“So, everyone thinks we eloped?” said Elizabeth.
“How does that make sense?” I muttered. “Whose carriage did we take?”
“The thought was you hired one somewhere,” said Bingley. “That you were both overtaken with…” He cleared his throat.
I felt my face heat up. “I don’t need to elope with this woman. What? Her family would object?”
“Well…” Bingley turned his hands over.
“I bet her mother was overjoyed,” I said darkly.
“Oh, Mr. Darcy, just when I think I shall stop hating you, you go and make it impossible not to,” said Elizabeth, nostrils flaring.
“She was not displeased,” said Bingley. “And I suppose, perhaps, all of that, we… perhaps we did not ask enough questions or think it through too much. But everyone seemed to think it quite good news. Except Caroline. She railed for some time, saying that you would never marry Miss Elizabeth, and then—when no one would listen—got herself into a state and was bundled off to bed and has not gotten out of bed yet today. She’ll be… glad to see you and to know the truth of it.”
“This is to say nothing of me, though,” said Elizabeth. “Everyone thought I would do that, would go off with some man, would leave Jane, ill and abed—where is Jane?”
“She went home last night,” said Bingley. “Everyone in your family was here, and we were all talking everything over, and she was up and in the fray of it, and she pronounced herself well enough to go home, so—”
“And my sister did not defend my character, did not say to everyone gathered, ‘Lizzy would never do such a thing!’”
Bingley shook his head.
Elizabeth let out a noise of distress.
“The good news, madam,” said Mr. Leavitt, “is that I think this is just a particularly bad sprain. You twisted it badly in the fall, but you didn’t break anything—”
“I heard it,” I broke in. “I heard a crack, and her foot was bent over—”
“You may have heard something else break, maybe she fell on a branch or something of that nature,” said Mr. Leavitt. He turned back to Elizabeth. “This will swell, and you ought to have a brace and stay off of it, likely for some weeks, maybe even amonth or two, but you’ll be up and about sooner than if it were broken.”
“That’s good, I suppose,” said Elizabeth. “I do love my walks.”
“No walking,” said Mr. Leavitt. “Not for some time, not until you are healed.”
She nodded, and her face fell.
“Dash everything, Miss Bennet,” I said. “I should not have encouraged you out that window.”
“You should not have chased me into that house, sir!” she rejoined with some heat.
“Oh, yes, I was supposed to run off and leave a young maiden like yourself off in the woods, all alone.Thatwas what I was supposed to do.”
“For heaven’s sake, does he have to be in here?” said Elizabeth, entreating Mr. Leavitt. “And might I have some willow bark for the pain?”
“I have laudanum,” said Leavitt.
“No, that will put me to sleep,” said Elizabeth. “It always does. And then I have the most frightful dreams.”
“I shall leave,” I said, and I quit the room.
Bingley came with me. “So, nothing happened, I assume? You were trapped there, and it was nothing untoward?”
“No, of course not!” I said.
“It is only that everyone thinks—”
“Well, I know that,” I said.
