Page 22 of The Pemberley Picnic

A gust off the river went through Darcy’s soaked coat, and he realised he would not be fit to be seen until he had changed. He put the thought from him.

Bingley was, as ever, full of exclamation. “Good God—is he hurt? Darcy, are you—Miss Bennet—shall I send? The apothecary—where is my horse?”

Richard caught him by the sleeve. “No one is hurt, Bingley. They are wet, and the marquee is finished. Fetch the boy’s father, if you would? He is downstream.”

Bingley seized on the occupation, squared himself, and was off towards the bend at a hard run, his fright turned to good use.

From somewhere about his person Richard produced a flask and tipped it into a surviving glass. “Mrs. Atherton. For the shock—yours, not his. To judge by his lungs, the boy is thriving.”

Even Hurst’s face was creased with concern, something Darcy would not have expected. He studied the dripping child. “Boy’s not hurt?”

“Wet, sir,” said the nursemaid from where she stood, as if to reassure herself. “Only wet.”

“Hm.” He waited a moment longer, to be sure of it. “Good.” And, his duty discharged, he went to find himself something to drink.

Henry—swaddled now, restored to his mother, and assuredby the adults that he was very brave—recovered enough to lay his grievance before the company entire.

“There was a fish,” he announced mournfully. “In the bowl. It was this big.” His arm came out of the blanket to measure. “And I nearly had him, and nobody fished him out.”

“We shall catch him another day,” said Mrs. Atherton into his hair, not yet able to laugh, but very near it.

“Best wait until you are dry, Master Henry,” Richard told him. “No fish worth catching will surrender to a gentleman whose shoes squelch.”

Georgiana had come down from the rugs. Darcy had not seen her arrive, and his first instinct was to wish her spared the sight. But she had not come to be spared anything. She had brought a dry shawl and put it about young Miss Atherton, who was trembling more from fright than cold and whom everyone, in the rush, had forgotten. She crouched to the child’s height to say something Darcy could not hear. The girl laughed through her tears, and a smile appeared on the small face.

It was the thing his sister did when she believed herself unobserved—she found the person at the edge of the trouble, the one everyone else had passed over, and went to them. He could not think where she had come by it.

Mrs. Atherton gazed at Miss Elizabeth a long moment over her son’s wet dark head. Whatever estimate the lady had held of her before—and he suspected Miss Bingley had been busy providing one—she had plainly revised it and found this new portrait much to her liking.

Miss Elizabeth, occupied in discreetly wringing the lemonade from her hem, did not appear to notice.

But Darcy noticed. He did so with something perilously close to pride, though he had no business feeling any.

Mr. Atherton came pelting up from the river, his rodabandoned and his face white as he took in the wreckage. The reunion was loud and took up the whole attention of the company—which was a mercy, for it meant that almost no one was observing the state of Darcy’s clothes.

The Athertons followed Georgiana up to the house.

Miss Atherton, whose spirits had come back faster than any grown person’s, tugged at her mother’s sleeve. “Mamma. Do you think the marquee might fall on Henry again later?”

Mrs. Atherton closed her eyes for one brief, fervent moment. “No, Sarah. I certainly do not.”

“But I missed it.”

Her mother’s eyes snapped open, and she sighed. “No, Sarah.”

Mr. Gardiner arrived at a more philosophical pace, sorry to have quit the water and not yet certain why he had been required to. He took in the wet child being carried away, Darcy, the fallen marquee, and his own soaked niece in a single sweep, and seemed to arrive at the essentials.

“Lizzy. You are drenched.”

Darcy glanced over and saw that the front of Miss Elizabeth’s gown was wet through where the flood had found her, the muslin clinging where it had no business to. He quickly looked away. She did not appear to know it yet, or if she did, Henry had mattered more.

“I am, uncle.”

Mr. Gardiner examined the oak pole from where they stood. “That would have laid him out cold, or worse.” He patted his niece’s sodden shoulder, appeared to count the matter closed, and in one smooth motion had placed his own coat about her shoulders. “Capital sport this morning, by the by. I shall give you the whole of it when you are dry.”

Darcy fixed his eyes on his shoes, his self-command more fragile than he cared for.

“I shall hold you to that,” said Miss Elizabeth, steady as ever.