She glared at me.
I sighed. “All right, never mind. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is that we are in this predicament, we are in it. We need to get down.” I crawled back over to the edge, where the stairs had once been, and I looked down at the floor. “I think it’s all right. It’s not that long of a drop. I shall just scoot off here and go for help. You stay up there.”
“You are going to leave me all alone here?”
“Have I gone mad, madam, or is that not what you have wished for all along?” I said, more sharply than I might have meant to say it.
“You’re right, of course,” she said. “Yes, I shall be absolutely fine here, and you will not be gone ever so long, will you? You wouldn’t leave me here, trapped here, until dark?”
“No, of course not. I shall go up to the main house and find Bingley and we shall come and get you down,” I said. “All it wants is a ladder. It’s a simple solution.”
“All right,” she said in a small voice.
I glanced back at her. “I could offer to stay, but that seems foolish. No one knows where we are.”
“No, of course,” she said. “You know, perhaps I can simply jump down too.” She scooted up next to me, carefully dangling her legs over the side, and she looked down.
“No,” I said, immediately. “The wood there, it’s broken into splinters. They’re standing up like shards. It’s not safe.”
“If it’s not safe for me, it’s not safe for you.”
I looked down at the broken pieces of stairs. “I have… better shoes than you.”
“I don’t think you do!” she cried.
“I’m fine,” I said firmly, resolving to push myself right off the edge now. I took a deep breath and…
Did not scoot off.
The splinters of wood looked sharp and I could just imagine one of them piercing through my clothing, right into the flesh of my calf or my inner thigh or—well, anyway, if I were going feet first, there were a number of tender areas that might be harmed.
“Don’t do it, Mr. Darcy,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t want you to. What if you break your leg, and then you are just down there, in pain, and I can’t get to you, and you are bleeding and the blood brings wolves—”
“There are no wild wolves in England anymore, I don’t warrant, Miss Bennet,” I interrupted.
“Well, then, dogs,” she said. “Wild dogs. Ones that have gotten free from their masters or ones who are trained by highwaymen to fight in dog fights—”
“Highwaymen train wild dogs to fight?” I said. “Where are you getting these ideas?”
“I’m only saying—”
“Whatare you saying?”
“Don’t,” she said, cringing. “Stay here. I don’t think it’s safe.”
I let out a breath. “All right, perhaps this part of the landing, it’s not the right part.” I got up, got to my feet.
“Don’t!” she cried, reaching up for me. “You’ll topple over.”
“I shan’t!” I said, but I moved over closer to the wall. The landing here ran across about ten feet or so, and here, in the space next to where the stairs had been, there was a railing. I walked down and leaned over the railing. “Perhaps what I shall do is to climb over the railing, and then leap down here. Because there’s nothing there, you see. Just the floor.”
“You might go straight through it,” said Elizabeth, breathless, still sitting next to the place where the stairs had fallen off.
“Well, look, we can’t stay here and simply wait for someone to come for us.” I hooked a leg over the railing.
“Don’t!” she cried.
I felt dizzy. I clutched at the railing and stood with one foot on either side of it. The railing was a little longer than my legs, and so I was up on tiptoe. The dizziness increased, and I realized that this was impossible.
