Elizabeth struggled, but the hands at her arms only tightened. Her sleeve tore further; something warm ran down her wrist. She felt Darcy attempt to move toward her, felt the effort through the air like a tremor.
He did move—rose from his knee to stagger one step, then another—but the colour had left him. His strength was draining visibly now. “Release her,” he said thickly.
There was no force behind it. Only will.
A man struck him aside with the flat of his hand. Not a sword. Not yet. Merely the confidence of numbers.
“She near drowned a child!” someone shouted.
“She’ll burn us all next—devil!”
“Bind her!”
Lady Catherine did not issue the order again. She did not need to. She had named the danger, and the men supplied the remedy.
Elizabeth was pulled backward in earnest now, her boots scraping furrows through the earth. She reached for Darcy despite herself—knowing the touch harmed him, knowing she ought to spare him even now—and he was able to lunge just enough that their fingers brushed once more before the grip was broken.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Darcy did not remembercrossing the distance between them.
One instant, Elizabeth was dragged backward through the press of bodies, her sleeve torn, her hair ripping across her shoulders; the next, he was among them, striking hands aside, driving forward with a force that owed nothing to prudence. The weakness that had dogged him for weeks fell away the moment she was dragged before Lady Catherine’s feet. Strength returned—not kindly, not cleanly—but sharp and dangerous, like a blade drawn too quickly.
“Let her go.”
He did not shout. He did not need to. The command cut through the nearest ring of men by the mere fact of his advance. One stumbled beneath his shoulder; another recoiled at the look in his face. He seized the wrist of the man who held her and twisted until bone ground against bone. The grip broke. Elizabeth lurched toward him, and he caught her again, one arm braced around her waist.
And at once the cost returned.
Her hand closed in his, and something inside him recoiled and gave way. The strength that had carried him through the mob thinned as though drawn through a narrow channel. His vision sharpened and dimmed in the same instant. The ground seemed less secure beneath his boots. He felt her pulse against his palm—too quick, too bright—and knew that whatever bound them was no longer dormant.
She wept into his collar, begging him. “No, Darcy! I will only make it worse!” He did not loosen his grip.
Behind Lady Catherine, her carriage stood at a perilous angle where the roadside had begun to fail. The matched greys plunged against their traces, iron ringing as harness strained. Anne’s pale face appeared at the window, her gloved hand pressed against the frame.
Lady Catherine turned at the sound of splintering wood. For one suspended instant, her composure fractured; she saw the tilt, the sucking slide of earth beneath the near wheel, the black gleam of water below. Anne’s cry pierced the tumult.
“Hold them!” she cried sharply to her servants, stepping forward as though command alone could force the road to obedience. “Are you blind? Secure the horses!”
The nearest horse reared high, forelegs striking air as its hind feet slipped. The second plunged sideways, the harness snapping taut between them. A torch fell and rolled beneath stamping hooves, scattering sparks against damp earth.
The soil beneath the near wheel continued to give, sloughing away in heavy clods and revealing darker earth beneath—a seam running along the roadside as though something long buried had shifted at last. One wheel dipped farther. A groom shouted. The carriage body groaned and began, impossibly, to twist.
Lady Catherine wheeled back toward Darcy, fury conquering alarm. “You observe the consequence!” she said, her voice sharpened by outrage rather than fear. “You feel what indulgence has purchased! This disorder follows her—follows you! Even now, you would persist?”
Elizabeth strained in Darcy’s hold. “There is a woman inside the carriage! We must—”
Darcy blanched in horror.Anne.Innocent in all this, and endangered by her own mother’s pride. He felt the pull in Elizabeth’s frame—the terrible instinct to run toward danger rather than from it.
“No! Elizabeth, stay. Harrowe! For God’s sake, man!”
A fissure traced itself along the road’s edge, narrow as a thread before widening by degrees. The near horse screamed again. A trace snapped. The carriage lurched, one side dropping another inch toward the dark water of the ditch. Men who moments before had shouted for judgment now scrambled for footing.
Harrowe lunged, caught the dangling bridle of the nearer horse with both hands, and dragged its head sideways, using his full weight to turn the animal’s panic away from the collapsing edge. A groom seized the other rein. Together they forced the team back a pace.
“Move!” Harrowe roared to those still clustered nearest the wheel. “Do you want it over on you?”
Darcy attempted to step forward to assist and felt his knees threaten betrayal. Elizabeth’s fingers tightened convulsively in his. The contact burned—not in heat, but in depletion.
