Chapter Fourteen
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
fitzwilliam
“It’s gone,” I said, sorting through my clothing. “I wasn’t paying attention last night when I was getting undressed for bed, which is your fault, of course, because you were rather distracting, but I don’t remember noticing it then, when I was removing my waistcoat.” It was early, which was likely a good thing, I had thought, because we had awakened before the servants of Netherfield could discover two people in one of the bedchambers early Thursday morning when no one had fallen asleep in them Wednesday night.
I thought, with luck, we could get moving quickly, before anyone was the wiser. Her family, of course, wasn’t expecting her, and we could get free and go on whatever adventure she wished.
“Well, when did you see it last?” She was wriggling into her stays. Her hair was long and hanging free and she was the most beautiful woman in the world this way, I thought. No one else got to see her hair down, but I did. It was the sort of intimacy a man should have with a wife, and I had it.
She’s practically my wife, I thought. I could tup her. She wouldn’t even mind. I think she wants me to.
No, but I hadn’t done anything the night before except kiss her, even if some of that kissing had been done horizontally, my body pressed into hers, crushing her under my heft into the mattress below me as she gasped and huffed against me and my whole body felt like it was about to explode .
I rubbed my chin. It was funny, because every Thursday, no matter how long my whiskers had been the night before, I woke to them shorter. They were shorter now. I tried to remember what happened to them if I didn’t sleep at all. “I think I had it with Wickham,” I said. I wondered if I should wake a servant at Netherfield to shave me or if I should do it myself. I wasn’t strictly skilled at shaving myself, but I could manage it when necessary.
“You did?” She looked me over.
I nodded. “Yes, I remember checking the watch when he arrived.”
“And now the watch is gone,” she said. “He saw it, and he must have taken it.”
“Well, it can’t be worth much, so the joke will be on him,” I said. “Anyway, I’m sure it’ll show back up in my pocket soon enough.”
“It should be here now, because the day’s reset,” she said. “Except the pocket watch has a mind of its own, of course, so who knows.”
I grimaced. “Right. The last time the watch disappeared, it went to you, and it made you live Thursday every day. So, we should go and try to get it back from him, because I can’t think of a worse disaster than Wickham being trapped in this with us.”
“We would not bring him along,” she said, aghast. “If he was repeating Thursdays, he could do it on his own.”
“True,” I said. “Hopefully, he is not.”
“Where is he?” she said.
“With the regiment,” I said. “I shall go. It’s no place for a woman. They wouldn’t let you in, anyway.”
She made a face, disliking this, but she acquiesced.
Soon enough, I was traipsing across a dew-covered field towards the encampment where Wickham was staying with the other men. I wasn’t sure which tent belonged to him, so I supposed I’d have to try them all until I found it.
But I was intercepted, instead, by an officer, who inquired if I was seeking someone. When I told him it was Mr. Wickham, he said to follow him, and he escorted me to Wickham’s tent.
Wickham opened the flap when his name was called. He was wiping shaving cream from his face. I had not shaved myself. Damnation. “What are you doing here?” he said to me.
Good. That didn’t sound like someone who remembered seeing me the night before, so I could set aside fears he was going to be repeating Thursdays like Elizabeth and me. I breathed a sigh of relief. “This is going to sound very strange, Mr. Wickham, but I have reason to think that a pocket watch of mine is somehow in your possession.”
“Oh, that’s yours, then?” He ducked back into the tent. He came back out with the watch. “I did not take this, Will. You must believe that.”
“I do,” I said. “It… it’s impossible to explain.” I held out my hand for it.
He gave it to me. “Take it, then, if it’s so important to you.”
“Yes, thank you,” I said.
He shrugged. “You’re welcome.”
“This is all I wanted,” I said, unwilling to engage in any further conversation with him. I would sooner be done with him, in fact. “I shall take my leave.”
“Yes, well, I thought you must have put it on my person last night at Netherfield, and that you were going to accuse me of having stolen it, but I suppose that this is as good a way to begin a Friday as any.”
My heart sank. “Friday, hmm?”
“Yes,” he said.
I had a moment, one of a wild and strange hope, that it was Friday, somehow, after all, that the pocket watch had leapt from us and that we were spared now. So, I called out to one of the other members of the regiment. “Ho there, what’s today?”
“April ninth,” he called back.
“Tenth,” said Wickham quietly.
“Damnation,” I said.
elizabeth
When he came back with Mr. Wickham, I knew the news was bad.
“Now, wait a moment,” said Mr. Wickham as he approached me on the grounds of Netherfield, “I left you here with him last night, rather late, and now you’re still here. I know you agreed to marry him, but the two of you are not married yet. What is going on here?”
“He remembers,” I said. “The watch went to him. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Darcy said. “I have no idea. I think this watch may enjoy doing things that make me suffer.”
I drew back, a bit wounded at that. “I make you suffer, Will?”
“Well, I feel responsible for having done this to you!” he said to me.
“Miss Bennet,” said Mr. Wickham, “you’re calling him Will, are you? How long have you two…” He gestured back and forth between us. “What in the bloody hell is going on?”
