He went back out into the storm. Through the cottage's small window, Elizabeth could see almost nothing — only the dark shape of him disappearing around the side of the building, where a small stone stable jutted from the cottage wall. He was gone long enough for her shivering to worsen, long enough for her to wonder whether he had lost his way in the few yards between the stable door and the cottage. When he returned at last, stamping snow from his boots, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, she understood he had taken the time to unsaddle the horse and see it settled before coming back inside.
The animal before himself. In a blizzard.
Something shifted in her understanding of him. This was not the proud, disdainful Mr. Darcy of the assembly rooms. This was a man who would walk through a storm while a half-frozen woman rode his horse, and then tend to the animal before seeing to his own comfort.
He returned moments later, stamping snow from his boots, his dark hair plastered to his forehead.
He kneeled before the hearth without looking at her. The kindling caught quickly, flames licking upward with eager hunger, and as the light grew and the warmth began to spread, Elizabeth allowed herself to breathe. They were alive. They were safe, at least for the moment. And they were utterly, catastrophically alone.
He rose and turned to face her. His gaze swept over her once, and she saw the way his jaw tightened before he looked away. She was suddenly aware of how she must look. Snow melting in her hair. Her dress clung to her body in ways that left very little to the imagination. She ought to have felt self-conscious. Instead she felt something else, something she was too cold and too tired to examine.
“You are still shivering,” he said, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere past her shoulder. “Come closer to the fire.”
She moved toward the warmth, and as the firelight reached her, she saw his expression change again. That same unguarded flicker she had caught outside, gone almost before it appeared, but she was watching more carefully now. Whatever Mr. Darcy felt about finding himself trapped in a cottage with a woman he had once called merely tolerable, it was not indifference. She was certain of that much, even if she could make no sense of the rest.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I might have died out there.”
“Do not thank me yet.” He turned away, his attention fixed on the window where snow continued to pile against the glass. “We may be here for some time. The storm shows no sign of abating.”
The words settled between them, heavy with implication. Elizabeth understood what it would mean for her reputation if they were discovered here, and what it would mean for both of them if they were not. She looked at Mr. Darcy's rigid profile, at the careful distance he was maintaining, at the hands he had clasped behind his back as though he did not trust them, and she thought:I do not know this man at all.
The fire crackled. The storm raged. And Elizabeth Bennet stood in a freezing cottage with the last person in the world she would have chosen for company and wondered how everything had gone so thoroughly wrong.
2
THE STORM
Darcy had riddenout that morning with no destination in mind, only a desperate need to escape.
His horse, a black gelding named Atlas, had sensed his mood from the moment he swung into the saddle. The animal moved now with ears pricked forward, alert to his master's tension. Darcy loosened his grip on the reins and forced his shoulders to drop. It was not the horse's fault that Miss Bingley had spent the better part of an hour expounding upon Italian silk versus French, nor that she had hinted, with all the subtlety of a cavalry charge, that Pemberley's mistress would require extensive knowledge of such things.
He had excused himself with a curtness that would fuel her complaints for days.
He did not care.
The gray sky pressed low over the Hertfordshire countryside, heavy clouds threatening weather he ought to have heeded. Atlas snorted and tossed his head as a gust of wind cut across thelane, carrying the sharp scent of coming snow. Darcy patted the horse's neck, his mind already wandering where it would.
To her. It always wandered to her now.
Elizabeth Bennet, with her fine eyes and her sharp tongue and her laughter, that reminded him of everything he had lost.
Atlas stumbled on a frozen rut, and Darcy gathered the reins, steadying them both. The lane had grown rougher here, winding along the edge of a winter-bare copse where skeletal branches creaked in the wind. He should turn back. The sky had darkened since he set out, and even his foul mood did not warrant catching his death on a Hertfordshire back road.
He did not turn back.
Instead, he let Atlas find his own pace while the memory of the Meryton assembly stabbed at him without warning, as it did a dozen times a day.
Tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.
He flinched from his remembered words the way one flinches from a burn. He had not meant it. God help him, he had not meant a single syllable. But the reasons he had said it, those he was not yet prepared to examine.
He thought instead of Georgiana. Her last letter had arrived two days ago, written in the careful hand she was still perfecting, full of news about her progress on a new sonata and a tentative request to visit London before Christmas. She had seemed brighter in recent weeks, steadier. The shadow that Ramsgate had cast over her was lifting at last, and he clung to that as evidence that wounds could heal, that time could do its quietwork even on the deepest cuts. He ought to write to her tonight. He had been neglecting his correspondence shamefully.
A crow launched itself from a nearby oak, its harsh cry cutting through his thoughts. Atlas shied sideways, and Darcy steadied him with his knees, murmuring low reassurance until the horse settled. The wind was picking up now, biting through his greatcoat, but he made no move toward shelter.
His thoughts drifted, unbidden, to the militia officers who had descended upon Meryton like a plague of redcoats. Most were harmless enough, young men with more charm than sense, content to dance and flirt their way through the winter. But one among them made Darcy's jaw tighten every time their paths crossed. He had said nothing to anyone. There was nothing to say that would not expose Georgiana's ordeal, and he would cut out his own tongue before he allowed that. Still, it was some small mercy that Wickham's particular brand of charm seemed directed at the younger Bennet sisters rather than anyone Darcy was obliged to protect. Let the man make himself agreeable to Miss Lydia and Miss Kitty. Let him be their problem.
It was not a generous thought. He did not feel generous.
