that nature would be a good idea. He'd likely tear apart any part of his body that had begun to mend itself.

He felt helpless.

He lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling and tried to summon the energy to do anything to better his situation, but all he could think was that if Mrs. Reynolds was there, everything would be better. He mused that most people would wish for their mothers in this situation, but that he had always known his mother was too delicate to be of any use. She hadn't survived bringing Georgiana into the world after all. With his mother gone, his father had seemed on borrowed time.

Hours later, Elizabeth returned.

She was dirty and exhausted and she collapsed into a chair near him on the couch. "There's nothing. Nothing at all. I walked and walked and walked, and all I found was the bandits."

Alarm shot through him. "Miss Bennet, did something happen?"

"No, they didn't see me. I stayed out of sight. I'm not that foolish," she moaned. "But neither could I keep going in that direction, not with them out there. So, then, I went all the way back to where the carriage was overturned, and I walked towards London for an hour, looking for someone there, anyone at all. I found a house, but it was empty and no one answered when I knocked at the door. There are horses in the stables, though, so someone must be coming back, don't you think? Who leaves horses in a stable and disappears? Perhaps it was a farmer and he is out in the fields. I am thinking about going back later, once the sun is down, for he is sure to be back by then—"

"Not in the dark. Don't be foolish, Miss Bennet."

She glanced at him. "Why haven't they come looking for us yet?"

He sighed. "It's been a day?"

"Yes, longer now. It's late now, and I'm starving, and I swear I didn't notice it yesterday—"

"Food," he said softly.

"Well, you may have been shot in the stomach, and if so—"

"I don't think so," he said.

"Well, your guts or something," she said. "I don't think you should eat, not that it matters because there's nothing in the larder of this house except potatoes, mealy potatoes, and you must cook them. I thought maybe a carrot at the least, but nothing—"

"Truly? Nothing?"

"Flour," she said. "There's a large bag of flour."

"Why would a house only have—"

"Well, maybe the bandits took the food," she said.

"It seems like there must have been something else here for them to loot, though."

"I did look last night. Upstairs, there's a room where the floor has caved into the level below, and there are ever so many open trunks in that room, and a few stray pearls on the floor, too."

He gave her a confused look.

"Well, a woman's wardrobe might be worth a great deal of money," said Elizabeth. "For the fine fabrics used and the laces and all those things. Even if it were very old, and no one would wear the dresses because they are outdated. So, what I think is that the people who lived here had the wardrobe of some old female relative, and that they left on a holiday or some such, and then the bandits came and killed the servants—I did find the corpses—"

"Christ, Miss Bennet," he said. "I'm so sorry."

"Yes, well, they're just dead people," she said. "That's really the least of the horrors of this entire experience, sir."

"No, true," he said. "Entirely true, I'm afraid." He'd been swearing in front of her a great deal, hadn't he? Taking the Lord's name in vain left and right. She was correct that horrors had been visited upon her, visited upon them both.

"Why hasn't anyone come for us?" she said.

"I don't know," he said.

"I think they must have tried and they can't find us," she said. "I think they don't know where the carriage overturned. They must not have thought to leave a sign for themselves. So, they would be left to try to remember where it was, and perhaps they are relying on Maria Lucas—"

"Oh, Christ," he said again. "Apologies for the swearing, madam."

"You have a hole in you," she said. "It's all right. I wish to swear as well. I likely have. I don't even know."

"Miss Lucas didn't know that she was wearing her own shawl," he said.

"Exactly," she said. "What if they never find us, Mr. Darcy? What if you just die out here?"

"Miss Bennet—

"That is why I am going to the farmer's house after dark, because I can't stay here and watch you sleep again."

He grimaced, feeling useless. He couldn't walk. He knew that. But he wished he could do something to help her. "Not at night. The bandits are still about—"

"No, they are far down the road by now, and I shall be going in the opposite direction."

"Well, there are wolves—"

"I haven't heard any wolves!"

"I forbid it," he said. "Think of it. If I die and you live, it will be one thing, but if you die, and I'm alive here, while you're taking all the risk, it's abominable. I can't bear that."

