Breathless
Elizabeth awoke with hands upon her arms and candlelight filling her vision. She could not catch her breath—a sensation that had become all too familiar of late.
“Lizzy, ’tis only a bad dream—wake up!”
“I am awake,” she mumbled through lips still numbed by sleep.
The hands released her, and she felt her aunt Gardiner perch on the edge of the bed. The candle was placed on the dresser, removing the glare from her eyes, and revealing her uncle’s deeply troubled visage.
She groaned and rolled her face into the pillow. “I am sorry I woke you.”
“Hush now, my girl. We are only worried about you,” Mr Gardiner replied in his deep, steady voice. Not the voice she yearned to hear but comforting, nevertheless.
The slight quiver of the mattress alerted Elizabeth to some silent communication between her aunt and uncle and then one of them left, closing the door behind them. She peeked at her aunt. “You should go too. The children will have you up before dawn.”
Mrs Gardiner shook her head and smoothed Elizabeth’s hair with the flat of her hand. “What did you dream about this time?”
With a sigh, Elizabeth unfurled herself and sat up. “I dreamt I was asleep in that tiny space again. I kept bashing my head every time I tried to get to him. Then, when I got out, I was freezing cold and lost in the snow—and I could not find him.”
Her breaths came faster, and the hairs on her nape stood on end. “I dreamt he died.” A whimper of anguish escaped her. She pressed her fingertips to her breastbone. “It hurts in here whenever I think of him lying there.”
“Then try not to,” Mrs Gardiner whispered.
“I cannot think of anything else. I just want to know if he is alive. I could stand it if he hated me, if only I knew he were alive to do it.”
Her aunt smiled pityingly. “Oh Lizzy, we would have heard if he had died. A man of Mr Darcy’s consequence does not pass away without people hearing of it.”
Elizabeth knew this was what everybody had been tiptoeing about, attempting not to say to her for the past two days.
She comprehended their reluctance. If Darcy was not dead, or at least gravely ill, then he was alive and simply refusing to acknowledge her.
And that would only confirm that she had, as she feared, ruined all her chances of happiness with her stupid accusations.
“Lizzy, calm yourself. You are breathing too fast again.”
Elizabeth nodded and forced herself to take several deep breaths.
It was an affliction that had plagued her since early on in Darcy’s recovery.
It had been difficult to watch him struggle to fill his lungs—heart-breaking on occasions.
She had often found herself breathing in time with him, matching his shallow respirations with her own, holding her breath in wretched suspense whenever he could not catch his, and gasping with relief whenever he managed a grating inhalation.
Being reunited with her relations in London had not alleviated the condition; her breathing had proved as erratic without him as it had been with him—and grew considerably worse whenever her thoughts returned to the night he collapsed.
She spoke hastily to fend off her rising panic. “You must think I am being very foolish.”
“I most certainly do not. You have had a terrible experience. Nobody could begrudge you a few night terrors.”
Elizabeth shook her head emphatically. Terrible things had happened, it was true, yet in other ways, the past week had been the most astonishing, edifying, and intimately pleasurable few days of her life.
The cause of her distress was not the time she had spent marooned with Darcy at the inn; it was coming away from there without him.
“It was not a terrible experience. Notwithstanding poor Mr Perkins, my week was…I have never been so…” She was racked by one sob then determinedly held her breath until she could speak calmly again.
“He never once complained, you know. I cannot imagine the pain he must have been in, but he never mentioned it. He never said he was frightened, never lost his temper. The only thing he ever objected to was when he thought I had not taken enough care of myself.”
She brought her knees up to her chest and hugged them.
“I have never felt so appreciated—and I do not mean because I was helping him. I mean because he valued my opinions and my feelings. He cared what I thought and what I did. He worried about me when I was not with him. I have never felt so important to anyone—not anyone so wholly unconnected to me, anyway.”
She squeezed her knees more tightly, though it did not ease the ache in her breast. She had never missed anyone with such intensity in her life, not even her sister Jane.
It was as though something inside her had been cut out.
