Chapter 7 #2
“Lizzy. You are drenched.”
Darcy glanced over and saw that the front of Miss Elizabeth’s gown was wet through where the flood had found her, the muslin clinging where it had no business to. He quickly looked away. She did not appear to know it yet, or if she did, Henry had mattered more.
“I am, uncle.”
Mr. Gardiner examined the oak pole from where they stood.
“That would have laid him out cold, or worse.” He patted his niece’s sodden shoulder, appeared to count the matter closed, and in one smooth motion had placed his own coat about her shoulders.
“Capital sport this morning, by the by. I shall give you the whole of it when you are dry.”
Darcy fixed his eyes on his shoes, his self-command more fragile than he cared for.
“I shall hold you to that,” said Miss Elizabeth, steady as ever.
“Well,” said Mrs. Gardiner, opening the coat to survey the ruin beneath, “I had wondered what Derbyshire might find for you to do that Hertfordshire never had. I believe we may now agree that we have found it.” She gave the coat lapels a little tug to make sure Miss Elizabeth was entirely covered.
The footman in charge of the pegs was at the fallen canvas, hauling a heavy fold of it clear of the path, his hands raw where the rope had torn through them. Darcy went to him.
“Leave it. It is only canvas.” The man’s gloves were ripped and his palms scored red. “Go up to the house and have those seen to.”
“I was watching the pegs, sir, I swear it. Johnson had just gone to gather some help to take the marquee down as you asked, but the wind—I just couldn’t hold it.”
“No man could have. It is not your fault.” The footman stood a little straighter. “Go on up to the house.”
Across the lawn, Miss Bingley had not moved.
She had stood through the whole of it—the canopy, the pole, the boy, the wreck of Darcy’s coat, Miss Elizabeth soaked through—and had not crossed the grass, or set down her glass, or done one single thing.
He did not think it was cruelty, or even calculation.
All he knew was that she had remained exactly where she was as the disaster unfolded before her.
Miss Elizabeth, on the other hand, had made the rescue possible. She had cried out and dashed to the boy without thinking about the consequence. Had realised she could not extract Henry quickly enough on her own, had pulled him into Darcy’s path instead and tried to back her own way out of danger.
Miss Bingley finally crossed the grass to him. She had not spoken with her friend or inquired after the boy, and this irritated him.
“My dear Mr. Darcy, you are wet through. You will take a chill. You must go up and change directly. Only think if you were to be laid up after such a—” Her hand came halfway to his ruined sleeve before she recalled the state of it and drew it back.
“How dreadful it all was. My heart has not yet left off pounding. One scarcely knew where to look.”
“One might have begun,” said Darcy, “with the child.”
It was not loud or unkind, but it was not warm either, and for once Miss Bingley seemed to understand him. The colour came up under her powder. She turned the remark off with some observation upon the difficulty of keeping good servants, and removed herself to where Mrs. Hurst sat.
It did not make him easy; civility had been doing the work of honesty too long, and that could not continue.
By degrees the party on the lawn sorted itself.
Darcy and Miss Elizabeth were left at the edge of the lawn, both wet through, surveying the wreck of themselves. He was not certain where to put the seriousness of what they had just done between them.
“Your coat is . . .,” said Miss Elizabeth.
“Yes.”
She offered a sympathetic frown. “It was a very good coat.”
His favourite coat, in fact. He had hoped she would admire him in it. “It has been sacrificed to a worthy cause. Your gown, I am sorry to see, has fared no better.”
She glanced down at her sodden skirt and then up at him, holding her uncle’s coat tightly about her. He hoped it had not been ruined. She had appeared rather fetching in it.
A curl had come loose and was stuck against her temple, and Darcy stood there in sodden clothes, the whole case against his composure assembled before him in one windblown, dripping woman.
“Despite the results,” she said, glancing over herself ruefully, “I cannot mind it.”
“No,” he said. “Nor I.”
Neither of them said anything further, and the silence went on longer than was comfortable. Then another footman came to ask whether the apothecary was, after all, to be sent for, and the world started up again around them.
“I must change,” Darcy said, which was true, and not in the least the reason he said it.
“You must,” Miss Elizabeth agreed.
“You should come up to the house as well.”
“I believe my aunt intends to take me back to Lambton.”
The alarm of it went through him sharper than the cold flood had. “But the day is not yet over,” he told her. “You must stay. I am certain there is something for you to wear up at the house, or we can send a servant into Lambton to fetch another gown for you.”
He was faintly appalled. In the space of a single breath he had pressed her to stay, undertaken to clothe her, and proposed to send a servant on a ten-mile journey to keep her here.
Worse still, it had all been delivered as eagerly as a boy released early from his lessons when the entire point of the day had been to show her that he had attended to her reproofs.
Miss Elizabeth assessed him. Whatever she found in his face brought a little colour into her own, and her answer, when it came, was gentler than he deserved.
“I am wet quite through,” she said, “so I will not pretend a fire would be unwelcome. But I will not have a servant sent the whole way to Lambton and back over a gown, Mr. Darcy. Dry me by a fire, and the dress will mend itself.”
“Then it is settled,” said Darcy, with a satisfaction out of all proportion to so small a matter.
Miss Elizabeth spoke with her aunt, who nodded, and they all traipsed back up to the house.
Mrs. Reynolds appeared the very instant they all passed into the house. She bore Miss Elizabeth and her aunt off to a private room, a good fire, and whatever dry things they could furnish.
Darcy was left standing in his ruined clothes. After a moment, he took himself off to the family wing, to find a dry coat and what command of himself he could.