Chapter Six
I was on my belly, lying face down on the floor, my feet aimed at the edge where the steps had come off. I had determined this was the best way to get down.
This way, I could grip the ledge and lower myself down and dangle here, holding onto the ledge. It would mean that it was the shortest drop possible. It was the way.
Elizabeth had argued with me that it was too dangerous, but I had told her that I must try it, and she had eventually quieted. Now, she was perched in the doorway, biting down on her bottom lip, very nervous. “But if you break your leg, sir, what are we going to do?”
“I am not going to break my leg,” I said. “If I’m dangling, the drop is not too far.”
She chewed on her bottom lip.
I began to scoot myself backward, my feet going out over the edge.
“Be careful, Mr. Darcy,” said Elizabeth. “Do be careful, please.”
“Obviously, I’m going to be careful,” I said, as I eased myself even further over the edge. “I shall be entirely careful. Do not worry.”
“Obviously, I am worried!” she cried.
I sighed and decided there was no need to talk. I eased myself further backward. Now, I could bend my legs so that they aimed downward at the floor. I pushed further back, careful, and then stopped.
I was going to need something to hold onto.
The railing that went across here, the railing I had attempted to straddle. That would do nicely. I would hold onto the part that was secure here, and I would dangle, holding tight to it, and then drop right down.
I scooted over to grasp it, and then, holding tightly, I pushed myself backward.
Elizabeth let out a cry when I was dangling there, which I actually didn’t mind. I wanted to cry out, too, but her cry saved me the trouble of doing it.
I was hanging here, holding onto the bottom of the railing, where it was secured into the floor above, with two hands, and I was now looking down at the drop, and I was realizing it was too far.
There were the shards of the steps, sticking straight up, but I could avoid them, except, if I did so, I would have to land there, and it was too far. Even dropping like this, I could sense that I would do myself injury.
I was going to have to pull myself up.
My arms already hurt from the strain of holding myself now. I was a fairly active man. I rode horseback and slept outside and went hunting and all of those sorts of things, but I had to admit that it was very rarely in my life that I had to pull my full weight up without any help from my legs.
“Mr. Darcy?” called Elizabeth.
I could not answer her. I had to concentrate on this. I pictured myself doing it, yanking myself right back up there.
I looked down at the drop again, and I could not drop down. It was too far.
And then, my muscles screaming at me—not just the muscles in my arms and shoulders, but the ones in my back and the ones in my core—I did it. I pulled myself right back up and scrambled back onto the landing there.
I lay on the floor, panting.
“You didn’t drop,” came her voice.
“It was too far,” I said.
“I told you it was,” she said.
I shut my eyes. Yes, yes, women were always cautious about these sorts of things, but if we left it up to women, we’d never get out of any situation at all.
However, in this instance she was right.
We were trapped up here.
We were not getting down.
“They’ll come looking for us.” Elizabeth was looking out of the window in the bedchamber with the bed in it. It was starting to get dark outside. “It must be dinner by now. They would know we are not there.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I warrant no one has noticed we are gone until now.” I was seated in the doorway of the room, not quite inside it, but not outside of it either. I had not entered the bedchamber with her yet. Something about that conversation about violation kept me from it.
She turned around from the window. “But the Bingley sisters saw us—”
“Yes, and Caroline would have turned back round in a snit and gone to hide somewhere and Louisa would have stayed outside her door, calling to her, begging to be let in, and it could have gone on hours. I have seen it before.”
She sighed, going back to the window. “Yes, all right. I do have sisters.” She sighed. “You said I was beautiful to her to hurt her feelings. You were pointedly saying you didn’t think she was pretty.”
“It was perhaps not my finest hour,” I said with a sigh.
“So, she was very hurt,” said Elizabeth quietly. “All right, but now, they will question her, and she will remember that we were walking together on the path, and they will come out here looking for us.”
“Yes,” I said. “They must.”
“And if they do not find us quickly, they will send word to my parents, and my father will bring every able-bodied man on the grounds of Longbourn, and they will comb the woods with lanterns and dogs, and we shall hear them and we shall call to them from the windows, and they will come in and go and fetch a ladder, and then… then it is all over.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, we must hang on but a few more hours at the most, I should think.”
