“A bear.”
“What?”
Bingley was gone, however, and all was dark again.
Darcy sipped, for there was water upon his lips. “Who did this?” he begged, though this time he had no voice, and the question hurt to ask. He found he no longer cared. The means mattered little; that he was injured remained true whatever the cause. He sipped more water and prayed for everything to cease hurting. Never had he known pain that permeated even the deepest sleep. It did not relent even for a moment.
“Physician?” he begged—or attempted to. His numb lips misshaped the word, and the obstruction in his throat stole what was left of the plea. “Laudanum?” he mouthed. “Laudan—” He gave up, exhausted.
“I am sorry,” a voice too feminine to be Bingley’s said, “Ihave nothing to give you for the pain. Though—” A loud scrape muffled whatever words were spoken next, and the voice faded away. Time pulsed in Darcy’s ears awhile. Pain throbbed in his neck, and he drifted helplessly in obscurity.
An icy touch at his throat awoke him. He flinched away from it, and then grimaced at the agony of so sudden a movement. He lifted a hand to identify the coldness that stung his skin but was pushed gently away.
“Pray, leave it a moment, Mr Darcy. ’Tis only snow.”
He frowned, baffled, yet snow was a less threatening delusion than a murderous bear, and he had not the wits about him to query it. In any case, its icy burn had begun to affect a small but sublime reprieve from his torturous breathing—and he felt certain he knew that voice intimately enough to trust it.
“What has happened to me?”
He received no response. Somebody dabbed at the rivulets of melted snow that ran behind his ears and into his hair, but whomever did so gave him no answer. Perhaps it was another hallucination. He asked again. The fussing ceased.
“Forgive me, I cannot understand you. Could you move your lips more slowly?”
He thought he had spoken aloud. Though, he also imagined he had been talking to his sister and, it would now seem, this was not she. Was he losing his mind?
“What happened?” he mouthed slowly and pointed at his throat.
“You were kicked by a horse.”
It was more probable that he had been strangled by a bear. A man kicked in the neck by a horse would like as not be too dead to enquire about it, mutely or otherwise. Perhaps hewasdead. He asked if it were so.
“I am sorry,” came the answer after a pause. “I simply cannot understand what you are trying to say. Pray, rest fornow. I can answer your questions when you are better recovered.”
Dead people did not recover. With the snow at his neck now merely warm dampness and the constant scraping sound of his breathing showing no sign of abating, that seemed as much comfort as he was likely to find at the present moment. He released the last of the air in his chest and surrendered once again to darkness.
Chapter 3
A Hopeless Business
The room brightened, and though his head was thick with fog and his thoughts were scattered incoherently throughout the miasma, Darcy supposed he must be awake, for he became aware of the sound of somebody moving around and the quiet thrum of a voice not his own. The aching discomfort that had been his constant companion whilst he slept intensified with wakefulness. Everything from his scalp to the pit of his stomach throbbed sharply and breathing felt akin to sword-swallowing.
A rush of alarm brought with it the recollection that he was gravely wounded.And in an unfamiliar place, he thought, taking in his strange surroundings. The voice floated nearer, and a blurry figure leant over him, touched his forehead, then drifted off and was shut away behind what sounded like a closing door.With Elizabeth Bennet? For crying out loud!
Vague memories and half-dreams of his malaise returned to him in flashes, and though little of it was intelligible, the feeling of her having been there throughout, once acknowledged, could not be shaken. Was she tending to him? Aghast,but clumsy with fatigue, he assessed his state of dress with heavy hands. The totality of his attire consisted of a shirt and what felt to be his riding breeches. He closed his eyes, unsure whether to be horrified or relieved. Both, he supposed, for though the impropriety was mortifying, it could have been infinitely worse. In any case, the humiliation of Elizabeth’s being there did not sting as much as the perverseness of it. For the better part of three months, Darcy had fought an insuperable fascination with the dark-eyed spitfire. Now he was not only back in her presence but apparently quite literally at her mercy. He doubted even his fanciful younger sister could invent a story to match such far-fetched happenstance.
