Chapter 13 Out in the Cold #2
Darcy stared hard at the floor, his throat announcing every breath as it hee-hawed in and out of him.
Elizabeth had attempted the walk to the village again.
After giving her word that she would not.
Without so much as a note explaining where she had gone.
In the sole company of a man whom she had known for less than a week. What was she thinking?
Latimer turned his head slightly to speak over his shoulder and down his nose. “Funny thing that, Mr Darcy. You not knowing where your wife is.”
“There they are, coming along the road now,” Timmins announced, nodding at a window to the front of the property.
Through it, Elizabeth could clearly be seen walking ahead of Stratton, holding her skirts above the ankle as she every now and then broke into a run before being forced to walk again where the snow was deepest. Darcy needed to see no more.
With more vigour than he truthfully had the strength for, but animated with outrage, he strode to the front door and wrenched it open.
The air was bitterly cold, and it instantly clasped its icy talons about his throat.
In his pique, all the carefulness he had adopted to minimise his discomfort was forgotten.
Every furious step sent shards of pain lancing from his chest to his chin until he could scarcely order his thoughts.
He struck his boot on something hidden beneath the snow, instinctively took a jarring step to avoid falling, and fell to his knees anyway when a jolt of agony overtook him, making his vision swim.
“Oh my goodness! Darcy!” Elizabeth was on her knees beside him. “Can you hear me? Are you well?”
He gritted his teeth savagely and forced himself to answer in the affirmative with their agreed hand gesture.
Elizabeth hooked her hands under his arm and began to tug him up out of the snow. “What are you doing out here?”
Leaning more heavily on her than he liked, he pushed himself to his feet. “Looking for you.”
“Looking for…Are you out of your wits?”
“Mr Darcy, I presume?” At Stratton’s arrival on the scene, Darcy instinctively jerked his arm tightly to his side, tugging Elizabeth closer with it. He made no attempt to conceal the resentful curl of his lip, even when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Elizabeth frown at him.
“Yes, this is he,” she answered in his stead. “Pray excuse him, sir. He cannot speak”—she peered closer still—“and he is not well.”
“I am well enough,” Darcy mouthed in retort. “Do not apologise to this man for me.”
Elizabeth recoiled, snatching her hands from his arm, her frown changed from one of concern to one of confusion and displeasure.
“Everything well out here? Uncle Timmins sent me to see if I can help any?” came an insouciant interruption from John, who was trotting towards them from the inn.
Darcy could scarcely contain his pique, for had the boy made more effort to help half an hour ago, he might not have ended up on his knees in the snow. “Not now,” he mouthed angrily.
“Yes, thank you, John. You could take this indoors for me,” Elizabeth said, retrieving a basket from the snow and handing it to him. He took it with another of his shrugs and went away. A boy of few words and even fewer manners, Darcy reflected with disgust.
Turning to the other gentleman, Elizabeth said, “I thank you for your kindness this afternoon, sir. Pray, do not let me keep you from your wife a moment longer.”
Stratton looked uneasily between her and Darcy, apparently unsure whether or not to leave. Darcy helped him shed his ambivalence by mouthing, severely, “Good day, sir.”
“Good day, then,” Stratton said with a conspiratorial look to Elizabeth that did nothing to soften Darcy’s opinion of him. “Do be sure to let me know if there is any way in which Mrs Stratton or I can be of assistance.”
Elizabeth assured him she would and remained silent as he walked away. The moment they both disappeared inside, Darcy turned, his lips already forming around his first question, but Elizabeth took full advantage of his muteness and spoke over him.
“What do you mean, being so uncivil to poor Mr Stratton?”
“Poor Mr Stratton?” Darcy repeated, incredulous.
“Aye, poor Mr Stratton! For what has he done to deserve your disdain? Or Master John? Do you truly think so meanly of the rest of the world that you cannot even pretend to be polite?”
“You would have me affect civility towards a man from whom you were just running away?” He enunciated as clearly as vexation allowed, but he could tell from the way she glowered at his lips that she did not comprehend.
