Chapter Seven
I made no less than four attempts to apologize and get her to open the door, all of which were rebuffed. Between each one, I left more and more time, hoping that if she had more time to calm down, she would be more amenable to speak to me.
I wished to get back in her good graces. I did not relish what she was going to say about me when we got out of this predicament. If she repeated the things I had said to her, I should sound like some kind of villain, truly, and I wished to find some way to explain myself.
But she stayed firm, and the hours ticked away, and it was full dark, and the wind began to kick up outside, whistling into the old house. The door was entirely gone, the wind rushed right inside, chilling me where I huddled on the landing in the darkness.
I began to shiver.
I bore it as long as I could, but eventually, I opened the door into the bedroom.
“Mr. Darcy!” came her voice in the darkness, near to the door, though I could not see her.
“I’m very sorry, Miss Bennet,” I said, shutting the door, “but it is ever so cold out there and I cannot bear it much longer. I shall sit right here, far from you, but allow me to stay in this room, where the wind cannot get in, where everything is shut up tight. Please.”
“All right,” she said.
I huddled in against the wall. I was still shivering, but it was a great deal warmer in here, and I thought I should soon warm up.
“Your teeth are chattering, sir.”
“I think that will stop quite soon,” I said, sucking in noisy breaths and hugging myself.
“Why haven’t they come looking for us?”
“I do not know,” I said. It was troubling.
They should have sought us out here by now.
I had a pocket watch, and I knew that it was past eight o’clock, far later than dinner would be served on a night like tonight.
Not late enough for anyone to be abed, but soon enough, perhaps, it might be considered time to retire. They must be seeking us somewhere.
Perhaps they were simply looking in the wrong places.
I mused over that for a time.
“Your teeth are still chattering.”
“Yes, well, I’m sorry about that,” I muttered, a bit cross.
She was moving. A warm weight of something landed on me. It did not smell good, it smelled of must and dry leaves, but it was a blanket. She settled down next to me, with the blanket. “There. Better?”
“Much,” I said, my chest tight with the goodness of it. I had been so cold. “Thank you for sharing, Miss Bennet.”
“Yes, just… don’t touch me,” she said. “There will be no huddling close for body warmth or anything of that nature.”
“Yes, noted,” I said. “I am sorry for whatever I said, you know. I swear it.”
She sighed. “You frightened me. You sounded horrible.”
“Yes, I suppose I did. I would never trap a woman in… I would never lie about a woman and ruin her reputation. I know what that would mean for her, for her whole family. Believe me, I know.”
A long silence, and then, “It’s your sister, is it not? The woman whose reputation was threatened?”
Drat, how easily she’d guessed. I said nothing.
“Well, you may be assured I shall say nothing of it to anyone, not even Jane, and I tell her everything. I can see why it would send you out of sorts.”
“Can you?” I was stupidly grateful for her saying that. “You don’t think I’m acting like a madman?”
She laughed. “No, you are acting like a madman, Mr. Darcy, but I suppose it makes sense.”
“I thought to just marry her to Bingley.”
“The man with whom she—”
“Never,” I said curtly.
“I see,” she said. “Good for you, then. There are men out there who would saddle a sister or daughter with a man who is horrid just because he has taken advantage.”
“That man does not get my sister. I don’t care what he does to her,” I said darkly.
“This makes me like you more, I must say.”
“Oh, good,” I said. “I wish you to like me.”
“You don’t entirely behave like a man who wishes to be liked.”
I groaned. “No, I know.”
“So, this is why you’re here, to convince Bingley to marry your ruined sister.”
I groaned again.
“Does he know she’s ruined?”
“Look, she’s not… nothing happened.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth in a knowing voice.
“Well, I don’t know what happened,” I said in a low voice.
“He says the worst. She says absolutely nothing happened, and the woman I hired as a companion, she agrees with my sister, but she would say that she had protected my sister’s virtue, because I had charged her to do so.
