Chapter 1 #2
He lifted her into the saddle before she could object, his strength startling as he settled her atop the great black horse.
Elizabeth gasped at the sudden height, her frozen fingers scrabbling for purchase in the horse's coarse mane.
The animal shifted beneath her, warm and solid, and she could feel the heat of it rising through her sodden skirts.
After the relentless cold of the storm, that warmth was so welcome it nearly made her weep.
It was not a secure seat. Her legs were too numb to grip, and her waterlogged pelisse dragged at her like an anchor. She swayed before curling forward over the horse's neck, pressing her cheek against the coarse hair, her body instinctively seeking the animal's warmth.
“Hold on.” Mr. Darcy took the reins in hand, and the horse began a slow walk. “The cottage is not far.”
They moved forward through the storm, Mr. Darcy leading the horse on foot, his boots plunging through snow that had risen near to his ankles. Elizabeth could feel the effort in every step he took through the jerk of the reins as his feet found purchase.
She should have protested. Should have insisted on sharing the burden. But the very thought of dismounting into that freezing white was enough to silence her pride. She gripped the mane tighter with fingers that could barely close and focused on staying in the saddle.
After what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, a shape emerged from the white: a small stone cottage with a peculiar glass-roofed addition that caught the last gray light of the dying afternoon.
“There,” Mr. Darcy said, and Elizabeth sagged with relief.
He guided the horse around the side of the cottage, where a rough lean-to of timber and stone jutted from the wall. Elizabeth watched through half-frozen eyes as he looped the reins to a post and reached up for her.
“Can you dismount?”
She tried to swing her leg over and found her body would not obey. Her limbs had gone stiff and clumsy, her muscles locked with cold. She managed a small, humiliated shake of her head.
His hands found her waist again, and he lifted her down from the saddle as if she weighed nothing, setting her on her feet with a gentleness that belied the urgency of his manner. Her knees buckled the moment they took her weight, and his arm came around her.
“Lean on me,” he said roughly. “Just to the door.”
He half-carried her to the cottage entrance, fumbled the latch, and pushed the door open. The hinges screamed in protest. He drew her inside and forced the door shut behind them.
The silence was almost shocking. After the relentless shriek of the wind, the sudden stillness rang in her ears like a bell. She could hear their ragged breathing, the drip of melting snow from their clothes, the distant moan of the storm outside, muffled now, held at bay by stone and glass.
Elizabeth stood in the center of the room, dripping and shivering.
She looked up at him, and for once she had no sharp remark to offer. No wit, no archness, no careful defense. She was shivering too hard for any of that, and the cold had stripped away everything except the raw, humiliating fact that she needed help and he was offering it.
Something moved across his face. She could not name it. It was gone before she could study it, replaced by the rigid composure she expected from him.
“Stay here,” he said. His voice was rougher than she had heard it before. “I must see to the horse. Then I will get the fire started.”
He went back out into the storm. Through the cottage's small window, Elizabeth could see almost nothing — only the dark shape of him disappearing around the side of the building, where a small stone stable jutted from the cottage wall.
He was gone long enough for her shivering to worsen, long enough for her to wonder whether he had lost his way in the few yards between the stable door and the cottage.
When he returned at last, stamping snow from his boots, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, she understood he had taken the time to unsaddle the horse and see it settled before coming back inside.
The animal before himself. In a blizzard.
Something shifted in her understanding of him. This was not the proud, disdainful Mr. Darcy of the assembly rooms. This was a man who would walk through a storm while a half-frozen woman rode his horse, and then tend to the animal before seeing to his own comfort.
He returned moments later, stamping snow from his boots, his dark hair plastered to his forehead.
He kneeled before the hearth without looking at her.
The kindling caught quickly, flames licking upward with eager hunger, and as the light grew and the warmth began to spread, Elizabeth allowed herself to breathe.
They were alive. They were safe, at least for the moment.
And they were utterly, catastrophically alone.
He rose and turned to face her. His gaze swept over her once, and she saw the way his jaw tightened before he looked away.
She was suddenly aware of how she must look.
Snow melting in her hair. Her dress clung to her body in ways that left very little to the imagination.
She ought to have felt self-conscious. Instead she felt something else, something she was too cold and too tired to examine.
“You are still shivering,” he said, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere past her shoulder. “Come closer to the fire.”
She moved toward the warmth, and as the firelight reached her, she saw his expression change again.
That same unguarded flicker she had caught outside, gone almost before it appeared, but she was watching more carefully now.
Whatever Mr. Darcy felt about finding himself trapped in a cottage with a woman he had once called merely tolerable, it was not indifference.
She was certain of that much, even if she could make no sense of the rest.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I might have died out there.”
“Do not thank me yet.” He turned away, his attention fixed on the window where snow continued to pile against the glass. “We may be here for some time. The storm shows no sign of abating.”
The words settled between them, heavy with implication.
Elizabeth understood what it would mean for her reputation if they were discovered here, and what it would mean for both of them if they were not.
She looked at Mr. Darcy's rigid profile, at the careful distance he was maintaining, at the hands he had clasped behind his back as though he did not trust them, and she thought: I do not know this man at all.
The fire crackled. The storm raged. And Elizabeth Bennet stood in a freezing cottage with the last person in the world she would have chosen for company and wondered how everything had gone so thoroughly wrong.