Page 19 of A Selfish Disdain

Finally, the end, when it came, was due to one wheel that struck something in the darkness. It might have been a stone, a root, the stump of some long-felled tree, she would never learn which, and the carriage, already labouring under a backbreaking speed, tipped.

She felt it happen with a peculiar slowness quite unlike the chaos that had preceded it, as the whole world tilted until the carriage went over entirely, and the last thing Elizabeth registered was Darcy's arm tightening around her, pulling her in against him as though he might, by sheer will and physical strength together, shield her from a fall that had already begun and could no longer be stopped by anyone.

Then there was only impact, and darkness, and, for a period of time, nothing at all.

***

She came back to herself, for a second time that evening, though not all at once. It began first with recognizing a ringing in her ears, dull and continuous, and then the cold, damp press of the carriage floor beneath her cheek, tilted at an angle that made no sense to her mind still gathering itself; then, last of all, a voice, close by, saying her name with a note of urgency that cut through the ringing more effectively than anything else had managed.

Then, she heard a strong, masculine-type of voice almost shouting in alarm. "Elizabeth. Elizabeth, can you hear me?"

It was the first time she had heard a man use her Christian name, and she realized, rather embarrassingly, even through the sharp ringing in her ears and the general disorder of her senses. Elizabeth felt slightly upside down, and it took some moments for her to feel that she was right-side up again. The carriage turning over had been quite a shock.

"I am here," she managed, feeling rather helpless. "I am. I think I am not badly hurt. Are you?"

"I am well enough." He was already working at the door above them, which now hung where a window ought to have been, forcing it open against its own weight with an effort that spoke to some injury of his own he had not yet troubled to mention. "Give me your hand. We cannot stay in here; if the horses are still entangled in the traces they may yet do the whole thing further damage, and I do not know how far behind us those men may be."

She did not take his hand right away, and Darcy’s voice cut through the stillness of the night."Can you move?"

Her senses still a bit rattled, Elizabeth did not respond for a moment, as she tried to think about her limbs and whether or not she could, in fact, move. After a time, she registered that her limbs seemed to be intact, and she replied, "I believe so. Help me, if you can."

She reached her his hand, and he took hers, helping her stand. And then, he took hold of her waist, and lifted her upwards through where the carriage door now hung open above them like a trapdoor into the night sky.

Elizabeth could sense the tightening about his jaw, and a breath drawn carefully. Then, Darcy moved one arm from her side and braced it against the wrecked frame and drew her up and out with the other, his grip closing about her with a strength she did not possess.

It was only once she stood beside him on solid ground, her legs unsteady beneath her and the whole world still tilting faintly, that she saw it, a dark stain spreading along his sleeve, just below the shoulder, black in the moonlight where it should have shown red.

"Oh, Mr. Darcy, you are hurt," she cried in concern.

He shook his head immediately, attempting to deny the accusation. "It is nothing; I am well.” Her tone was tight, and she swallowed hard the bile that rose to her throat.

No, she thought, Mr. Darcy is not well at all. She could see a rather large red spot on his forearm that had the unmistakable look and smell of fresh blood.

Elizabeth moved from his embrace to grab ahold of the arm that was bleeding, trying as she might to see through the linen. “No, it is plainly not nothing. You are bleeding." Her voice was firm, and taught.

"I think it only a graze from the fall, or perhaps from the second shot, I could not say which." He said this with briskness. He sighed."It does not trouble my arm's use, which is the only thing that presently signifies. We have a great deal more to consider than one scratch, Miss Elizabeth."

She wanted to press him further; she wanted to see the wound properly and satisfy herself it was truly as slight as he claimed, but she yielded unwillingly to the practical urgency of their situation, and she turned, as he had, to take stock of the wreck around them.

The horses, she saw now, had torn themselves free of the wreckage, and were nowhere to be seen or heard. And, Reeves was nowhere to be seen either. She imagined he was left behind upon the road with a wound.

They stood together beside the ruin of the carriage, by now recounting that she had been traveling with Mr. Darcy in his carriage bound to London to take care of her aunt and sick uncle. But now, they were in a wood neither of them knew, with the last of the daylight entirely gone and nothing between them and whatever lay ahead but each other.

"Mr. Darcy," said Elizabeth, her voice coming out more steadier than she had imagined it would, "what do we do now?"

He was silent for a time, surveying what little could be made out of their situation in the dark. It was clear that the carriage was broken, and there was an empty road somewhere behind them that neither could presently locate with any confidence, as the trees closed on every side.

When he answered her, he sounded as if he were attempting to avoid any alarm. "We find shelter," he finally said, "before anything else. And we do not, under any circumstance, separate."

CHAPTER 11

Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and she became gradually sensible of the wreckage around them, how the carriage canted at a wrongful angle, one wheel still spinning with a forlorn creak, and the night air sharp with the smell of splintered wood and horse.

The carriage lay on its side in a shallow gully, one wheel shattered entirely, the traces torn and empty of any horse. The night had come on fully now, moonless and close, the trees pressing near enough on every side that Elizabeth could not have said, looking about her, from which direction they had come, nor which way might lead them back to it.

"Reeves," she said. "We must go back for him."

"We will," said Darcy, "though I do not know how far we have come, nor by what road, and I will not have you walking blind through this wood in the dark without some plan beyond good intention. Wait here one moment."