Chapter 9 #2
The words carried such austerity that silence followed. Elizabeth’s pulse thudded as all eyes turned toward the source. The tall gentleman standing against the wall, hands folded behind his back, eyes half-lidded as if the entire exercise were a boredom to him.
Relief flooded her—sharp, almost painful. Yet shame mingled with it: that he must shield her so, that his courtesy was armour, not warmth.
Mrs. Barlow’s smile thinned. She murmured about preferring cards to scandal and drifted off to another group. Miss Kendrick merely laughed, protesting that far too much had been made of a simple jest before she, too, found some excuse in the form Miss Clara Montford nearby.
Elizabeth risked the smallest glance toward Darcy. He stood as he had before—unyielding, gaze averted, as though he had spoken only for form’s sake. She could not read him. Gratitude, humiliation, something perilously near longing—all tangled within her, leaving her scarcely able to breathe.
Then the door of the great hall burst open with a gust of cold air. Colonel Fitzwilliam strode in, boots white with snow, stamping life back into them. “By heaven, the drifts are half to the eaves! I saw a cart stalled in the lane—took three men and two oxen to move it.”
He came straight toward Darcy, shaking the snow from his coat.
“Not fit for man or beast out there. Egad! Someone tried for the next town on a mule. Smarter than his rider, he was—planted his legs and refused to stir. Reminded me of one in Portugal. Stubborn devil saved more men than the colonel himself.”
He threw out his arms in mimicry of the creature’s rigid stance. Laughter erupted at once—Sir Edward pounding his chair, Miss Clara giggling behind her hand, others joining in for the release.
Elizabeth bent her head. Her lips tried to form a smile, but it faltered.
The noise rose and rose, merry and careless, until it rang brittle in her ears.
Across the circle, her aunt sat several chairs away, her face pale but her expression calm—too distant to have caught a word of what had just passed.
She rose abruptly. “Aunt, you look pale. We must go upstairs at once.”
Mrs. Gardiner blinked in surprise. “Indeed, Lizzy, I am perfectly—”
Colonel Fitzwilliam caught her movement. “Leaving already, Miss Bennet? You will miss the end of the tale!”
Elizabeth summoned a polite smile, but her tone left no room for debate. “My aunt requires rest, Colonel. Pray excuse us.” She was already gathering the shawl about her aunt’s shoulders, as if the matter were settled.
Mrs. Gardiner began to protest, but Elizabeth pressed her hand firmly. “There is rather a draught, and you have only just begun to catch your colour again.”
Lady Montford, reappearing just then with her usual brisk authority, saved Elizabeth the trouble of further explanation.
“Quite right. Mrs. Gardiner must not be jostled. The private sitting room upstairs has been waiting this half-hour, and I will have it occupied.” She rang for servants without delay.
Elizabeth seized the reprieve. She guided her aunt toward the stair with careful determination, keeping her gaze fixed ahead, never once glancing back. Behind them the laughter swelled again, bright and heedless. But Elizabeth climbed with the sound heavy in her chest.
He saved me. He still saves me. And yet I cannot stay in the same room with him.
Darcy had never known a half-hour to last so long.
He had spoken—briefly, concisely—yet the words had fallen short of what he wanted.
Elizabeth had sat only a few steps away, her eyes downcast for the first time since he had known her—her shoulders drawn as though the gaiety and talk around her were a cold wind she must brace against. To stand idle while she bore it made his chest ache with a useless fury.
Mrs. Barlow’s bright fan snapped open and shut, each flick like the crack of a whip.
Miss Kendrick, composed and smiling, pressed on with questions that Elizabeth parried with weary civility.
The others laughed and sipped their wine, content to let the sport continue.
Darcy’s hands clenched behind his back, nails biting into flesh; his jaw ached from holding still.
Why do they try her so? She was a guest, alone save for her aunt and uncle, and they circled her with curiosity sharp enough to wound.
He longed to strike their barbs aside, to make it plain that she was not theirs to toy with.
Yet to do so would only bind her name tighter to his. To shield her would be to expose her.
He forced his gaze to the fire. It made no difference. He saw her still—lashes lowered, nails biting into the soft flesh of her palms, teeth probably sinking into her tongue to keep it still.
Laughter broke out at Richard’s tale, voices rising in cheerful abandon. Darcy could not join them. Every burst of mirth felt like water closing over his head. He stood among them like a man drowning in the middle of a ball.
When Elizabeth rose and urged her aunt away, Darcy felt the relief strike sharp as a wound.
She was gone—safe from the circle of curious eyes, safe from his own helpless watching.
Yet the shame followed at once. He had stood idle, offering nothing more than one mild rebuke.
She had rescued herself, dragging her unwilling aunt with her, while he lingered—useless, a figure at the edge of the hearth.
For a moment, he wondered which chamber had received them upstairs. Then he realised he already knew—he had asked a footman earlier, though what he meant to do with the knowledge, he could not have said. It only made his inaction sting the more.
A footman passed then, his coat dusted with snow, bending to Sir Edward with a report of the stables—drifts to be cleared, horses restless.
At last, something he could do.
Darcy moved without pausing for courtesy. The withdrawing room fell behind him in a swell of laughter and heat, replaced by the bite of cold air on his face—the honesty he craved. In the stables he might shovel, lift, labour—anything to spend this fury in muscle and breath.
Anything but stand powerless while Elizabeth Bennet endured trials he could not ease.
The warmth of the withdrawing room still clung to his coat when Darcy stepped into the night, but the cold stripped it from him at once.
Snow stung his face, the wind biting sharp enough to clear thought—if thought would be cleared.
He strode across the courtyard, boots sinking into drifts the grooms had already attacked twice that day.
Lanterns swung against the dark, their light caught in gusts of white.
The stables were alive with the restlessness of horses who had heard too much wind and felt too little exercise. Hooves struck the floor, breath steamed in clouds, and the smell of hay and leather crowded out the scent of snow. Darcy took up a fork without a word, setting his shoulder to the work.
The stable lads, startled at first, made space for him with the same instinct they would have shown any gentleman who insisted on lending his hand.
One passed him a truss of hay, another fetched a bucket.
Darcy forked the straw, spread it thick, broke ice from the trough with a bar of iron until the glassy shards flew against his boots.
His muscles welcomed the strain; his mind fought it.
Elizabeth’s face hovered before him—the lift of her dark eyes when Miss Kendrick had spoken her name, the stillness of her hands when Mrs. Barlow loosed her barb.
She had borne it with grace, but he had seen the effort in her posture, the tension in her mouth.
He had answered once, and too mildly, and then stood silent while others turned her name into a plaything.
The fork struck the ground harder than he intended. A horse started, tossing its head, and he muttered a word of apology as if the beast could understand. He set his jaw and worked faster.
Icy rain—not even soft snowflakes now—rattled against the stable roof. Somewhere outside, a groom cursed at a drift that filled faster than it could be cleared. Darcy welcomed the noise. It drowned the sound of the laughter he had left behind, laughter that had seemed to mock him as much as her.
What is a gentleman worth, if he cannot shield a lady from idle talk?
The ribbon in his pocket seemed to burn against his side. He had carried it through months of solitude, a token foolish enough to shame him, yet now it felt the only thing in the world that bound him to her. And still, he could do nothing—no word, no gesture—that would not betray her further.
He hefted another forkful, muscles straining. Better the ache in his arms than the helplessness in his chest. Better the honest cold of the night than the warmth of a room where Elizabeth Bennet sat within his reach, and he could not go to her.