She has a vested interest in lying, as does my sister. ”
“But that man has a vested interest in lying, too, I suppose,” said Elizabeth. “He is hunting her fortune. I suppose she has quite a dowry.”
“Indeed,” I said. “Such a commonplace sort of situation in the end, is it not?” I groaned once more.
“And Bingley doesn’t know any of it?”
“I don’t think I wish him to marry my sister,” I said.
“I perhaps thought I did. I thought that it would be best for her, because he would be grateful for her, because of her pedigree, not simply because of her money, so that if he ever found out, he… but I don’t like him for her, not a jot.
” And this, I realized was the real reason I had been so hard on him, had joined with Caroline against him so often, had said the things that I had said to him, only the day before, about his not being a particularly dependable person.
It was because I knew that I could not marry Georgiana to this man.
“Oh,” said Elizabeth.
“But if I’m not going to do that, what am I doing?
Why have I spent all of the summer and all of the autumn in his company, as if we are the fastest of friends?
Why have I abandoned all my expectations in order to travel with him?
How shall I make an accounting of it?” I sighed.
“On the other hand, no one was going to understand when I let him marry my sister anyway—”
“Not unless he seemed to be your fast friend, I suppose?”
“How you see through me, madam,” I said soberly.
“No, only because I know all. You are correct, it would have protected her reputation, and I can see why you schemed it all out. It’s a great deal of effort to go through for one’s sister, especially when she has behaved badly.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” I said. “It was that man. It was him.”
“I see,” she said. “All right, then, Mr. Darcy, I do like you. I think you are actually quite a good man, willing to sacrifice for those you care about. I see you better now.”
I felt warmed by this, physically warmed even. I noticed that I had ceased to shiver now that I was under this blanket.
“And,” she said, “it’s much easier for me if you aren’t set upon Mr. Bingley marrying your sister, of course, since I have sworn myself to secrecy about all of this, and since Jane may have some attachment to him.”
“Oh,” I said, as if this hadn’t quite occurred to me, though of course Bingley’s favor towards Miss Jane Bennet had been quite obvious. “You would wish that for your sister, I suppose. Your entire family would wish it.”
“I only wish Jane to be happy,” said Elizabeth.
“I do not think this any kind of courtship, her sick and abed, him forced to be her host. It creates an illusion of intimacy, but no true intimacy has been chosen. If a connection continues between them after this, then I should support it, but only if it is what Jane wants.”
“I see,” I said softly. I had to admit I recoiled a bit at the idea of Bingley married off and into the Bennet family of all families.
But was this because I wished him to be available, in case I changed my mind and wanted him for Georgiana, or because I bore disdain for the Bennet family, and if so, how much disdain could it really be when I had been contemplating marrying Elizabeth Bennet myself?
Well, no, I had not truly been contemplating it. It had been a fever dream borne of the frustration of being stuck in this house, that was all.
I was not the sort of man who would buck against what was expected of him. I would wait to be rescued from this house, and then I would make my excuses, quit the country, and go back to town. Someday, I would marry my cousin Anne de Bourgh.
The thoughts seemed to soothe and settle me, as if I now knew that everything would be all right, back to normal, and I burrowed into the blanket, careful not to touch Elizabeth in any way, and I feel asleep.
Morning came.
We were hungry.
There was no sign of anyone in the woods looking for us.
We exchanged several anxious conversations about this over the ensuing hours. I went and inspected the drop from the stairs again, pronounced it impossible, and resolved to look at it no further.
By late morning, however, we were both beginning to feel real worry.
It was beginning to seem a rather desperate situation.
We had no access to water, for instance, and we were beginning to feel quite thirsty.
I did not know how long a person could go without water, but I suspected that it wasn’t very long.
It seemed so ridiculous, dying of thirst in a house not a half mile from the house where we were meant to be staying. Such a thing could not be possible, could it?
I went to look at the drop again.
Elizabeth said I would be no good to anyone with broken legs.