“George, really, there is a lady present,” said Mr. Darcy, annoyed. “Watch your language.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I decided. “The watch did this, not us. We have already decided we are going traveling, have we not? It’s all very unfortunate for him, but perhaps it’s for the best.”
“What?” said Mr. Darcy. “For the best?”
“Well, before, you wished to prevent him from doing harm to anyone else,” I said. “Now, he’s trapped in Thursday along with the both of us. So, he can no longer affect the future or anyone in it.”
Mr. Darcy nodded slowly. “True,” he said. “True.”
“What are you two on about?” said Wickham, eyes wide.
“It’s Thursday every day,” said Mr. Darcy. “Not for everyone, just for us. We remember. They don’t. This has been going on for us for an abundantly long time—longer for me than Miss Bennet. I was at it for a month before she joined me in this insanity.”
Mr. Wickham blinked. “What?”
“No point in explaining it, Mr. Wickham,” I said. “It sounds mad, I know. But you’ll see, when you wake up tomorrow. It’s not ideal, but we’re making the best of it.”
“Oh, yes, making the best of it, waking up together, so I see how that’s going,” said Wickham, looking us both over. “It’s a cursed pocket watch, you say?” He rubbed his forehead.
“You believe us?” I said.
“I’ve run afoul of gypsies and the like before,” he said quietly. “I know about curses.”
Mr. Darcy turned on him. “Really? Well, perhaps you could take us—”
“We’ve tried everything, Will,” I said. “I wanted to travel.”
Mr. Darcy looked up at me. “Yes, you did. And I wanted to please you.”
“So, let’s just go,” I said. “We’re very sorry, Mr. Wickham, but we didn’t do it to you ourselves. The watch seems to have a mind of its own.”
Mr. Wickham looked at us, brow furrowed. “Every day is Thursday,” he said quietly. “That’s absolutely, abundantly, and in all other ways, deranged.”
“Aye,” said Mr. Darcy. He turned to look into my eyes. “Where do you wish to go first, Elizabeth?”
I could help but smile.
So, leaving Mr. Wickham behind to puzzle out his fate, we set off together, off into the rest of our lives, into the unending, repetition of Thursdays.
Travel, however, proved difficult.
The first time we set out on a boat, we thought that it would be much like a horse. If we were touching the horse, the horse stayed with us as the day reset, at least, so long as we were sitting on the horse itself, at any rate. Mr. Darcy had some evidence that if one was off the horse when the day reset, the horse reset back where it belonged as well.
Turned out, standing on a boat did not mean that the boat would remain with us.
The first time we set out on a voyage, midnight came and the boat reset to back where it had begun Thursday, which was the port city of Newhaven, where we had set off from.
And we were tossed into the English Channel, which was a wet and frightening experience.
We swam for some time, in the dark, then we grew tired and treaded water and began to discuss the benefits of simply drowning.
“We shall both wake up in Kent,” said Mr. Darcy.
“Well, can we be sure of that?” I said. “You have only died once, is that not correct?”
“Yes, true,” he said, and we redoubled our efforts to swim for shore.
We managed it, but we were in Fecamp, France. Seeing as the boat had gotten us much closer to the French shore, it had only made sense to swim here. Also, we were entirely destroyed, very tired, both of us, and we had lost all our money when we dropped into the ocean there. We found somewhere to rest for that day, but it turned out to be somewhere outdoors, hidden away in some alleyway like street urchins.
Luckily, however, we had perfected our thieving skills.
So, we were able to steal food and money from the market that afternoon, and then we fled from the city by way of the road. When we had left the crush of it behind, we scampered off the road into a field there in the French countryside and we sat together around a fire that we made and considered what we might do to go from here.
“You wished to travel,” said Mr. Darcy. “You wished to have an adventure.”
“So, I did,” I agreed. “I suppose I’ve gotten my wish.”
“I suspect you hoped it would be more comfortable,” he said.
I laughed. “Perhaps, yes.”
But we had made it out of England and onto the continent, and I was keen to explore.
The following day, we traveled along the road until we found an estate. Then, we waited until the cover of darkness to steal the carriage from their stables. We galloped off, sitting together outside the carriage, driving it together as we had done on our way back from Tiewater, and I threw my head back and my arms out (Mr. Darcy had the reins) and laughed into the night air, because we were free and we were traveling and I felt alive in a way I’d never quite felt.
And then we discovered that—when midnight came—carriages functioned much like boats.
There we were, driving along through the darkness, bouncing there on the road.
And then.
We were on the ground, and the carriage was gone, and the horses were gone.
We both tumbled about, rolling over, bumped and bruised, crying out. Then, we helped each other up. He began to examine me all over.
“Are you all right, Lizzy?” he said, concerned.
“This isn’t what happened with Tiewater!” I said, annoyed.
“Well, actually,” he said, “we took that carriage after the reset.”
He was right.
Vehicles, as it turned out, were too large to stick with us through the reset. We could keep small things—teacups and cookfires, blankets and clothing, coin and food. We could keep horses. But there was a limit to what would stay with us through a reset.
