“Yes. Wake her.”
Chapter Eleven
Janehadarrivedtwentyminutes earlier, summoned by Darcy from the chamber upstairs, her hair half-pinned and her sleeves still down. She had taken one look at Elizabeth, crossed to the bed, put her hand on Elizabeth’s forehead, and held it there for five slow breaths.
She spoke no more after the “Good morning, Lizzy,” she offered upon entering, but needed no speech, for the work was the language. She moved with the controlled skill of a woman who had practised this care recently elsewhere and was now doing so again, in different rooms, for a different patient, with the same hands.
The fire was stoked. The fomentation cloths replaced—fresh water from the bucket Darcy had brought at midnight, reheated on the grate. The cup of water at the bedside refilled. The book Darcy had been reading lay set aside on the table, glanced at once by Jane without comment, and untouched. Darcy’s chair remained pulled close to the bed, also undisturbed.
Footsteps sounded in the hall outside. Not Mrs Bannon’s slow, complaining shuffle. Not Mrs Reeves. Not Darcy’s quieter tread.
Aldridge.
Her whole body began to shake.
It came without dignity and without permission, a violent inward trembling that ran through her chest, arms, even her teeth. The bone saw. The bottle. The straps, if he used straps. Men would call it necessity and get on with it. She knew what this morning meant. She had known it in broken pieces all night, but knowledge gathered itself differently when the man himself was on the other side of the door with his case in his hand.
Do not cry. Do not begin before he enters.
The command was useless. Tears were already spilling into her hair.
Jane bent over her at once. “Lizzy?”
“I know,” Elizabeth whispered, though she knew nothing that could help her. “I know.”
Voices reached them through the door. Aldridge, brisk and professional. Darcy, lower. The latch turned.
Aldridge entered with his case in one hand and his hat in the other, looking rested, which struck her as monstrous. He might have slept well, broken his fast, ridden over in the clean morning air, and come now to alter the whole shape of her life before noon.
Darcy came in after him.
He did not look first to the table, the bandages, the fire, or the surgeon’s hands. His eyes went straight to hers.
She was shaking too hard now to master it. Her fingers had twisted themselves in the sheet. She could not seem to draw a full breath. The room had narrowed to the distance between the bed and Aldridge’s case.
Darcy crossed to her before Aldridge had set it down.
He came to the bedside and took her hand out of the linen she was crushing, his grasp firm enough to hold her, careful enough not to startle. He bent without decency, without a gentleman’s formality, as though there were no one else in the room to witness it.
“Courage,” he said under his breath. “He looks first. Nothing is done before you hear him speak.”
It was almost nothing. A whisper. A few plain words. Yet they were the only thing in the room not drowning in terror, and she clung to them as if they had physical substance.
Her hand closed hard upon his. His thumb pressed once against her knuckles.
Then Jane moved quietly into that place.
It was done with such gentleness that it might have been mistaken for chance. Jane came nearer from the other side of the bed and laid her fingers over Elizabeth’s wrist, then over Darcy’s hand, and in another instant, Elizabeth’s hand was in Jane’s keeping instead. A sister’s place. The proper place. Darcy yielded it at once and stepped back, though not far.
That small withdrawal hurt absurdly, because it was proper.
Aldridge set down his case beside the laudanum bottle and the little leather volume on the table, removed his gloves, and came forward.
“Miss Bennet. How do you find yourself this morning?”
Her mouth trembled before the words came. “Pray do not ask me that, sir.”
His face altered by a degree, enough to acknowledge that he had asked out of habit and would not ask again. “Very well. I must examine the leg.”