I said maybe we could somehow fashion the blanket into a ladder.
She said that we should have nothing to cover us if we had to spend another night there.
I said we could not spend another night there.
I went into the other bedchamber, the one with the broken bedframe. I opened the windows there, and that was where I found the trellis. It was the kind that is crossed in squares, that looks like a ladder. It had been here all along.
Swearing softly under my breath, I swung a leg out of the window.
“But what if they are rotted through?” said Elizabeth softly.
“One may be, but I shall catch myself on the next one,” I said, beginning to climb down. “They actually feel quite steady. You might be able to manage it behind me if you like.”
She peered down after me as I descended, biting her lip. “Truly? You think it will not break?”
“Perhaps one of us at a time, I suppose,” I said, continuing to climb down the trellis.
In moments, I was on the ground. I swore again, perhaps not quite under my breath.
She heard me. She let out a little laugh.
“Apologies, madam,” I said. “It is only that this was here all along and we did not know of it, and did not even explore this room, and I feel quite stupid.”
“Yes, so do I,” she said. “I was too intent on keeping you from jumping that I did not think to look for other solutions.” She disappeared from the window, and then her foot appeared.
“Ah, good!” I said. “Come on down, then, Miss Bennet.”
She eased her way out of the window and then let out a cry.
“Are you all right?”
“I’ve never climbed something straight up and down like this. Ladders are usually propped at an angle,” she said tightly. “My skirts seem in the way.”
It had been easy for me, but I didn’t have any skirts.
Still, I knew the way of it in situations like this, when someone was panicking, was to be the calm voice of reason and authority.
This would give her strength. So, I said, “It’s all right, you’re doing just fine. One foot after another, that’s all.”
She looked up at the window. “I wonder if I should climb back up.”
“No, no, you can quite do this. Another step down.”
She put her foot down on the next rung.
Crack.
She shrieked, her foot frantically moving about for purchase.
Another crack.
And she was tumbling down off the side of the house, screaming all along.
I darted forward to catch her, but I was too late.
She landed badly on her foot, and there was another crack, this one far worse, a sickening sound.
I cried out, a low and guttural noise, and I knelt next to her.
She was shaking, white-faced, too stunned to cry.
“Don’t move, Miss Bennet,” I whispered. “I’m frightfully sorry. I should not have encouraged you.”
“Is my leg broken?” Even as she said it, we were both looking at it. It looked badly twisted to me.
“You must stay right here, and I shall run up to Netherfield fast as I can, and I shall fetch some servants to come and bear you back there, and send others to go for a surgeon, all right? You must stay right here and not move.”
“It’s odd because it doesn’t hurt,” she said, though her voice was trembling. “I think it is going to hurt, but right now—”
“I think it hurts, Miss Bennet. You are likely in shock. Do not move.” I leapt to my feet, and I tore off through the woods.
I had to fight my way through the brambles and branches to get back on the path, but then it was nothing at all to dash the rest of the way back to Netherfield.
I put my head into the stables first and I bellowed for two of the men I knew in there to get a cart ready to meet me here in ten minutes time.
Then I went into the house and I was seeking a servant first, to send after a doctor, when Bingley came into my path.
“You’re back,” he said. “That was rather quick.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Haven’t you been looking for us?”
“Well, at first, but then everyone realized—” He broke off, looking me over. “You look rather worse for wear.”
“Oh, none of this matters. Miss Elizabeth has broken her foot—ankle—leg, I don’t know. I left her there, and we must make haste back to her, and we need to send for a surgeon to see to her.”
“How did you break her leg, Darcy?” said Bingley. “What were you doing to her?”
“I didn’t do it.” I glared at him. “Well, maybe I shouldn’t have let her climb down the trellis in skirts, or maybe the wood wasn’t sturdy, and I weakened it with my weight or—we do not have time for this!”
“Yes,” said Bingley. “A surgeon, you say?”
“At once,” I said.