Page 17 of I Have Faults Enough

"Then you had better hope," Darcy said, his voice filled with bitterness, "that whatever ransom your Cobb means to collect does not depend upon delivering her in a condition her own family would recognise, for I promise you, if you force her onward on that ankle until it will bear no weight at all, you will have made yourselves a considerably worse bargain than the one you presently hold."

It was a clear threat, and Elizabeth knew, even with her own pain, that Mr. Darcy did not have much to offer by way of bargaining. However, his tone was laced with fury, and he had defended her so adamantly that even Cobb hesitated as to what to do.

"Let me see it," Cobb said, walking over to Elizabeth, before crouching down next to her. He turned her ankle with a rough but not unskilled hand. "It looks turned, not broke. She can walk on it, if she's minded to, or she can be carried,” he looked to Mr. Darcy as he said the last part. Then, moving his gaze from her foot to her face, Cobb asked Elizabeth directly, “Which is it, miss?"

"I shall walk," Elizabeth said, firmly enough, though her teeth remained clenched against the pain of saying so. Darcy's bound hands came again beneath her arm to steady her rise, and she did not resist his support; in fact, she did not so much as offer the protest she would certainly have made a day before, some dry remark about being perfectly capable of standing on her own, followed by at least two further attempts to prove it before she consented, with poor grace, to accept his arm at all. She accepted it now in front of witnesses, and found she had no pride left to spare in refusing him.

The group continued on, after that, more slowly than before with Darcy positioning himself at her injured side. He did not ask Cobb or anyone else for the privilege, but simply inserted himself by her side. Though his wrists were still bound and offered clumsy support, she could not help but feel some gratitude for the aid. And Elizabeth, not being able to help it, leaned some part of her weight against him with every second or third step.

As they continued, she found herself thinking about Mr. Darcy. I have spent the last two months listing all his faults, she told herself. She could never have imagined once what it would feel like to know the particular warmth of his shoulder beneath my hand in a wet field at dawn. Nor could she have ever imagined the low, murmur of his gentle words, “slowly, there is no hurry now, I have you,” that he offered her, under his breath, at every uneven step, in a voice that bore no resemblance to anything at all she had heard in all her time with him in Hertfordshire.

Elizabeth did not remark on his behavior, or the magnitude of how different he acted. Instead, she walked on in silence next to him; though, it was a silence, that was, for perhaps the first time something very near to comfort in his presence. At that moment, they were simply two people leaning on each other while walking across a cold field, with the whole of the county's search still somewhere behind them and no certain shelter yet ahead.

***

It was some while later, the sun fully up now behind a grey scrim of clouds that promised more rain before the day was out, that they came at last to a stand of woodland thick enough to offer real cover, and Cobb called the halt.

She spotted an ancient oak tree that seemed dry enough, and Elizabeth attempted to move towards it and sit down. Mr. Darcy was quick to grab ahold of her, and ease her gently down, pressing his weight against hers to allow gravity to slowly move her to a seated position.

They did not speak; there was no need to. Though his hands were still bound, he managed to ensure she was seated with surprising care. Once she found a comfortable position, she let out a breath she didn’t realize she had held and settled her back against the tree.

Seeing that Elizabeth was settled as comfortably as their circumstances allowed, Darcy came and sat beside her without a word. He had positioned himself close enough that his shoulder rested lightly against hers, his whole body angled toward the men rather than toward her, as though he meant to stand between her and their captives while she took what rest she could.

Unfortunately, they did not rest long. Cobb permitted them perhaps an hour, long enough for Elizabeth's ankle to stiffen rather than mend, and long enough for the cold to work its way properly into their limbs again.

Cobb called for the group to move on again, and this time, set a course northward. He told Bill the party that he knew of a place that no search would think to try; it was a gamekeeper's cottage long fallen out of any estate's use, and it stood alone at the edge of a wood some miles further on.

It was Ned who fell into step beside her for a stretch of that second march, whether by Cobb's design or his own inclination she could not tell, and it was Ned who, some while into it, glancing twice toward where Cobb walked ahead deep in some low conversation with the grey-haired man, produced from inside his coat a heel of bread gone hard at the edges and pressed it into her bound hands.

He whispered to her in a low tone, not quite meeting her eyes. "Not much, but you'll want something, walking on that ankle."

She thanked him, quietly, and broke the heel in careful halves and passed one back along her bound wrists to Darcy without a comment, and if Ned noticed the division he said nothing of it. He only fell back a pace.

The bread did what bread could, and she was grateful for it. It did not touch the deeper hunger that had begun, by the second day's light, but it helped. For perhaps the first time in her life, Elizabeth felt hunger; she did not know how much it honed rather than eased the cold. This, coupled with her ankle's steady ache, made her increasingly weary.

Eventually, while in a particularly thick wood, Cobb called another halt. There was still light enough to gather wood, and the men set about building up a fire with speed. Darcy took no part in the felling of branches but stood near her the whole while, and if he said little, his presence itself seemed a kind of shelter.

It was Bill who caught a rabbit, and brought it to their makeshift camp. Elizabeth had scarcely noticed his absence before the rabbit was hung dressed and turning above the flames. She found she could regard the blunt business with an eager calm, as her hunger drove her senses over squeamishness.

When at last the meat was passed round, she ate what was given her without complaint. With the cold air pressing in, Elizabeth told herself that she was entirely grateful for the fire's warmth, pressing back the night's bitter cold, as she sat under a cove of ancient firs.

What are we to do? What will become of us? She thought, staring into the flames, and feeling tears that came into her eyes, without wanting them.

Darcy remained beside her as the camp settled, near enough that she might have touched his sleeve had she reached for it, and made no pretence of occupying himself elsewhere. She knew he acted as her own guard, and Elizabeth found that she did not mind it at all.

The party's arrangements for modesty were decided with swift practicality. Cobb made it clear that the left of the clearing was given over to the men, and the right was reserved for her use alone. Bill had told her, none too gently, that when she felt she needed the chamber pot, to find herself a tree.

When at last she lay down near the fire, it was Darcy who arranged himself nearest of all the men to where she settled; he kept a small distance between them but would not fully surrender distance with propriety.

Elizabeth could feel his breadth over the top of her head, and she was glad of it; his presence brought a degree of safety, even if it was entirely false. He is a foolish, stubborn man; what would I do without him, she reflected, before she eventually closed her eyes and slept.

She felt the stark, cold winter air, as she woke and slept again in snatches, only broken by the frigid conditions and shifting of bodies around the dying fire; and each time she woke, she found Mr. Darcy awakened before her, his eyes already turned toward her in the dark. She did not speak to him, too tired from exhaustion, but each time, she eventually fell back asleep, feeling a type of suspended relief that he was not far away.

Morning came grey and reluctant. Ned found another rabbit, and it was prepared and cooked with immediacy. The party ate what little there was from the rodent, before they moved on for the day.

There was a general grumble about the members of the party, and Cobb assured the tired group that they would arrive at the cottage that day.

Sure to his word, after a long morning of walking, they arrived at the cottage. It was towards the middle of their second day of captivity, that the door was forced open, and the small band entered into the building. Elizabeth saw a single low room, and a hearth choked with old ash that Cobb set the grey-haired man to clearing for a fire.