A Debt of Gratitude (Pride and Prejudice Variation)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

The Empress

The barn door banged open, admitting a swirl of snow and a very disgruntled Lydia, her hem heavy with wet mud.

“Come down at once, Josephine!” she shouted at the rafters, stamping her boots on the stone floor. “Do not ignore me! You are behaving like a common stray, not an Empress!”

A faint, defiant meow drifted down from the hayloft.

“You will freeze out here, Josephine,” Lydia muttered, grabbing the ladder. “When my fingers turn black from frostbite, I shall make you into a fashionable muff.”

She scrambled up the wooden rungs, her breath hitching in the biting cold of the upper loft.

Josephine was a shadow in the gloom, perched smugly atop a mound of loose hay near the back wall.

Lydia lunged for her, slipping on the loose straw.

She landed hard on her knees, her hands sinking deep into the pile to steady herself.

Her fingers did not meet dry stalks. They sank into something soft, heavy, and shockingly cold—a wet pile of fabric that gave way beneath her weight.

Lydia froze. Josephine hissed and bolted, but Lydia did not move. The texture under her palm was not burlap or canvas. It was icy, sodden velvet.

She snatched her hand back as if burnt.

The scream that tore from her throat was not a request for attention. It was raw and primal, sending the pigeons exploding from the rafters.

Elizabeth was the first through the barn doors, a shawl thrown hastily over her head, with Jane, Mary, and Kitty close behind.

“Lydia?” Elizabeth called out over the wind.

“Up here!” Lydia cried. “Lizzy, come up! Josephine found... I think Josephine has found a dead person!”

Elizabeth took the ladder at speed. When she crested the floor of the loft, she found Lydia pressed against the far wall, clutching the shivering cat to her chest, pointing a trembling finger at the hay drift.

“I touched it,” Lydia whimpered, burying her face in Josephine's fur. “It is stone cold.”

Elizabeth dropped to her knees beside the mound. She brushed aside the loose hay, revealing a shoulder wrapped in dark blue velvet, ruined by mud and ice. It was a young woman, tall and slight, lying so still she might have been carved from stone.

“Mary,” Elizabeth snapped, stripping off her own shawl without turning. “Please fetch a heavy blanket from the carriage box.”

“Is she...?” Jane asked, her face pale as she reached the top of the ladder.

“Who might she be?” Kitty murmured, her voice unsteady. “Those slippers—Morocco leather, and of the finest quality.”

Elizabeth reached out and pressed her fingers to the young woman's neck. The skin was ice cold, but a faint, uncertain pulse beat against Elizabeth's fingertips. The stranger gasped—a sharp, rattling intake of air.

“She breathes,” Elizabeth said.

Elizabeth reached to check the pulse again, but the moment her fingers grazed skin, the stranger flinched violently. It was a violent, instinctive recoil. She buried herself deeper into the hay until her back hit the wooden slats of the stall.

“All is well,” Elizabeth whispered, pulling her hand back to show she meant no harm.

The stranger did not speak. She stared at them with dark, fever-bright, utterly terrified eyes. Her chest heaved in shallow, ragged gasps, but she made no sound. Her gaze darted from Lydia's flushed face to Mary's spectacles, watching them all with desperate vigilance.

“Who are you?” Lydia demanded, leaning forward. “Why are you in our barn?”

The stranger squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away, pulling the ruined velvet of her pelisse around her throat. The sleeves were stained with a dark redness that might have been blood.

“Hush, Lydia,” Jane said softly. She moved past Elizabeth, sinking to her knees in the straw. Jane did not ask a question. She simply unclasped her own thick woollen cloak and held it out. “You are cold as stone, my dear. Please. It is warm.”

The stranger stared at the heavy wool, then at Jane's face. Jane remained perfectly still, her expression open and kind.

Slowly, with a hand that shook so violently it scarce held the fabric, the stranger reached out. As the cloak settled about her shoulders, the sleeve of her pelisse slipped upward.

Elizabeth drew a sharp breath.

Jane glanced down. There, encircling the pale, chafed skin of the stranger's wrist, was a ring of dark, angry purple—the unmistakable mark of a rope tied too tight and fought against too hard.

The stranger saw them staring. She snatched her hand back, tucking it beneath the hay, her breathing hitching into panic.

“We must fetch Papa,” Kitty whispered from the ladder, her tone shrill with alarm.

“She has been hurt. We must call the magistrate.” Mary said.

“No!” The word tore from the stranger's throat, ragged and desperate. It was the first sound she had made. “No magistrate. Pray, no.”

