Chapter 10 The Rescue
THE RESCUE
The cottage appeared through the fog like a memory: gray stone, the pale glint of glass, the thin ghost of smoke still rising from the chimney where the fire had not quite died.
Darcy tightened his grip on the reins and walked faster.
Elizabeth had not spoken since the wall.
She lay against Atlas's neck with her eyes closed, one hand still fisted in the mane, the other pressed against the horse's warm shoulder.
The shivering had not stopped, but it had changed character, deepening from violent tremors into something slower, as if the cold had worked its way past muscle and into the mechanism beneath.
He knew what that meant. He had seen it in lambs born during Derbyshire blizzards, the point where the body began to spend its last reserves and the trembling became less a protest than a surrender.
He guided Atlas around the side of the cottage to the stable.
The remains of last night's hay lay scattered on the frozen ground, trampled where Atlas had stood, the stone trough still holding snowmelt.
Atlas lowered his head toward the water without being asked, and Darcy stripped the saddle and bridle with hands that moved faster than his mind, looping the reins over the post, leaving the animal to find his own comfort in the familiar shelter.
The horse would be fine. Elizabeth could not wait.
Darcy reached up and lifted her from Atlas's back.
She came without resistance, her body folding against his chest with the boneless weight of someone who had used the last of her strength to hold on during the ride.
Her dress was soaked through. Her pelisse was heavy with wet.
He could feel the cold radiating from her body even through his own damp clothing, a chill so deep it seemed to come from inside her rather than from the air.
He carried her around the cottage and through the front door, which still stood ajar from his frantic departure. The room inside was dim and cold.
He set Elizabeth in the chair nearest the hearth and knelt before the fireplace.
His hands were shaking. He forced them steady.
Kindling first, the dry scraps from the storeroom, a handful of bark, the last curls of tinder he could scrape together.
The ember caught the bark, smoked, and flared.
But the firewood was gone. They had burned the last of it two nights ago, and the cold that had driven them into each other's arms had not restocked the woodpile.
He looked at the cottage's second chair. The storeroom shelves. The frame of the cot.
He did not hesitate.
He smashed the chair against the stone floor with a violence that startled him, and fed the broken legs to the flames.
The dry old wood caught, burning fast and hot.
He added the seat, the back, and the crosspieces.
When the chair was gone, he pulled the shelves from the storeroom wall and broke those too.
The fire grew. Grew again. He built it high, burning a dead woman's cottage to save a living one, because the alternative was watching Elizabeth die of cold.
When the heat pushed outward, he turned to her.
She sat where he had placed her, her head bowed, her hands in her lap. She was not shivering anymore. The stillness frightened him more than any tremor had.
“Elizabeth. I need you to look at me.”
Her eyes opened. Found his. They were glassy, the gaze of someone surfacing from a great depth, and his chest constricted at the effort it cost her to hold them on his face.
“I need to remove your wet clothing,” he said. His voice was level, practical, the voice of a man managing a crisis. “The wet fabric is pulling what heat remains from your body. It must come off.”
She blinked at him. Nodded once, a tiny movement.
He began with the pelisse. His fingers found the fastenings and worked them free with a steadiness he did not feel.
The wool was sodden, heavy as chain mail, and it peeled away from her dress beneath with a wet, reluctant sound.
He draped it over the back of the second chair and turned it toward the fire.
Her dress next. The laces at the back required him to lean close, to reach around her, and the intimacy of it, his arms bracketing her body, his fingers working the wet cord, made something tighten in his throat that he refused to acknowledge. Not now. Now was survival.
The dress came away and joined the pelisse.
Her shift beneath was soaked through, clinging to her skin in a way that revealed the shape of her breasts, the line of her ribs, the flat plane of her stomach.
He looked, because he was human and because he could not help it, and then he looked away and clenched his jaw until his teeth ached.
“The shift as well,” he said. “It is wet through.”
She reached for the hem. Her hands would not close. Her fingers were white and waxy, and she made a small sound of frustration.
He pulled it over her head himself.
She was naked in his arms for the second time in twelve hours.
The first time, she had been warm and wanting, and her body had curved against his like an answer to a question he had not known he was asking.
Now she was ice-pale, her skin rough with gooseflesh, her lips blue, and the only thing he felt was a terror so complete it left no room for anything else.
He wrapped her in every blanket the cottage possessed, the rough wool from the cot, the ones from the storeroom, the one they had lain on together, layering them around her body, tucking them beneath her chin, swaddling her with the fierce efficiency of a man who knew that cloth alone would not be enough.
It would not be enough.
He stripped off his own wet clothing, his greatcoat, coat, waistcoat, and shirt until he was only in his small clothes. Some last shred of propriety demanded it, though propriety felt absurd when measured against the temperature of her skin. The fire was roaring now, throwing heat in waves.
Darcy sat on the floor before the fire and pulled Elizabeth down into his arms.
She came without protest, without stiffness, without the careful negotiation that had preceded their first night.
He arranged the blankets around them both, his back against the side of the chair, her body between his legs, her back against his bare chest, the wool cocoon enclosing them both.
He wrapped his arms around her and held on.
Her skin was ice against his heat. The shock of it made him hiss through his teeth, made his muscles tighten with the body's instinctive recoil from cold, but he did not pull away.
He pressed closer. Let his warmth pour into her through every point of contact: his chest against her back, his arms around her ribs, his thighs bracketing hers, his chin resting on the crown of her head.
“Breathe,” he told her. “Breathe with me.”
He exaggerated his own breathing and felt her body match his rhythm.
The shivering returned, which was good. It meant her body was fighting again, spending energy to generate heat.
He held her through the violent tremors that rattled her teeth and made her spine jerk against his chest. And he said nothing, because there was nothing to say that his body was not already saying.
I am here. I am warm. You are safe.