“You were running from him,” he mouthed instead, pointing angrily at the road along which she had just hurried.
Elizabeth looked where he pointed, then back to him in furious astonishment. “I was not running away from Mr Stratton—I was hastening back to you!”
“You were?”
“Yes, to see whether you were still alive!”
“If you were so concerned about me, why go at all? Without even a note! You must have known how I would worry.”
The hiatus to which he had grown accustomed each time he gave a mute answer and she industriously struggled to understand it felt tortuous in this new context of dispute. Her tone, when she replied, suggested a loss of equanimity that justified his anxious wait.
“You were babbling deliriously when you fell asleep yesterday. You tossed and turned all night long and then could not be woken this morning, no matter how I tried. I had serious doubts as to whether you would survive the day. Waking up, reading a letter, and coming for a stroll outside were not things of which I suspected you capable when I left in urgent search of an apothecary. I see now that I need not have been concerned at not finding one. You evidently require no medical attention whatsoever, for your pride, at least, is in fine fettle.”
Part of Darcy wished to crow at the news that Elizabeth had been so troubled by the prospect of his demise. A greater part of him railed at yet another attack upon his character. “I misjudged. That scarcely makes me prideful.”
“No? You did not then presume that Mr Stratton’s condition in life meant he could never be respectable?”
“You do not know that he is.”
“I do not know that you are, yet I have been alone with you all week and have heard no complaint from you about that.”
“You have nothing to fear from me,” he replied indignantly.
“But I do have something to fear from him? Why? Because I told you he is in trade and now you think him vulgar?”
Darcy snarled derisively. “He thought it proper to walk eight or nine miles with you, unaccompanied. What says that about his respectability?”
“He did not choose to walk anywhere with me,” she cried. “I walked there alone, as did he, and when our paths crossed, he kindly accompanied me back.”
Darcy stared at her in consternation. “You went alone? After you gave me your word you would not? Devil take it, Elizabeth, you do not know the area. It was not safe!”
She squinted furiously at his mouth but could only have caught one in four of his words, for he was exasperated well beyond measured speech. However many she deciphered, it seemed to be enough.
“I am well aware of that, Mr Darcy, but I thought you were gravely ill. Would you rather I had left you to die?”
“I would rather you had sent someone else.”
She shook her head. “The only people I might have prevailed on are Mr Stratton and Master John. One had gone there already before I even resolved on going myself and would not have known to look for an apothecary. The other was at his work, helping his uncle. What was I to do? Demand that they both desist and do my bidding instead? These people are not in my employ, sitting about awaiting my instructions.”
“It would not have hurt them to do you a small favour.”
“Upon my word, think you they have not done enough already? John walked to Spencer’s Cross only yesterday, if you recall, through far deeper drifts than still remained today, to deliver our letters—which have been collected now, it transpires, so you may thank him for that.
” She began to walk back and forth before him, gesturing angrily as she spoke.
“He has also, in case it has somehow escaped your notice, been emptying our chamber pots all week. Think you that is his job? Mr Timmins has been caring for your horse. Mrs Ormerod and Mrs Stratton have helped me wash and shred linens to dress your wound. Indeed, they have all done quite enough! I have two perfectly good legs of my own—why would I not walk to the village myself?”
Her words sounded odd. Darcy worried for a moment she was weeping but recognised at the last it was not tears that shook her voice.
Her teeth were chattering. Which was strange, for he no longer felt cold at all.
All he felt was escalating resentment at Elizabeth’s obstinate irascibility towards him.
“I am very grateful to all of them,” he mouthed. “I was only concerned for you, madam. You are cold. We had better go in.” Without waiting for her, he turned and walked in that direction.
“I rather think you were concerned for yourself,” she said behind him.
He stopped walking, arrested by indignation and held in place by the prodigious effort of remaining upright despite his vertiginous light-headedness.
“You are angry because I did not leave you a note or heed your wish that I not walk to the village. You are too used to having your own way, Mr Darcy—but you have no right to be angry with me. I am wholly unconnected to you and am under no obligation to please you.”