"Oh, well, I shouldn't wish to inconvenience you with my death," she muttered.

"You must stay," he said.

"Last night…" She let out a little moan. "Oh, I wasn't even going to tell you."

"What?"

"Well, I found your jacket, but there was no flint," she said. "So, I couldn't start a fire. And it was cold, and you were warm, and I…"

It took a moment for him to put that together, but when he did, he smiled. "Did you stay warm, then, Miss Bennet?"

She tilted her head back and let out another moan. "I can't do it again. It was one thing last night, and you were gone on the laudanum, and I thought that no one would ever know. But now I've told you. You don't even like me."

"No, no," he said, still smiling. "I like you. You simply don't like me." He had a funny thought. Maybe I'll have to marry her now. They were trapped out here, together, no chaperone. True, it was unlikely anyone was going to believe he was ruining her with a hole in his belly, but it wasn't as if he was incapable. I could be ruining her. Certainly, I could. He chuckled at the thought, how painful it would be, how maybe it would be worth it, even so?

"What are you laughing at?"

This made him laugh harder, which hurt, so he broke off, groaning.

"Mr. Darcy, don't laugh," she said. "I mean it. You'll make yourself bleed." She sighed. "Oh, I should go and see if I can find anything to redo your bandages before I go back to the farmer's house."

"Miss Bennet, you're not traipsing about after dark, do you hear me?" He raised his voice, because she had left the room.

There was no response from her.

He decided he was going to get up from the couch. Maybe it was the thought of ruining her that made him think he was capable of it. Whatever the case, he didn't manage it. He did sit up, though, feet on the ground, dizzy as he gazed out at the shadowed sitting room. Was he dizzy from all the blood loss or the lack of food?

She appeared with some fresh linens and a knife to cut them. She used water from the well to clean him. It was shockingly cold. He swore at her more. He might have said "bloody hell," but she ignored him, steadfast in her task.

He let her clean and bind him, but then he tugged her down to sit next to him on the couch.

She huffed, but she looked exhausted. She didn't protest, at any rate.

"You have to stay," he said softly.

"No," she said. "I have to go."

He lifted his arm and draped it over the back of the couch. At this point, he was bare from the waist up, and this made it all seem odd and dreamlike, too intimate. Maybe it was those awful, inappropriate thoughts he'd been having about ruining her, which…

She was exhausted and dirty and she'd lost her bonnet at some point, but he thought she looked very pretty. "You'll take some laudanum and sleep," she said.

"The devil drag you to hell, madam," he said with a groan. "Because now I know I can't have any laudanum. The minute I drift off, you'll leave, and I can't let you go out in the dark like that."

"Mr. Darcy… I know you are only caring about my welfare, but you must realize that someone has to do something."

"I think you need to rest," he said, and his voice was scratchy, and his arm was moving over the back of the couch to drape itself over her shoulders.

She eyed his fingers as they curled down over the sleeve of her dress. Her breath came out noisily. "Mr. Darcy…"

"Both of us need it," he rasped. "Rest and warmth, and stop moving for a moment, Miss Bennet, all right?"

Her jaw worked and her eyes shone and she looked ready to leap up from the couch and scamper off like a determined rabbit—were rabbits determined? Was that a remnant of the laudanum working its way through him? But then, slowly, by degrees, she drooped and then carefully lay herself down against him, avoiding his wound, but putting her head on his shoulder. He pulled her closer and ran his hand up and down her spine and put his nose in her hair and breathed in the scent of her.

She smelled like ash and sweat and blood—his blood—but underneath there was this other smell, and he knew it was her, and it was sweet and good. He breathed it in, sighing her name—her first name—softly, just under his breath.

She put her hand on his chest, her bare hand on his bare skin, and she whispered, "We shouldn't."

"Shh, Elizabeth," he said.

She moaned again, but she didn't protest anymore and she didn't say anything else.

And then, her breath went even and deep, and he could tell she'd fallen asleep. He curled around her—into her—and let himself drift off, too.