Light filtered through her closed eyelids.
Her lashes fluttered.
With a final effort she forced her eyes open.
The room around her swam into view slowly, shapes and colors assembling themselves with painful brightness.
Elizabeth blinked, staring up at the ceiling.
Nothing looked familiar.
The ceiling is wrong.
She looked around. The walls were wrong as well, and the bed was not her own. She pushed herself upright unsteadily, her head spinning as she struggled to focus.
Across the room several figures stood gathered around a woman she didn’t recognize lying upon the floor.
Darcy… Lady Anne… Georgiana… and a man she did not recognize—tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in a soldier’s uniform.
They were speaking urgently to one another, their attention entirely fixed on the unknown woman lying motionless at their feet.
“What… what is going on?” she managed hoarsely, realizing in that moment just how parched her throat was.
Her voice barely rose above a whisper.
No one heard.
She swallowed painfully and tried again, forcing the words louder.
“What is happening?”
Darcy turned so suddenly that for a moment he simply stared at her, his eyes wide with disbelief.
“Elizabeth!” he cried.
“You are awake!”
In two strides he crossed the room and reached her bedside. He sat beside her on the mattress and pulled her tightly into his arms, holding her as though he had feared he might never have the chance again.
Elizabeth clung to him instinctively, still struggling to understand where she was—or how she had come there at all. She tried to ask him, but she could not yet speak well.
“Water,” she rasped, and even that single word scraped painfully against her throat.
“Of course,” Darcy said at once.
He rose quickly and crossed to a small table where a pitcher and basin had been set out. Pouring a glass, he returned immediately to the bedside.
Elizabeth reached for it, but her hands trembled so violently that the water sloshed against the rim.
Darcy gently steadied the glass before it could spill. “Allow me.”
He lifted it carefully to her lips, and Elizabeth drank greedily. The cool water slid down her throat like a blessing, easing the burning dryness that had plagued her since she woke.
“Slowly,” Darcy cautioned softly.
She forced herself to obey, and it was fortunate she did. A sudden wave of nausea surged through her stomach without warning. She stiffened, pressing one hand weakly against the bed as her stomach lurched violently.
For one alarming moment she was certain she would be sick. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, forcing the sensation back down.
