“How sudden it was in the end! Was there any warning?”
Another flash of pink, vanishing in a sea of dust, filled Darcy’s vision. “Yes, there was a twenty-foot crack in the wall, Georgiana, but I think I can be forgiven for assuming the several tonnes of shoring would hold it up.”
“Of course! I only meant, was there any warning today, before it fell. A noise or a—”
“No, there was no warning!” Darcy rubbed a hand over his face in frustration, regretting his incivility. He had not meant to shout, but he wished Georgiana would cease forcing his mind back to that damned moment!
“Your brother is very tired,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps it would be best if we all went to bed now.”
“A very sensible suggestion, Mrs Darcy. I shall go up as well.”
Darcy had not even noticed his aunt was still there. She inclined her head solemnly and left without another word. Georgiana hastened after her.
Elizabeth came to stand in front of Darcy and held out her hand for him to take. “Come. Vaughan and Garrett will never get to bed if we do not go up soon.”
Upon arriving, alone, in his bedroom, the surreal quality settled even more oppressively over Darcy’s world. He tried not to picture it again, but when Elizabeth walked through the door, he could do nothing to ward off either the memory of crashing stone or the appalling feeling that accompanied it. He did not think he made any sound, but he must have done something, for Elizabeth cried his name and dashed across the room to him.
“For heaven’s sake, sit down!”
He let her push him into a chair. He heard her ask Vaughan to leave them, and the door close behind his man. He watched her kneel on the floor in front of him and listened as she told him how profoundly sorry she was for him. She began saying things about Pemberley, and legacies, and rebuilding, and—
“I know all of that, Elizabeth. That is not—” He was obliged to stop speaking because he was either going to be sick or start crying. He shook his head to clear it, but he could not bring his breathing under better regulation and was all but panting as he forced himself to say what had been haunting him all evening. “I thought you were underneath it. I thought I had lost you.”
There was so much pity in the way she said his name it made him squeeze his eyes shut against it.
She picked up his hands and brought them to her own face. “I am perfectly safe. See?”
When he could not answer, she grew more insistent, smoothing his hair and stroking his face as she repeated her assurances. He did not stop her because he had never needed reassuring of anything more than this, but her words were not enough. With something inside him howling for her, he kissed her—harder than he meant to, but not as hard as he wanted to. He made himself stop.
“’Tis well, my love,” she said softly. “I am flesh and blood, not stone. I’ll not crumble. I promise.”
Darcy might have wept in earnest, then, except he wanted her too badly. He put his hand at the back of her head and pulled her back into the kiss. She met him with urgency that matched his own, her hands on his chest, then around his shoulders, then in his hair. When he kissed her neck, she tasted of rubble, and though it wrenched his gut to be reminded of why he felt this way, it only inflamed his need for her. Nothing but being as close to her as it was possible to be would suffice now. With an arm cradling her shoulders, he slid forward off the chair and lowered her onto the hearth rug.
He still felt as though he were in a dream—an intense, unsettling, impassioned one. He had never been as in love, never been as terrified, never been as aroused, neverfeltas much in his life. Elizabeth welcomed him to her, let him love her with unfettered emotion, whispered to him again and again that she was safe, she was well, she was his, until words failed her, too. Firelight caught her rapture in glorious relief, and in that moment, still in her pink dress, still covered in the dust of his ruined house, Darcy’s beloved wife banished his fear completely.
“I shall never be able to put into words what you mean to me, Elizabeth,” he told her quietly. “I would not have survived today without you. I have never known anybody with your courage or strength.”
He was not expecting a response and was taken aback when she took his face in her hands and lifted his head until he was looking down at her.
“I wasterrifiedtoday, Fitzwilliam! I was terrified when the wall fell, I was terrified that people were hurt and missing, and I knew not what to do or how to help. Do you know howIsurvived? I had you! Weallhad you. Every servant, every labourer, every man and woman in this house was looking to you, taking your lead, following your instructions. And you let none of us down.” She let out a small huff of the tenderest laughter and shook her head. “Never known anybody with my courage and strength? You foolish man. Try looking in a mirror.”
He settled for carrying her to his bed and looking atherwhile he loved her again—less urgently but no less ardently, until her fears were banished as incontrovertibly as his own had been.
CHAPTERFORTY-FIVE
THE MISTRESS OF NOTHING BUT RUBBLE
“Ihave already looked in that pile,” Elizabeth said. She lifted the stack of papers off the desk and replaced it with a different one. “Try these.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam duly began rifling through his new commission. “What exactly are we looking for, again?”
“I do not know,” Darcy replied, closing the folder on the desk before him with a contemptuous flick. “Every record of Pemberley’s mines, past and present, is accounted for, and I have never set eyes on any document relating to works this close to the house. Ferguson swears blind that neither has he, and the plans show nothing. But I must look. I cannot sit idly and do nothing.”
“And if we cannot find anything?”
“Then the next task will be to unpack every crate from the library and look there.”
Elizabeth repressed a sigh. It was a hopeless task. They had already searched every drawer, cupboard, and shelf in the estate office that Ferguson had suggested from his sickbed—and every one that he had not—to no avail. They had turned their attention this morning to the Argyll room, where the contents of Darcy’s study, formerly in the east wing, were being stored. After this, it would indeed be the library contents, followed by Darcy’s attorney’s office in Derby. All because Mr Jacobs was immovable in his conviction that there was a mine under the house, and Darcy would not rest until he had found something to discredit the theory.
