He blinked her countenance back into focus. He had meantto say something of it being too much to ask that she perform the task, but befogged with pain, his mind had wandered again, and she had taken his silence for consent. Unable to think of a sensible reason to refuse, he nodded yes to the brandy, quailed as pain ignited under his chin, opened his mouth to cry out, choked before any sound escaped and mouthed a thoroughly uncivil imprecation.
Elizabeth raised both eyebrows, but if she recognised his incivility, she was good enough not to mention it, and said instead, “We must devise a better way to communicate. One that does not require you to nod or shake your head. Perhaps you could blink once for yes and twice for no?”
A simple solution—he blinked once.
“No?” she replied dubiously.
He frowned and blinked once again.
“Yes? Stop blinking!”
He lifted his hands in another shrug.
“Just blink once if you agree,” Elizabeth said again, very slowly, as though speaking to a child.
Doing his best to conceal his exasperation, Darcy squeezed his eyes closed overlong, then opened them again—one unmistakable blink.
Elizabeth smirked. “You keep blinking again after you have said yes.”
Panic and pain melted away as Darcy beheld her expression. It felt an awfully long time that he been longing to see her eyes gleam with mirth in that manner. He reeled at the intensity with which he felt the effect, having thought to have reasoned himself out of any susceptibility to her charms weeks ago.
“There is no need to look so cross. You cannot help blinking. It is evidently not a sound suggestion. Why not extend your forefinger to say no?”
Darcy did as she suggested.
“Aye, that works well enough. I cannot mistake you when you look so much as though you are scolding me. And for yes, you could?—"
He dipped his extended finger to touch the back of his other hand.
“That will do well enough.” She twisted away to collect something from the table. “Now, to avoid the necessity for any more answers of any sort, I intend to spoon this brandy into you until you stop glowering at me.” She held the bottle up to the window and squinted at it. “I do hope we have enough.”
He smiled at her teasing, but stopped again directly, for he had no intention of worsening his plight or undoing weeks of struggles by being drawn back in at the very first hint of Elizabeth’s playfulness.
Darcy spluttered and choked down as much brandy as he could then pushed away the next spoonful Elizabeth brought to his lips. His pain had not much abated and certainly not enough to compensate for the sting of attempting to swallow the acrid swill. God, but he was tired!
“Are you ready?” Elizabeth enquired then immediately added, “Do not nod! I ought not to have asked. You will just have to accustom yourself to being told what to do.” He heard her dip something in the water and wring it out. “It will make a nice change from you directing everybody else’s affairs.”
He frowned over her meaning until something hot touched his throat and crawled in every direction over his skin. He gasped—a painful and noisy affair—and attempted to pull away from it but succeeded only in hurting himself more.
“I know it pains you,” Elizabeth said, “but I must soakthese bandages, or I fear I will reopen whatever has begun to heal when I take them off.”
He looked in dismay at the bloodied cloth in her hand.
She looked from him to it and back. “I shall not lie to you, sir—there was a good deal of blood.”
He wondered vaguely whether having bled a lot would account for the tingling warmth that was presently blooming in his fingers and toes. Elizabeth reapplied the damp cloth, and the crawling heat returned as water soaked into the bandages. Her brow contracted as she applied herself to the task, and her gaze flicked frequently to his as though to gauge his condition. Being even less certain of that than she, Darcy was able to offer nothing by way of encouragement and could only watch her silently as she worked.
Her hair was different, pinned simply and escaping from its confines in a dozen places. One wisp, hanging by her temple, bounced hypnotically each time she leant over him. Her touch was soporific in its gentleness. Every point at which his distress grew too great, she paused and waited for him to recover himself, her gaze steady and her smile encouraging. He had lied to himself; she was far prettier than his memory had allowed her to be. When she wiped her brow with the back of her hand and inadvertently smeared his blood across her face, he groaned inwardly. This was too gruesome a task for so respectable and genteel a woman. “Why you?”
He had meant to mutter it only to himself, forgetting Elizabeth was poised to read his lips, and he started when she said, heatedly, “There is nobody else! I suppose you would rather avoid the indignity, but the alternative is that I leave you to moulder, perchance to die, and I refuse to believe there is not somebody,somewherein the world, who would care if you did.”
She had mistaken him, of course, but he was diverted byher feisty retort, so reminiscent of their every exchange at Netherfield. He extended his forefinger to contradict her and gave the silent explanation, “That was not my meaning.”He could easily perceive she had not managed to catch his words, and he tried again. “I am sorry for you.”On a whim, he reached up and wiped the blood from her forehead with his shirt cuff. He pointed at her and mouthed, “Lovely.” Then he pointed at his injury and mouthed, “Not lovely.”
She pulled a sceptical face and pointed at him. “Drunk.”
He could not help but laugh and, hence, gag. He sucked in a slow, rasping breath and held it until the risk of coughing, sniggering, or indeed suffocating passed. When it had, he gestured for her to continue and squeezed his eyes closed in readiness. He began to suspect she might be right when the world began to spin in slow, nauseating revolutions. Still, he supposed that above four-and-twenty hours without food would leave a man susceptible to two or three dozen spoonfuls of cheap alcohol. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The patches of mildew swirled and bloomed into patterns. One was shaped just like a pineapple.
“Mr Darcy? I have finished washing it. Sir? Are you well?”