The hollowness was unbearable. As was the recollection of how she had repaid Darcy for his solicitude.
“And I have never been so unkind to someone so undeserving of it. If he is ignoring me, it is my fault. I was hateful to him.”
“Come now, I shall have none of that,” Mrs Gardiner replied tersely. “Mr Darcy cannot possibly think ill of you. Whatever you may have said to him in the heat of the moment, you still saved his life.”
Elizabeth could not evade the memory this time.
It slammed into her mind, winding her as she felt again all the anguish of watching Darcy fall.
She had tried to catch him but had not had the strength.
He was such a tall man, and he had toppled straight, like a felled tree, and hit his head so hard on the floor she feared he had cracked his skull.
The wound beneath his bandages had begun bleeding freely again, and he had lain completely motionless, barely breathing at all.
She had thought he was going to die. She had felt like she might too, so intense was the panic that gripped her as she begged him not to.
“I think you ought to go home.”
Her aunt barely whispered it, but it was enough to pull Elizabeth out of her nightmarish remembrances and hurl her into an even greater welter of alarm. “I cannot! Please do not make me!”
“I fear you will not begin to feel better until you are away from here and these awful memories.”
“But I shall hear any news sooner if I remain close.”
“Lizzy, I understand that you weathered a difficult ordeal together, but you are wretched, and getting no better that I can see. Is this Mr Darcy really more important than your peace of mind?”
“He is my peace of mind, Aunt. He is the best man I have ever known.”
Mrs Gardiner said nothing. Her opinion of Darcy was difficult to gauge.
She had lived for some years near his home in Derbyshire and claimed to have heard it said then that he was proud.
She had also heard Wickham’s lies about him when she was at Longbourn at Christmas.
She had since heard Elizabeth’s assurances that they were lies, though she had not been told the whole truth, for that was not Elizabeth’s secret to reveal.
All of that might have been overlooked, however, had not Mr Gardiner been treated so appallingly when he called at Darcy House on Tuesday.
Inconsolable with worry and desperate for news, Elizabeth had begged her uncle to make enquiries.
He had called there and been informed that Darcy was receiving attention from an eminent physician and therefore neither Elizabeth nor any of her relations ought to concern themselves further with his recovery.
Then somebody purporting to be Darcy’s aunt had attempted to give Mr Gardiner a vast sum of money to ensure he and his niece stayed away.
Her uncle had been and was still incensed.
She had not the wit at present to convince him Darcy was not similarly conceited.
She had used to think he was, until he opened his soul to her this week, and she discovered nothing existed therein but goodness.
Now, though Darcy might well wish that she would stay away, she knew without a doubt that he would not condone his aunt’s behaviour.
Understanding that only tormented her more, for if he had not prevented his relations from behaving thus, did that mean he was yet too unwell to know about it—or worse?
“A few more days, I beg you,” she whispered. “I just need to know.”
“Very well,” her aunt conceded unhappily. “Your father will not be happy about the delay, but I shall ask your uncle to think of something to placate him.”
Elizabeth thanked her profusely then settled back onto her pillows and pretended to go back to sleep so her aunt would leave, after which she lay awake for an age.
Her hours of sleep had lost all sense of rhythm while she was nursing Darcy.
Her makeshift bed at the inn had been incommodious and hard, but in any case, she had preferred to sit in a chair and watch him to make sure he did not stop breathing.
She had done so at first simply because it was what anyone would have done—he was another human, and she did not want him to die.
As the days had gone by, she had watched because his countenance had become fascinating to her.
Awake, his eyes were always searching, his smile always reluctant, his brow almost always creased in thought.
In repose, when his features were not racked with pain and he was not staring at her inscrutably, the lines of his face were more open.
He was handsome—discomposingly so—but she saw more than beauty when she watched him; she saw strength.
His was a powerful and dignified presence even when wounded and asleep, and she had not been able to—had not wished to—stop looking.
He had told her, at the height of his delirium, that she had utterly bewitched him.
She had no idea whether that were true, but if she had, then he had certainly returned the favour.