“You have been assaulted,” Mary stated. “The law requires—”

“He has the paper!” the stranger cried out, trying to scramble backward, though there was nowhere left to go. “If you call the law... he will show them the paper. He will make me go back.”

Elizabeth silenced Mary with a sharp glance. The terror that the mention of “law” had provoked was unmistakable. Whoever had done this to her had made the law serve his cruelty.

“We do not even know what paper he has,” Mary protested, still shaken. “What if we are concealing her from justice? What if she is in the wrong?”

“Look at her, Mary,” Elizabeth said quietly. “She is half-frozen, bruised, and was bound with ropes. Whatever her history may be, she is the one in need of mercy to-day.”

She glanced at her other sisters. “If anyone of us, or anyone we loved, had been so used and had nowhere to go, would we not pray that some decent family would shelter her first and ask their questions later?”

Mary swallowed, her gaze dropping to the livid mark on the girl's wrist. Kitty’s hand gripped the ladder-rail. Neither spoke.

“No one is calling the magistrate,” Elizabeth said firmly. “No one is taking you anywhere you do not wish to go.”

The stranger searched Elizabeth's face for the lie. “He is close. He stopped to change the horses. He will check every house...”

“Then we shall remain here,” Elizabeth decided. She surveyed the loft. The wind was whistling through the eaves, and the stranger was shivering too violently to stay here. “Mary, is the stove lit in the tack room?”

“The embers are likely still hot from the groom's morning watch,” Mary replied at last. “The door has a heavy iron bar.”

Elizabeth turned back to the stranger. She did not offer empty platitudes. She offered security.

“There is a room below,” Elizabeth said, keeping her tone steady. “It is warm. Well, a little warmer than here. It has a lock strong enough to stop a carriage horse. My sisters and I will stand between you and the door.”

The stranger hesitated. She stared at the snow swirling in through the open hay door, then at the bruise on her own wrist, and finally at the circle of five sisters.

“He will be angry,” the stranger whispered, a tear tracking through the mud on her cheek. “He is dangerous.”

“Lydia,” Elizabeth said, not turning away. “Where is the pitchfork?”

The stranger stared at Elizabeth, searching, desperate. She shifted her gaze to the youngest sister.

Lydia did not hesitate. She snatched the heavy iron fork from its hook on the wall, the rusted metal dull in the gloom.

She tested its weight with a sharp thrust into the air, shifted her grip until the ash-wood handle balanced in her palm, then drove the tines into the empty air in a short, vicious jab.

Lydia grinned at the trembling stranger.

She did not offer comfort. Instead, she brandished the weapon with an expression entirely devoid of pity but brimming with excitement.

It was a baring of teeth that promised she would use them without mercy on any who dared climb the ladder.

To a civilised guest, it would have been terrifying. To someone running for her life, these women were not merely offering tea—they were offering defence.

Slowly, the rigid tension in the stranger's shoulders dropped an inch. The terror in her eyes receded, replaced by a fragile, desperate trust.

She gave a small, jerky nod.

“I cannot walk,” she whispered, the admission costing her the last of her pride. “My feet... I cannot feel them.”

“Jane,” Elizabeth said. “Shall we take her shoulders?”

The stranger shivered violently, her teeth chattering so hard that the words were barely intelligible. She pressed herself back against the rough wood of the stall, her gaze darting between the five faces hovering over her.

“He... he says he is my husband,” she whispered. “He says the licence is signed. He says I belong to him.”

Lydia gasped, her eyes widening. “You are married? An elopement?”

“I said no,” the stranger sobbed, clutching the dirty velvet of her pelisse against her chest. “We stopped at the inn... I wanted to go home. But he said... he said since he had the licence, I was already his. He said if I screamed, he would tell everyone I was ruined anyway.”

Jane made a soft sound of distress, reaching out to tuck the wool blanket around the stranger's trembling shoulders.

“You are safe now,” Jane murmured. “You are among friends.”

“Who did this?” Elizabeth demanded, her gaze fixing on the dark bruises that encircled the stranger's wrists—marks that spoke of ropes or harsh restraint. “Who is chasing you?”

“Please,” the stranger croaked. “Do not tell him where I am. He will come for me.”

Getting the stranger to the ladder proved to be a trial of coordination. Her legs were useless, numb from the cold and the long hours of confinement, and she hung between Elizabeth and Jane like a rag doll.

“Kitty, go down first,” Elizabeth commanded, her breath pluming in the frigid air. “Hold the lantern high so we can see the rungs. Mary, stay behind us and guide her feet.”