She looked out the window again. “All right.” She put her fingertips to one of the panes of glass and then she turned away from it. “What do you think this house was? Perhaps a housekeeper’s cottage or something of that nature?”
“Could be,” I said. “Yes, for a servant who lived on the grounds. How long has Netherfield been unoccupied?”
“Quite some time,” said Elizabeth. “When the owner was here, he was solitary. Never came to town, never hosted dinners, never attended anyone else’s dinners.”
“But this hasn’t been used in quite some time,” I said, looking around at the house. “It’s quite in disrepair.”
“Yes,” she said. She left the window and came over to sit down next to me, arranging her skirts around her knees.
I stayed where I was, waiting to see what she might say or do.
“I have to say, sir, what you said to me today, it has unsettled me a bit, but in a good way, I think. I hope. I wish to question you a bit further on it, if I may.”
“What did I say and what do you wish to question me about?” I said.
“Well, it’s heartening, being found, er, breathtaking.” She blushed again.
“Yes, well, when I said that, I perhaps shouldn’t have,” I said. “I do not want you to get an impression that I—”
“No, you are betrothed, as you have said,” she said, smiling at me.
“Indeed,” I said, giving her a relieved smile.
“But it makes me think that it would not be out of the realm of possibility that some man who was not betrothed might also find me pleasing.”
“Oh, indeed,” I said, though I found myself thinking about the idea of Elizabeth catching the eye of some other man and not really liking it very much.
That is not fair, Fitzwilliam. You cannot have her. You cannot seek to bar anyone else from having her.
“Yes, but you also said I was not behaving the way a woman would behave if she were seeking a husband, and what did you mean by that?”
My lips parted. “Well, just the walking, I suppose.”
“Walking?” she said.
“Alone, all alone, for however many miles,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, nodding. “But there was no one else there.”
“Well, so you say,” I said. “You can see, however, if a man was going to marry you, it might give him pause.”
“Why?” she said.
“Because that’s not proper,” I said.
She nodded slowly.
“But honestly, I think it’s rather nonsense,” I said. “Clearly, you were simply walking, alone, and you weren’t doing anything else and no one was with you.”
“What could I have been doing?” she said.
I shook my head at her. “No, we needn’t discuss that.”
“I think I should like to discuss it, because I suppose I need to understand what it is, exactly, that is putting men off me.”
“I don’t think you’re doing anything that is putting men off you,” I countered.
“You said that I was.”
“No, I said—” I lifted a hand. “I take it all back. Your behavior is not the problem, truly. You’ve done nothing untoward. It’s really your family. Your mother, your sisters.”
She furrowed her brow.
“Not Miss Jane,” I said. “She is a pleasure.”
“Yes, and the only pretty girl in the room,” said Elizabeth softly.
“All right, but when I said that, as I say, I had not gotten a good look at you, and you are definitely prettier than she is.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “I most certainly am not.”
“Well, perhaps others would not agree with me,” I said, unsure of why I was even telling her this, “but there is something about your beauty that is arresting, that sort of stops me, halts something in my chest.”
She swallowed visibly, simply gazing at me.
I cleared my throat. “I think we should cease talking of this.”
“Yes, you should leave off the compliments, I suppose,” she said. “For both our sakes.”
“Just so,” I said, nodding.
“But you could explain to me more about my family, I suppose, though I must say that I rather know what you mean. My mother, she can be…” She sighed.
“As for my sisters, they are simply young, I think, though Lydia is the baby as she has been coddled and is quite used to getting her way in anything and everything. I know she was dreadful, demanding that Mr. Bingley give a ball, but she has rarely been told, ‘no,’ I am afraid, and she has also learned that if she is refused, that pestering often leads to a reversal of the selfsame refusal. So, she has learned to be a bit annoying.”
I smiled. “Well, I can’t say that’s not unlike my own sister.
When my parents both died, rather suddenly, she was quite young.
I was young, too, but my sister is more than ten years my junior, and she was extremely young.
So, everyone coddled her in the wake of it, everyone.
We all simply gave her everything she wanted.
I worry it has… affected her, perhaps badly, but I think, if it happened again, I’d do the same.
There was something about gratifying her, about making her smile, that made it easier for me to smile. ”