Chapter 9 #3
“Oh, thank God,” Charlotte breathed.
Lizzie was sure of it now. She still couldn’t see much, but the corridor seemed to take on an amorphous shape before her eyes
rather than just an endless stretch of black. And the more steps they took, the more defined the space became. Finally, her
eyes adjusted, and she saw the shape of a door standing ajar.
“Charlotte, look!” Lizzie said. “We’re almost out.”
They picked up the pace, even Guy, and Lizzie could now make out the cream-colored shape of him before her. They came to the
end of the enclosed space and burst into a lonely hallway with grimy windows overlooking the forest that enveloped Netherfield
Park.
“Never. Again.” Charlotte held a hand to her chest and shook her head. “Elizabeth Bennet, you’re far too adventurous for your
own good.”
“So everyone tells me,” Lizzie said, laughing. “Look—you’re covered in dust!”
“Look at yourself! You have cobwebs in your hair!”
“Nothing a bath won’t fix,” Lizzie said with a laugh. She looked down and showered Guy with pats. He was similarly grimy.
“I think you also have earned a bath, sir.”
They were so giddy at finally finding their way out, Lizzie didn’t think about where they were until Charlotte grew serious
as she gazed out the window. “Lizzie, are we in the east wing?”
All laughter dried on Lizzie’s lips as she gazed out the windows. “Oh. I think so.”
She walked up to a window and ran a finger across a pane and inspected the pad of her finger. It was dark. Soot. The plaster
walls around her were not just darkened with time—they were damaged and smoke-stained, and extensively cracked in more than
a few places. Above her, giant chunks of plaster had fallen from the ceiling, revealing the laths beneath them. The air was
stale and still, and every stray creak of the floorboard beneath her put Lizzie on edge.
“How have we come all the way to the opposite end of the house?” Charlotte asked, panic back in her voice. “I thought Bingley
said the east wing was closed off!”
“It is, but he must not know about the servant corridors,” Lizzie said, looking back at where they’d emerged. She wasn’t eager
to revisit it without light.
“How do we get out?” Charlotte asked. “We can’t go back the way we came.”
Lizzie thought for a moment. They could try to find their way to the original door and pound on it until someone came and rescued them. But that could be hours from now. Or . . .
She looked up and down the hallway, which stretched to either side for at least twenty paces. She peered out the window and
oriented herself toward the front of the house. If they could make their way, carefully, to the front of the house, they’d
find the door that separated this wing from the rest of the house. They could knock on that until someone heard, and considering
the door to the east wing was very close to the landing where they’d begun their journey, it was far more likely that someone
would hear and open the door for them.
It would also mean they wouldn’t have to wander around through the dark again.
“We’ll move very carefully to the center of the house,” Lizzie decided.
“Is it safe?”
“Well . . . plaster damage aside, these floors and walls look solid enough,” Lizzie said. “Bingley just said the wing wasn’t
entirely suitable for guests, but I doubt that means we’ll fall through.”
“All right,” Charlotte agreed. “Anything but going back the way we came.”
They crept down the hall the way they’d moved through the servant corridor—Guy in front, Lizzie in the middle, and Charlotte bringing up the rear.
Lizzie couldn’t help but let her gaze wander as they carefully stepped down the creaking hallway—this part of the house was not as evenly proportioned as the west and central wings.
Alcoves and strange corners hid doorways into rooms she desperately wanted to explore, and streaks of soot and warped wood finish betrayed the fire that had occurred decades earlier.
Lizzie was beginning to doubt the treasure actually existed.
If Honoria had access to a pile of silver, why hide it when her home desperately needed repairs?
Lizzie and Charlotte followed a strange, angling passage that led them past empty rooms with damaged or destroyed furnishings
boasting heavy layers of gray dust that covered what appeared to be more black soot. Lizzie got the impression that they were
headed toward where the fire had been the worst. But very soon, they came to a turn, and when Lizzie peered out the nearest
window, she saw with relief that it overlooked the front of the house. “We’re back to the front,” she said. “Which means that
door at the end of this hall is probably our way out,” she told Charlotte. “See, that wasn’t so bad. We’ll be out in just
a—AH!”
A shriek of surprise ripped out of Lizzie as she felt her right foot plunge through the floor and into nothingness. She fell
forward, catching herself on her hands, and tried to dislodge her right leg, but it was caught between splintered floorboards
at the knee, and fiery pain ripped through her. Charlotte shrieked when Lizzie went down, somehow managing to throw herself
to the left, away from where the floor had given way.
“Lizzie!”
“Don’t come any closer!” Lizzie ordered.
It was the strangest thing, but Lizzie could feel the floorboards beneath her groaning.
She couldn’t see or feel anything beneath her right foot—it was dangling in the liminal space between floor and ceiling .
. . and then a terrifying thought occurred to her: What if there was no ceiling below her?
What if the plaster had all fallen, and the laths were rotted away, and nothing else was between here and the floor below but these rotting floorboards?
She closed her eyes. The ceilings were nearly fifteen feet downstairs! Would a fall from that height kill her?
Very probable.
“Lizzie,” Charlotte said again, and Lizzie came back to herself. Guy was standing before her, licking her face very earnestly,
and her best friend was huddled on the floor two paces away.
“I’m all right,” Lizzie said, which was true enough for now. “But I want you to crawl on your hands and knees toward the door.