Georgiana!At the remembrance of her, thither swept all his thoughts. A picture formed in his mind of her as a young child, reaching her hands up, pleading to be swung into his arms. Something swooped and plummeted in his gut at the prospect of her never again welcoming him home. How badly injured was he? His sister had lost too many relatives at too tender an age to suffer another grievance—and, at the present moment, with indistinct but terrible recollections of panic and suffocation plaguing him, his own death did not seem wholly improbable.
He raised his hands to explore his neck. A fleeting fear that he had lost all sensation there was replaced with the equally worrying discovery that it had been bandaged. Bandages meant an open wound. Trepidation weakened his arms; he lowered his hands so as not to see them shake and lay still, chasing his untethered thoughts as they dashed futilely from one matter to another, alighting on nothing long enough to properly comprehend it. Every question—from what had befallen him, to what would become of him, to how much dignity he had sacrificed to Elizabeth’s care—led to the same murky impasse: there were no answers; he was helpless.
Alarm swarmed close to overflowing until a new vexation arose, and his thoughts took flight like a host of flies disturbed by the swat of a hand. He needed to relieve himself. There was a moment when fear might have turned to hysteria, for the situation could not have been more ridiculous; but Darcy was not naturally disposed to laugh at himself and instead, fear twisted into bitterness. He threw back the blanket and attempted to haul himself upright.
Sudden and horrific pain tore down his neck and pinned him to the bed. He pounded a fist on the mattress and gritted his teeth so hard his face hurt. Nobody came to his assistance—something by which he could not help but be further vexed. God knew he had no wish to be in this situation with Elizabeth Bennet of all people, but now that such had been forced upon him, he found that hernotcoming to his aid was even more objectionable. As soon as he felt able, he called to her and was dismayed when all that escaped his mouth was a watery scratching sound. He tried again but this time gagged on the utterance and almost lapsed insensate at the pain the attempt induced. Fear hammered in his veins. He could not speak! What the bloody hell was he to do with no voice?
Long moments filled with desolate predictions for his future passed, and no relief from agony arrived. Neither did Elizabeth. His perturbation increased tenfold at the possibility of having dreamt her up after all—for what did that say about the state of his mind? What it said about the state of his heart was something he was so averse to considering that he avoided it altogether by rolling onto his side, planting a hand on the bed and shoving himself roughly to sitting. The room simultaneously shrank and tilted as his vision blackened at the edges and his head swam vertiginously. He grabbed for the nightstand, knocked something off it that clanged loudly to thefloor, and grimaced savagely to forestall the bellow he suspected would only choke him.
At length, his vision cleared, revealing an average-sized room, with too few windows to properly light the space, too much furniture to let in what little light there was, and no Elizabeth. He was not alone though. Over the scrape and crackle of his breathing, he could hear the faint din of conversation creeping up through the floorboards. He stared at them, beneath his feet, attempting to think how best to gain somebody’s attention through the thick oak, but his addled thoughts refused to attend to the problem. The roar of pain in his ears worsened by the moment, suffocating every thought that lingered too long. His feet were cold—the rest of him was not—a fire burned in the hearth—his neck hurt—his boots stood in the corner of the room at right angles to each other—his head hurt—there was only one bed—a chamber pot protruded from under it. At last—an observation of some actual use!
With as little movement to his upper body as possible, Darcy hooked a foot behind the pot, slid it into position, used it without standing up, and shoved it back beneath the bed with his heel. Confusion trespassed ever farther over his awareness. Every movement he made, every moment he remained upright, every breath for which he fought increased the agony in his neck and his desperation to find relief. He grabbed hold of the nightstand with both hands and would have heaved himself to his feet had the door not opened, and Elizabeth cried out in alarm.
