“Hush.”
Something brushed against his forehead. He flinched from it, then from the bolt of agony that arced the length of his gullet.
“Hush. Calm yourself, sir. Try not to struggle—the worst is over. We shall not move you again.”
He opened his eyes and blinked against the light. Elizabeth Bennet leant over him. It was a delusion of a different nature; less muted, less indistinct than the others. He liked it better.
“Mr Darcy? Can you hear me?”
To nod in the affirmative was a reflex not easily subdued, and he grimaced fiercely at yet another excruciating stab, then fought a rising swell of nausea as the grotesque clamour of his fractured breathing increased.
There was a touch to his hand. His fingers were pried open. Something to which he had not known he clung was tugged from his grasp and replaced with a warmer, gentler thing. Her hand. Why was she there?
“You must try not to give in to alarm, sir. I know you are in a great deal of pain, but you are safe now, and we shall find somebody to tend to you as soon as may be.”
A darker blackness than merely the shadowy occlusion of closed eyes crept over him, and he could not fight it. He could only cling to Elizabeth, lest he be lost from the world entirely.
Chapter 2
A More Familiar Delusion
Worse than the unrelenting sense of suffocation, worse even than the agony of whatever affliction gripped his throat, was the terrible thirst to which Darcy awoke. His tongue cleaved to his palate, his head pounded, and exhaustion pinned his arms to his sides. When he begged for water, his lips cracked and his tongue spasmed, but his plea remained unspoken, for no sound came from the parched wasteland of his mouth. He could hear the hoarse scrape of what he presumed was his breathing, a crackling that he supposed was a fire, the faint whistle of wind trespassing around an ill-fitted windowpane—but of his own voice, he heard not a croak.
Fear added its bite to the gnaw of thirst. What in God’s name had happened to him? Fighting an upwelling of alarm, he forced his eyes open. He was in a chamber, the ceiling of which was yellowing and peppered with mildew. He could see the uppermost corner of a window from where he lay; it was glazed with diamonds of thick, distorted glass. The walls were painted a utilitarian shade of taupe. He did notknow the place or why he was in it. The time of day eluded him, for the light was all wrong—grey and bright at the same time. He knew neither how he came to be there, nor how long ago he had arrived. All that was certain was that he hurt atrociously, though the reason for that was as shrouded in mystery as everything else, and the confusion of his mind terrified him almost as much as his physical suffering.
Thirst overshadowed everything, compelling him to lift his head in search of water. Excruciating pain drove him instantly back down, his eyes and jaw clenched shut and his mind awhirl, grasping futilely at wisps of memories that might—but did not—explain the feeling of being utterly spent, utterly broken. His neck was ablaze and there was something horribly unfamiliar about the way his head and shoulders were aligned—an unnatural rigidity betwixt the two that, when he reached up to touch it, felt numb, despite the monstrous pain. He dug his fingers into it, attempted to scratch away whatever was hurting him, but everything he did and everywhere he touched exacerbated the torture.
Something took hold of his hands. He recoiled from the contact, ripping free of its grip and shoving it away, fearful of anything touching him. The movement tightened the constriction about his throat. He tugged frantically at the collar of his shirt to relieve it, but again his hands were seized and drawn aside, this time more firmly. Somebody spoke, the words nebulous but the tone fretful. He was not alone! There was comfort in that—or at least, there would be, if only whoever it was would do something to relieve his torment.
He or she—she—said something else.Heknew not what; he could not concentrate on anything beyond the all-consuming need for liquid. He begged for water and shuddered when his throat gave forth nothing but an arid wheezeand a flood of pain. He forced one eye open and mouthed his plea again at the silhouette bent over him.
For the briefest moment, Darcy forgot his thirst entirely as the achingly familiar apparition slid her hand beneath his head and lifted it slightly to meet the cup she held to his mouth.
“Sip it slowly, Mr Darcy. Your throat is wounded. You would not like to choke.”
Then water trickled between his lips and all else became immaterial. He meant to sip, but need bade him gulp. His throat contracted, he bucked in agony, spluttered out most of the water and sucked the rest into his lungs.
“Calm yourself, sir. Breathe. ’Tis well. ’Tis well.”
The composure of the voice was vastly at odds with the desperate situation. It steadied him until he ceased coughing. As did the hand that remained at the base of his neck. Somebody—the same woman, presumably—dabbed the water from his face. He strained to focus his gaze on her countenance, his eyes found hers, and his breath hitched, though nobody would have noticed amongst the already erratic clamour.
“Nowsip,” said Elizabeth Bennet—to all appearances the real one, not an apparition or a delusion or a dream.
What in blazes?Darcy wondered in bewilderment, for in his present condition, with his mind as empty as his lungs, he could think of no goodly explanation for her being there. He had not the strength to reflect upon it for long. Distracted by the cup that was back at his lips, he attended instead to assuaging his thirst, though the pain of swallowing and the effort not to gag made it impossible to take more than half a dozen sips. By the time Elizabeth laid his head gently back on the pillow and removed her hand, exhaustion had crept into Darcy’s mind and settled heavily upon his limbs. His eyes were already closed.
He heard, and envied, the deep breath Elizabeth took. Heheard her also as she let it out, slowly and a little shakily—and he heard her speak.
“Good. The only thing that could possibly make this situation worse would be if you were actually to die.”
Sleep was upon him before her meaning could even begin to matter.
“Come, Darcy. I must have you breathe. I hate to see you thrashing about in this stupid manner.”
Darcy opened his eyes. “Bingley?” The man standing over him in full evening dress did not look like his friend, but he sounded like him, and his cocked hat was placed the wrong way on his head, which seemed apropos. “What has happened to me?”
“Strangled, old fruit.”
“Strangled? By whom?”