Carefully.”
“What about you?”
“I’m stuck. I need you to get help.”
“I can’t leave you!”
“You have to, Charlotte.”
Charlotte crawled forward hesitantly. “Don’t get too close to me,” Lizzie warned. “And call Guy.”
“Here, Guy,” Charlotte said in a thin, scared voice.
The dog looked between the two ladies, uncertain.
But he did as he was bidden and followed Charlotte.
Lizzie watched with her heart in her throat as her best friend and dog made the long, slow, perilous journey down the rest of the hall.
At every groan and creak, Lizzie had to grit her teeth and pray that Charlotte wouldn’t fall through as well.
Finally, she made it to the door and twisted at the knob desperately. “It’s locked!” she cried.
“Bang on it!” Lizzie called back. “Someone will hear.”
Charlotte began knocking and banging, and then after a moment she started yelling, too. “Help! Can someone help? We’re in
the east wing! Please, help!”
“Good, keep going!” Lizzie encouraged.
Her muscles were starting to burn. Her right leg was outstretched, sunk into the floor to the knee, and her left leg was folded
under her. She had thrown her torso and arms down on the floor, too afraid to sit up and try to yank her leg loose because
if she shifted her weight toward the rotting boards, she feared she’d fall all the way through. Now she dared to wiggle her
right leg a little bit, and the groaning of the floorboard beneath her made her go still.
“Someone’s coming!” Charlotte shouted. “Hold on, Lizzie.”
“I’ve no intention of going anywhere,” she assured Charlotte, and then the most beautiful sound in the world floated her way:
a key scraping the inside of the lock.
The door separating the east wing from the rest of the house swung open, revealing Mr. Grigson. “Miss Lucas?”
“Miss Bennet is stuck and needs help!” Charlotte shouted.
“Don’t come any closer!” Lizzie warned the butler, who was a very tall and somewhat stout man. “Get Mr. Darcy. And tell him
to bring some rope.”
The butler disappeared without another word—he really deserved a raise and a lengthy holiday considering all he’d put up with lately—and Charlotte stood on the other side of the door, waiting and worrying while Guy barked in excitement.
Lizzie could hear shouts and various cries of alarm, but hardly five minutes had gone by before Darcy appeared in the doorway.
“Lizzie!” he shouted.
The anguish on Darcy’s face sent her stomach plummeting—so much so that she dug her nails into the floorboards, certain she’d
started to slip. But at the same time, she felt her breath become more even at the sight of him. Darcy was here. She was going
to be all right.
“Hello,” she said in a surprisingly weak voice. “I seem to have taken a wrong turn.”
“Save your breath, and don’t move,” he ordered.
A crowd of footmen and various members of the house party had gathered beyond the door, and Lizzie couldn’t tell exactly what
they were up to. Minutes seemed to drag by, and then when she looked up again, she saw Darcy carefully making his way toward
her, a length of rope wrapped around his torso and another one in hand.
“Don’t come too close,” she warned. “I don’t want you to fall.”
Darcy ignored her, dropping to his knees and crawling when he was within ten paces. The floors creaked ominously beneath them,
but he didn’t hesitate. When he was close enough to reach her, he said, “Push yourself up with your arms. I’m going to secure
the rope around your waist.”
Lizzie did as she was told, very carefully easing herself up on her elbows, trying to ignore the creaking of the rotten boards, hyperaware of even the slightest give beneath her.
“I didn’t mean to come to the east wing,” she said.
“Charlotte and I found a corridor, and then we got lost, and we couldn’t go back, and so ended up moving forward and—”
“Explain when you’re safe,” Darcy whispered, brushing his lips against her right ear as he carefully worked to tie the rope
snugly around her waist. Lizzie shivered. It had been days since she’d last felt his lips. She’d missed them. Something about
dangling so close to peril made her feel rather silly for the cold shoulder she’d been giving him these past few days.
“All right,” she said, when he confirmed the rope was tied securely around her and anchored properly. “You might want to move
back a bit.”
Using her arms, Lizzie slowly pushed herself back toward where her leg had fallen through. There wasn’t just creaking or groaning
wood—there was an ominous ticking sound that raked her spine with panic. Lizzie pulled her right leg up from the jagged hole
it had fallen through and had almost succeeded in getting free when her ankle caught on something sharp—the splintered edge
of the floorboard she’d broken through. She hissed with pain.
“Lizzie!” Darcy cried out in panic, and started to crawl to her.
“Stay back!” she shouted, and she tried again, this time kicking the ragged edge of floorboard to the side.
She lost her slipper, but then she was free, and she pushed herself up on her good foot, her entire leg screaming in pain but holding her weight.
Lizzie launched herself forward, falling into Darcy’s arms as the floorboards that had held her just a moment before broke.
A cascade of falling wood echoed from behind her as Darcy propelled Lizzie down the hall, half carrying and half dragging her to safety.
When they crossed the threshold into the central part of the house, Darcy slowly relaxed his death grip on her, but Lizzie
dug her fingers into his arm, swaying. After the excitement and fear had washed over her, she just felt weak. She wasn’t certain
what had scared her more—the fact that she’d almost fallen through to the ground floor, or the wild, desperate look on Darcy’s
face when he’d thought she was going to fall through.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said, wrapping her into a hug. His lips found her ear once more, and he whispered, “Me too.”