1
THE WALK
The floorboardsoutside the breakfast room groaned under Mr. Collins's ponderous tread. Elizabeth pressed herself against the wall of the back corridor, holding her breath. Through the half-open door, she could hear her mother's voice rising in theatrical welcome.
“Mr. Collins! Do come sit beside me. I was just telling Hill that the fire wanted building up. A man of your consequence must not catch a chill!”
“You are too kind, Mrs. Bennet, too kind indeed.” His voice carried the satisfaction of a man who believed himself admired. “Lady Catherine always says that attention to one's fire is the mark of a well-regulated household. At Rosings Park, the chimney-pieces are of the finest marble! I believe I may have mentioned them? And they keep the fires at precisely the temperature her ladyship finds most conducive to comfort.
Elizabeth did not wait to hear what temperature Lady Catherine preferred.
She slipped down the corridor toward the kitchen, her half-boots silent on the worn flagstones. Behind her, Mr. Collins's monologue continued, punctuated by her mother's approving murmurs and the occasional pointed comment about certain daughters who ought to be present for morning calls.
The kitchen was blessedly empty save for the scullery maid scrubbing pots, who barely glanced up as Elizabeth snatched her pelisse from its hook and eased open the garden door.
Cold air struck her face like a benediction.
She did not stop to fasten her pelisse, did not pause to fetch gloves or a warmer shawl. She simply walked, her boots crunching against frost-hardened earth as the kitchen garden gave way to the lane, and the lane stretched toward open country. The gray November sky pressed low overhead, but Elizabeth did not care. She would have walked through fire to escape that parlor, that voice, and the suffocating weight of her mother's expectations.
Three days. Three days of Mr. Collins finding excuses to touch her elbow. Three days of meaningful glances across tables and speeches about his noble condescension in selecting her, as if she ought to fall to her knees in gratitude. Even Jane's gentle sympathy could not ease the crawling sensation his attention produced, and her father had retreated further into his library, abandoning her to face the siege alone.
Even the officers, who had provided some diversion during Mr. Collins's first evening, had lost their novelty, though she noticed Mr. Wickham's particular charm had not diminished in the estimation of her younger sisters. Lydia and Kitty still talked of little else. Elizabeth could not quite share their enthusiasm, but she allowed his manners were pleasant enough, and hisconversation infinitely more bearable than what awaited her in the breakfast room.
The path toward Oakham Mount opened before her, familiar and welcoming despite the bitter wind. Elizabeth pulled her pelisse tighter and lifted her face to the sky, letting the cold numb her cheeks and chase the echo of Collins's voice from her ears.
Her thoughts turned, unbidden, to another man entirely.
Tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.
Mr. Darcy's words at the Meryton assembly still pricked when she allowed herself to remember them. She ought to have forgotten them by now, ought to have dismissed his words as the careless cruelty of a proud man who thought himself above provincial company. She had laughed about it, had told the story with arch amusement, had used it as proof that Mr. Darcy was exactly the sort of insufferable creature she had always despised.
And yet.
There were small, treacherous moments when she caught him looking at her with an expression she could not decipher. At dinner, when she had been arguing with his friend about the merits of country dances. In the drawing room, when she had been teasing Charlotte about her excessive practicality. She would glance up and find those dark eyes fixed upon her with an intensity that made her breath catch and her pulse quicken in ways she refused to examine.
It meant nothing, of course. He was probably cataloguing her faults for future reference.
The wind shifted, carrying with it a bitter edge that cut through her pelisse like a blade. Elizabeth hunched her shoulders and walked faster, her boots slipping on the frozen path. The sky had darkened since she set out, the gray deepening toward something more ominous, clouds pressing lower and heavier with each passing minute. A few flakes of snow drifted past her face, light and harmless.
She should turn back. Any sensible woman would turn back.
But Longbourn meant Mr. Collins, and Mr. Collins meant that desperate, grasping look in her mother's eyes. Elizabeth found she would rather face the weather than the future Mrs. Bennet was trying to build for her.
She walked on.
The snow began in earnest ten minutes later, not the gentle dusting of a typical November flurry, but a sudden, furious onslaught that turned the world white in moments. The flakes thickened, driven sideways by a wind that had risen from a whisper to a howl, and within minutes Elizabeth could barely see the path beneath her feet.
She turned back toward Longbourn, but the path had already begun to disappear beneath the accumulating snow. The wind picked up, driving icy crystals against her face with stinging force. Her pelisse, adequate for a brisk walk, proved woefully insufficient against this onslaught. Cold seeped through the wool, through her dress, through her skin, settling into her bones with frightening speed. She pressed forward, head bowed against the wind, but each step grew more difficult as the snow deepened.
Panic fluttered at the edges of her mind, but she pushed it down ruthlessly. Panic would not help her now. She needed to think, to find shelter, to survive this storm she had been foolish enough to walk into. The landscape had become alien, landmarks obscured by the white curtain falling all around her. She could barely see ten feet ahead, and the path she had walked so confidently an hour before had vanished.
Her foot caught on something hidden beneath the snow, and she stumbled, catching herself against a tree trunk with numb fingers. The bark bit into her palms through her gloves, but she barely felt it. Her teeth had begun to chatter, her body shaking with cold that seemed to intensify with every passing moment. She had been stupid to let her pride and her pique drive her out into weather that any sensible person would have avoided. If she died out here because she could not bear another hour of Mr. Collins's company, it would be no one's fault but her own.
The sound of hoofbeats cut through the howling wind, so unexpected that Elizabeth thought at first she had imagined it. She turned toward the sound, squinting through the snow, and saw a dark shape materializing from the white chaos. A horse, and astride it, a figure she recognized with a shock that drove the breath from her lungs.
Mr. Darcy.
He was upon her before she could react, reining in his horse. Snow clung to his greatcoat and dusted his dark hair, but his eyes were clear and focused as they found her face. She saw something flash through his expression, something that looked almost like fear before it was quickly suppressed.
