Where are we?
He held it up for her to read.
She frowned. “You do not recall any of what I told you this morning?” More urgently, she added, “Use your hands to answer!”
Darcy smiled gratefully for the timely reminder and extended his forefinger rather than shake his head.
Elizabeth pulled a wry face. “I did wonder if you had heard me.”
He scribbled another quick note.
Forgive me. I have been excessively fatigued.
He held it up again.
“’Tis well, sir,” she assured him after reading it. “You have been very seriously injured. It is not surprising you have been muddled. We are at an inn called The Dancing Bear, near Spencer’s Cross. Do you know it?”
Darcy shook his head and cursed silently, no less from the pain than exasperation at having done so yet again.
“My apologies,” Elizabeth said. “Asking questions is a difficult habit to unlearn. Spencer’s Cross is a small village a short distance south of here. Beech Hill, I understand, is a little farther, and to the east.” She stopped and seemed to be waiting for him to respond. He indicated that he required more ink, then wrote,
Why are we here?
This time, before he could hold it up for her to read, she shuffled her chair closer to the bed and leant forward to read it where it was in his lap. Darcy smirked at her impatience at first, then sobered as her closeness threatened to affect him in ways he prodigiously wished it would not.
“I cannot say whatyouwere doing in this part of the world,” she said, straightening to look at him again. She put the ink pot on the nightstand and clasped her hands together on the edge of the bed. “Iwas travelling to London to see my sister Jane. She has been staying there with my aunt and uncle since Christmas.”
Two things happened while Elizabeth said this: her expression grew disconcertingly steely, and Darcy’s stomach clenched with something disagreeably like guilt. Could Elizabeth be aware he had concealed her sister’s presence in townfrom Bingley? Surely not—and what ought it to matter if she were? He kept his expression neutral and waited for her to continue.
“Regrettably, we were caught short by the weather en route and forced to divert onto a road with more cover overhead.”
Darcy baulked as that part of his own memory resurfaced with mortifying clarity. He had been at St Albans, visiting friends. Returning to London ought to have taken a matter of hours—a direct carriage ride down the Great North Road. And so it might have been, were it not for the moment of madness that came upon him as he readied himself on the morning of his departure.
He could picture in his mind’s eye the colour that arose in his cheeks as he stood before his dressing mirror, torturing himself with the knowledge that St Albans was but ten miles from Meryton. Ten miles from the town to where often walked the woman he had not seen since he danced with her at Bingley’s ball last November. Ten miles from the woman who had plagued almost every one of his waking thoughts—and as sure as the devil everysingledream—since. Ten miles from the woman whose equal he had yet to find anywhere in the whole of his acquaintance. He had fought long and hard to relinquish his attachment and would not seek her out by design—but the temptation of a serendipitous encounter had proved too much to resist. He had sent his man home in the carriage and set out on horseback along the alternative route back to London, via Meryton.
No such encounter had occurred—at least, not that he recalled. The snow had started to fall whilst his horse rested at one of Meryton’s coaching inns and begun to settle by the time he set out again towards Ermine Street. A snowbound road anda diversion down an easier path both rang faint bells amongst his otherwise hazy memories of the rest of that day.
He looked away to the darkest corner of the room, attempting to conceal the disdain curling his lip, for it was not meant for Elizabeth. He was never impetuous.Bingleywas the impulsive one, forever landing himself in awkward scrapes as a consequence of caprice. Darcy had made it the study of his life to always act with purpose and forethought—and so he had achieved until Elizabeth waltzed into his world and made a reckless fool of him. And look where his newfound imprudence had led! At worst he was a dead man, at best he was a mute, and either way he was marooned with the one woman whom he was damned if he could resist but whom duty forbade him from ever having!
“Therewasless snow on the other road,” Elizabeth continued, “but, it transpired, more ice. I do not know precisely how it happened, but our carriage overturned.”
Darcy’s heart gave a great thud, and he whipped his gaze back to hers, ignoring the searing pain in his neck. She looked pained but composed, and her aplomb shamed him far more than a display of hysteria would have. She had given no hint of having suffered any misfortune, and so preoccupied with his own accident had he been that it never occurred to him she might also have been injured. “Good God!” he mouthed, “Were you hurt?”
She watched him say the words but struggled to understand, no doubt due to the urgency with which they were said. He snatched up the pen and scratched out the enquiry on paper.
“Oh, nothing broken,” she replied dismissively. “But Perkins, my uncle’s man, he—” She stopped speaking abruptly and looked at her hands. When she spoke again, her tone was sombre, and she did not look up. “He was travellingwith me in the carriage due to the cold, and when it began to swerve, he leant out of the window to call to the driver and—that is when it happened. I believe he broke his neck.”
“Dear God!” Darcy waited for her to glance up and mouthed clearly, “I am very sorry.”
“As am I,” she replied quietly. “I barely knew him, but I know my uncle thought very well of him, and I am sure the Perkins family will be devastated. Such a needless tragedy. My uncle or my father will have to compensate them—and buy a new carriage—and all because I desired to go to London a fortnight early! Had I only waited and gone when I had planned to, it would all have been avoided.”
Darcy’s first instinct was to pull her into his arms and whisper his assurances until she denounced all notion of blame. His second was to push such foolish wishes from his mind and indicate mutely for more ink. He waited for Elizabeth to hold it out to him, dipped his pen, and wrote,
I am grieved that you had to witness such a thing.
She read it and gave him a wry smile. “It was horrible, I shall not deny it, though I am not the sort to faint away in the face of real life, sir. Which is fortunate, given what happened next.” She looked pointedly at him and took a deep breath before elaborating. “Rogers, the driver, freed one of the horses. The other was trapped somehow in the harness, and it was…screaming. I have never heard a horse make such a noise. He could not get to it, I could not get to him, for the carriage door would not open properly. And thenyouappeared.”
Darcy vaguely remembered the sound of a horse screaming—and a woman, who must have been Elizabeth.The image of her trapped in an overturned carriage with a dead man, crying for help, raised the hairs on his arms.
