Page 23 of A Selfish Disdain

It was, none of them said aloud, considerably more danger than any of them had bargained for when the journey began; but there was no leisure, in the grey urgency of that hour, for anyone to remark upon it beyond the practical business of readying themselves to go.

Elizabeth and Darcy had not exchanged a single word beyond what the morning's necessity required since the fire had burned down the night before, and the silence between them, as they climbed into the back of Thatcher's cart alongside Reeves and a quantity of borrowed blankets, was better served for the journey ahead.

That said, Elizabeth watched him, when she believed herself unobserved, and did not like what she saw. His countenance had taken on, since the previous evening, a pallor that the low light of dawn did nothing to flatter, and when the cart lurched over a rut deep enough to jar them all, she saw him catch his breath and press his good hand hard against the wounded arm, which spoke to her of rather considerable pain.

She said nothing of it, as she had said, the night before, everything she had permitted herself to feel entitled to say, and found, in the grey light of a morning that offered no comfort for either of them, that she could not summon the courage to breach the silence again, whatever concern of him and his injury pressed at her to do so.

It was Reeves, in the end, who broke it, some hour into the journey, his own voice thin with the exertion of simply remaining upright against the cart's jolting, his head hurting him considerably. "Beg pardon, sir, Miss, but I don't like the colour of Mr. Darcy's face, and I don't think either of you ought to go on pretending you haven't noticed it neither."

"Reeves," Darcy began, with what authority his evident weakness could still furnish.

"Begging your pardon again, sir, but you near fainted just now over that rut, and I'll not sit here silent about it out of respect for whatever's passed between the two of you that's left you not speaking. A wound left untended and a body pushed past its strength makes for fever, and fever on a road like this, with men who mean us harm somewhere behind, is a danger worse than any highwayman."

Elizabeth felt something in her chest tighten at this plain, unadorned truth, spoken by a man with every reason to think of his own suffering first and none whatsoever to spend his remaining strength on smoothing the difficulty between his employer and a lady he barely knew.

She looked at Darcy properly, for the first time since last evening, and saw an exhaustion that frightened her rather more than she was prepared to admit.

"Let me see it," she said, and the quietness of her own voice surprised her.

He shook his head on impulse, "It is no worse than it was."

"I did not ask whether it was worse. I asked to see it, and I think, after everything Reeves has just said, you have very little ground left to refuse me."

He did not refuse her. He drew back the borrowed coat, wincing as the movement pulled at the wound beneath, and Elizabeth, examining the binding she had set the night before, felt her own alarm sharpen at what she found; a heat radiating from the skin around it that had not been there hours before, a redness spreading beyond the wound's edge that spoke, even to her limited understanding of such things, of trouble beginning to take hold.

"This wants proper attention, and soon." She said it plainly, without the anger of the night before. She turned to look at the back of young Thatcher, and raised her voice, aimed to get the young man’s attention. "How far to this inn, Mr. Thatcher?"

He called out from behind the bench. "Another hour, if the roads hold, Miss. Perhaps less.”

"You must make faster time," Elizabeth replied, with a voice strong with emotion. “We have not a moment to lose! Mr. Darcy’s wound is getting worse.”

The young man looked backwards at Mr. Darcy, and told Elizabeth that he would try to hurry along.

What passed between them, in the hour that followed, was not reconciliation, as neither of them was yet prepared for that. However, it was an anxious attention and an unspoken agreement that the danger to Darcy, which now faced them all, mattered more than the wounds each had given the other the night before.

She held his good arm steady against the cart's worst jolting without being asked. He, in turn, when the road narrowed and the cart tipped alarmingly close to a ditch on one side, threw his own weight instinctively toward her, bracing her against the fall before either of them had time to think better of the gesture. Neither acknowledged it, but neither moved away from it, either. Although a full minute passed, and the cart righted itself, and there was no longer any excuse of necessity to justify the nearness that remained between them, they stayed glued to one another.

Elizabeth kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, or on what passed for a road, and told herself she was watching for the next rut, the next place the wheel might catch, and not for any other reason at all. She was aware, all the same, of the solid warmth of him along her side, and the careful stillness with which he held himself.

Darcy, for his part, kept his gaze fixed with equal determination on the horse's ears, and reflected that a man who had spent the better part of the night rehearsing, with some bitterness, every reason he had to regret the confession he had made in the dark wood, ought not to find himself, some few hours later, quite so reluctant to shift six inches to his left merely because it would put a proper distance between his own arm and Miss Elizabeth Bennet's shoulder. He did not shift.

He told himself this was owing to the state of the road, which remained genuinely treacherous, and not to any weakness of resolve on his own part, and was aware, even as he told himself so, that it was not a claim he much believed.

The cart jolted again, less violently, and this time neither of them so much as pretended to be startled by it.

Once, when the cart slowed to navigate a stretch of road gone soft with recent rain, Elizabeth heard, or thought she heard, the distant sound of hoofbeats on harder ground somewhere behind them.

She then saw two horses, perhaps three, moving at quite a pace, and saw young Thatcher's shoulders go rigid at the box. He suddenly urged the horse to whatever speed the poor road would permit.

"Is it them?" she asked, low, and found her hand still closed tight about Darcy's uninjured arm.

"I do not know," he said, equally low, and did not draw the arm away. "But I think we had better not slow down to inquire."

Fortunately, the sound eventually faded, likely because its source had turned off toward some other errand, and Elizabeth could not have said, when it was gone, whether the trembling that ran through her afterward came from fear of what might have been following, or from the sudden and unguarded realization of how tightly she had been holding on, and how entirely unwilling, even now, even after everything said the night before, she had been to let go.

CHAPTER 14

The inn, when they reached it at last, was a solid, unremarkable house of grey stone called the Crown. And, fortunately, its yard was not entirely busy, Elizabeth observed, as she climbed down from Thatcher's cart into its courtyard.