Undeterred, however, we simply adjusted our strategies. We would steal carriages after midnight, drive them through the night and morning, and then make camp when it grew dark and sleep through the reset, waking to steal another carriage.
In this way, we went deep into the south of France.
We ate in taverns and visited small village gatherings. We danced to the lively tunes of fiddles and woke in the morning to traipse our way further on. I got better at speaking French, for I had only ever known a bit of French to begin with. Mr. Darcy was happy to oblige me, practicing as we rode together on stolen carriages through our days. Sometimes, we booked passage in paid coaches, and then we would sit together in relative comfort and everyone thought we were married.
There was more kissing.
A great deal more kissing.
Often, we slept outside together, around a fire that we would make up together before we drifted off to sleep. Often, we slept close for body heat, and he would lie with his body wrapped around mine, his front to my back, like we were spoons in a drawer. Often, before we got comfortable for sleeping, there was a good bit of kissing beforehand. Sometimes, we kissed with his body on top of mine and sometimes we kissed while I straddled him and pressed my chest into his.
The kissing was positively scandalous, and I knew it.
Of course, how could a thing really be scandalous, when there was no one to scandalize?
So, perhaps scandalous wasn’t the right word.
I knew the kissing was leading us somewhere, I suppose, and I was grateful that he was the one stopping us from getting there, because getting there was the end in some way.
Now, here, on our travels, on our adventures, flitting here and there, everything was open and possible and nothing was decided. But once we got wherever that kissing was trying to take us, I knew that something would shift between us, and then, that would sort of be the end.
Not the end of us together, I supposed, not that.
The end of the exploration.
The end of the journey.
Sometimes, he would rest his forehead against mine, ripping his lips away from mine. We always seemed to be out of breath in those moments, our chests heaving as we clung to each other. He would shut his eyes and say things like, “Have mercy on me, Lizzy,” and I wouldn’t know what he meant, exactly.
Sometimes, he would take my wrists and pin them above my head so that I could not touch him and wheeze, “No more, not now, please .”
And then, we would catch our breaths and rearrange ourselves and we would go to sleep, and my body would feel wound up like a thread wound tightly around a spool, wound too tightly, so tightly that it almost hurt. I would lie in the darkness, my heart still pounding, and think I wished to be unraveled.
I had a notion, in those moments, especially when he was holding me down, keeping my hands away from touching his skin, that I could have it if I wished, that he would not take much in the way of convincing in those moments, that if I begged him to do it, to unravel me, that he would.
He knew what it was.
I didn’t even really understand.
But I didn’t ask that, either.
Something held me back.
We traveled through France, from one shore to the other. When we made it to the southern sea, we stood and gazed out into the distance, the waves going all the way to the horizon, and it seemed as if we’d accomplished something.
But later, sitting in a seaside tavern, eating a bisque made with fish and mussels, I realized we’d accomplished nothing.
“Where to next? What is Lizzy’s pleasure?” He smiled at me, indulgent, easy, ready and willing to do my bidding.
I filled my mouth with soup so as not to have to answer.
“We could travel into Spain,” he said. “Or we could go to Italy or Germany. How far do you wish to travel? We may be limited by doing it by land, but we could likely get quite far, if we wish. Not to the Americas, I suppose, but it might be possible to get into Africa, if you’d like to see giraffes.”
I let out a little laugh, thinking of that, of animals from books, all sorts of things to be explored and seen.
And yet…
“I wish us to get a room this evening,” I announced instead.
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Yes,” I said. “I wish us to have a good night’s sleep in a bed somewhere. I don’t know how we do it. If we are worried that a room in an inn may be occupied on Thursday morning during the reset, perhaps we ask an innkeeper for a room that has been vacant the night before.”
He held my gaze, his dark eyes steady.
“For, after all,” I said, “if we offer to pay extra, we can simply pass it off as some sort of quirk, some indulgence that they must see to because we shall make it worth their while.”
“This is a bit of a subject change, Lizzy,” he said. “You are avoiding saying where you wish to go next?”
I ran my spoon through my soup. “It is only that arriving here, seeing the ocean, it’s… rather less gratifying that I thought it would be.”
He dipped some bread in his own soup and then tucked it into his mouth. “I’m confused,” he said, after he’d swallowed.
“I wonder if whatever I’m frightened happens to us once we give in to that… I’m wondering if it’s not nearly as frightening as I’m making it out.”
He set his spoon down. “Give in to what?”
“Oh, you wish us to be married before we do that, do you not?”
He flushed, reaching up to rub the side of his neck. “Lord, Elizabeth, really? Here? Now?”
I reached across the table and took his hand. “What if I promise to be yours, forever, even if we somehow find some way to see Friday? Would that be enough, or would you like a piece of paper, signed with witnesses, a rector, all of that?”
He interlaced our fingers. He didn’t look at me. Instead, he looked at our hands, looked at the way our fingers were entwined. When he spoke, his voice was very deep. “In fact, I have been thinking that there is very little chance of my holding back for much longer.”