Page 26 of I Have Faults Enough

She thought of her mother briefly, and of what her mother would say, and found the thought did not produce the mortification she had rather expected it to produce, which alarmed her further still.

She shifted, at last, because she could not lie there turning the matter over indefinitely, and put the bare space of an inch between her shoulder and his chest, which she suspected fooled neither of them as to the extent of her composure, hers least of all.

"Good morning, Mr. Darcy," she said, and heard her own voice come out with a steadiness she did not actually possess.

It was only then that he seemed to register, fully, the particular arrangement his own arm had settled into overnight, and he withdrew it with a suddenness that lacked every ounce of his usual composure. He coloured, she was almost certain of it, in the grey early light, in a manner she had not once seen from him in the whole of their acquaintance, not even at his most provoked.

"I beg your pardon," he said, rather too quickly. "I did not intend; that is, I was not aware, in the night, of having." He stopped, apparently finding no version of the sentence that improved upon abandoning it, and settled instead for a short, exhaled, "I beg your pardon," a second time, as though the repetition might succeed where the first attempt had not.

"There is nothing to pardon," Elizabeth said, with a composure she was pleased to discover came rather more easily to her than it evidently did to him. "I do not think either of us had a great deal of say in the arranging of it, given the night we had."

"No," he agreed, with a red colour in his cheeks, though he did not offer any further explanation of his own.

Neither of them said anything more on the subject. They rose stiffly, and shared the last of yesterday's hazelnuts between them, and Elizabeth found a welcome occupation for hands and attention alike, and if some part of her noted that Mr. Darcy seemed a good deal more interested in the careful division of the nuts, and rather less inclined than usual to meet her eye while doing it, she was not, upon reflection, in any position to remark upon it, being fully as occupied herself in not looking at him.

They set out that morning with the sun, stronger this morning, offering Darcy rather more confidence in their bearing than yesterday's clouded skyline allowed him.

CHAPTER 16

They continued to walk, slower than the day before, Elizabeth thought. And, in their slow progress, found that evening brought them only a short distance from where they set off that morning.

Nevertheless, with the light failing again and both of them footsore past any easy remedy, they were overjoyed to come upon a second shelter. It was an old charcoal-burner's hut, abandoned by whatever trade had once occupied it, but it was sound enough, and private, tucked deep enough into a stand of woodland that neither road nor farmhouse showed any sign of being near.

Unfortunately, they built no fire here, having no easy access to dry materials, with everything around them muddy and boggy, but the hut was smaller than the shepherd's had been, and warmer for its smallness, and they settled into what dry bedding it offered.

That night, however, was very different from the prior one. Neither spoke at first. They were both too conscious of the other, of the closeness forced upon them by the little shelter and the exhaustion that had made ordinary propriety increasingly difficult to maintain.

As Elizabeth lay in the hut, she thought of Longbourn, and her life before Cobb and his men had taken it from her. She thought further of the situation that she found herself in now. Lying there with Mr. Darcy’s heartbeat slowing gradually back toward its ordinary measure beneath her ear.

Before their abduction, she had disliked Mr. Darcy with a passion she had considered, at the time, entirely justified. She had found him proud, disagreeable, judgmental, and insufferably conscious of his own consequence. Indeed, she laid some part of the blame for their present misfortune at his door; had he not so provoked her at that small gathering at Netherfield, she would not have quit the party in temper, nor walked out alone into the garden where the men had been waiting.

And yet, the past few days had built her another portrait of him entirely, laid down one brick at a time, until she could no longer credit only the first. Mr. Darcy had carried her when she could not walk. He had gone without food so that she might eat. He had thrown himself into the river without a moment's hesitation, and taken the worst of the current upon himself, that she might come to no harm.

He had placed himself between her and danger more times than she could number. And, most inconveniently of all, he had done these things without once demanding gratitude for them. Elizabeth shifted slightly.

Darcy's voice came quietly through the darkness. "Are you uncomfortable?"

Elizabeth turned her head enough to look at him. The little light that remained through the cracks in the hut roof was insufficient to make out more than the outline of his face. She issued a humorless chuckle before saying, “I am not comfortable at all.”

A faint breath of amusement escaped him. “I suppose I am not very comfortable either.”

She settled back, and flitched, as she felt his shoulder next to hers, though unable to move much further, she let out an inconspicuous yawn, and tried to maintain whatever wits she had about her.

A faint breath escaped him, and she felt it across the top of her head. He broke the silence, “I have been thinking about you, and our predicament.”

Elizabeth frowned at the turn of their conversation. She chose not to turn around to look at him, and stated rather seriously, “What do you mean by our predicament?”

“These circumstances,” he said. “I have been thinking about them since we escaped. About the manner in which we have been forced to depend upon one another, and about what it may look like when we are no longer here and are able to think about it with the benefit of proper distance.”

Elizabeth turned more fully toward him. “Mr. Darcy, I assure you, I am quite capable of understanding the circumstances in which I find myself.”

He looked at her, his eyes leveled with hers, as they lay on the cold dirt floor. His voice was serious, and he said in plain terms, “I do not doubt it, Miss Bennet. And, this situation is not your fault in the slightest, but the reality of this situation is that society will talk, and it will not be kind, I assure you.”

“Then do not speak as though I am some helpless creature who cannot understand the consequences of our situation, Mr. Darcy. Society will talk; let them, I have nothing to be ashamed of,” she bit back in defence.

He sounded, for a moment, almost annoyed; the words coming out clipped, before he could soften them. "I am not speaking of helplessness. I am speaking of judgment. Yours, and mine." He paused, and seemed to consider whether to go on. "You have been frightened, exhausted, injured, hungry, and removed entirely from the life you knew. You have had no one to rely upon these days but myself, alone. You must take my meaning, Miss Bennet."

He had not meant to accuse her of any deficiency of understanding, of that much, at least, he was certain. He had meant only that whatever that the two of them, thrown together as they had been, could hardly help but be entangled by it. And, being a man of honor, he could not in good conscience leave now; he would have to marry her, and he was attempting to make it clear that he could marry her.