She pressed her face against Jane's shoulder and cried. Not the quiet, dignified crying of a woman in a novel. The ugly, helpless kind, with sounds and shaking and a complete loss of the composure she had been maintaining for five hours. She cried because Truffles was gone and the night was cold and she could not do anything about either of those things.
Truffles was not just a pig. Truffles was the animal who slept at the foot of her bed and followed her through the village and escaped every enclosure because being near Elizabeth was worth more than food or comfort or safety. Truffles was the creature who had never judged her, never found her wanting, never decided she was not handsome enough.
Truffles was the only one who had seen Darcy clearly from the beginning. And now she was gone.
The thought came and Elizabeth let it come, because she was too tired to push anything away. Darcy had held the pig at the ball. Darcy had talked to the pig in the library. Darcy had fed the pig bread crusts and scratched her ears and let her sleep beside his chair. And Truffles had loved him for it, completely and without reservation, and Elizabeth had called the pig's judgment foolish, and now the pig was gone and the judgment did not feel foolish at all.
It felt like the truest thing in the world, and Elizabeth had been too proud to see it.
She wiped her face. She stood up. She picked up the lantern.
"I am going to look again."
"Lizzy —"
"I am going to look until I find her or until the sun comes up. Whichever comes first."
Jane did not argue. Jane stood up and brushed the frost from her pelisse and said, "Then I will come with you."
"You do not have to."
"I know."
They walked into the dark together. The lantern made a small circle of gold on the road, and beyond the circle was nothing, just black fields and black hedges and the cold wind moving through the bare trees. They walked the lane toward Meryton for the second time. They walked the path that skirted the Longbourn fields. They called the pig's name into the dark, and the dark gave nothing back.
Elizabeth thought about the first night she had brought Truffles home. The pig had been so small she fit in two cupped hands. She had wrapped the piglet in her green pelisse, the good one, and carried her against her chest, and the pig had squealed the whole way and then gone silent against Elizabeth's heartbeat, and Elizabeth had looked down at the small, warm, trembling thing in her arms and thought:You are mine now, and I will keep you safe.
She had promised. She had not said the words aloud, because one did not make promises to pigs, but the promise had been there, implicit in every turnip and every scratched ear and every night she had slept with the pig at the foot of her bed.You are mine. I will keep you safe.
She had broken the promise. She had left Truffles in the kitchen with a latched door that someone had unlatched, and she had gone for a walk, and the pig was gone, and the promise was broken, and Elizabeth could not breathe for the weight of it.
They searched for another hour. The lantern oil burned low. Jane's hands were blue with cold. Elizabeth's feet were numb in her boots and her throat was raw and her hope was down to the thin, stubborn thread that was all she had left.
At midnight, Jane took her arm and steered her home. Elizabeth went because her body was failing, not because her will had. She walked through the Longbourn door and up the stairs and into her bedroom and she looked at the folded blanket at the foot of her bed where Truffles should have been sleeping, and the blanket was flat and cold and empty.
She did not undress. She did not remove her boots. She sat on the edge of the bed with the lantern on the floor and she stared at the empty blanket and she thought:I will find you. I will find you if I have to walk every road in Hertfordshire. I will find you.
She did not sleep. She waited for the first grey light of dawn, and then she went out again.
CHAPTER 18
Mr. Darcy
Darcy heard the news at breakfast.
He was sitting at the Netherfield dining table with a plate of toast he had not touched and a cup of tea that had gone cold, staring at the morning newspaper without reading it. Caroline was across the table, eating her breakfast slowly, buttering her toast as if it were the only task in the world. Bingley was absent. He had gone to Meryton early on some errand Elizabeth would have called unnecessary and Jane would have called thoughtful.
The footman appeared. He spoke to the butler. The butler came to Darcy's chair.
"Forgive the intrusion, sir. One of our servants has had word from Longbourn. The Bennet family's pig is missing. She has been missing since yesterday afternoon. The household is in some distress."
Darcy set down his toast.
"Miss Elizabeth has been searching all night," the butler continued. "She walked until dawn. She is still out looking, I believe."
All night. She had walked all night in the November cold, searching for a pig, calling a name into the dark. She had not slept. She had not stopped. Because the pig was hers and she loved the pig with the fierce, uncomplicated devotion of a woman who did not do anything by halves.
He looked across the table. Caroline was buttering her toast. Her hand was steady. Her face was composed. She did not look up.
