Chapter Twenty-Four
“You will not be frozen,” Elizabeth told herself. “You will walk briskly, you will keep to the trees, and you will find a place to hide.”
It was an excellent speech. It would have been improved by a fire, a chair, and a hot cup of tea.
Elizabeth put one foot before the other.
The woods did not respond by becoming less sinister.
The trees were bare, their branches clawed up at the now-dark sky like black hands, and the lightly drifting snow had stopped, leaving her concerned about leaving a trail that Sir Reginald and his friend could follow.
“Keep moving,” she reminded herself. “And above all, do not sit down.”
Unfortunately, sitting down grew more attractive the longer one walked in the cold. Sitting down promised relief. Sitting down also promised, with alarming plausibility, never standing again.
A sound rose suddenly from deeper in the wood. Elizabeth stopped so abruptly that her knee protested. She listened.
There it was again. A short, eerie note, then silence.
She moved forward, too quickly, and her foot slid on a patch of ice hidden beneath a dusting of snow. She went down on one knee with a stifled gasp, hands flinging out to catch herself. For a moment she remained there, absurdly kneeling, as if she had come to the woods to pray.
Perhaps, she thought bleakly, she ought to have waited.
There it was—good sense, arriving late. If she had remained in the room, if she had sat still and done what sensible young ladies were expected to do when waylaid by villains, then she might have been found by someone who was looking for her.
But no one was looking for her. That was the problem, was it not?
And it was her fault. She had refused to believe Mr. Darcy.
Not because she believed the world harmless, but because she believed herself too clever to be caught by anything so obvious.
And to be fair, because he so stubbornly clung to the belief that she was a liar.
It was a mortifying realisation.
She forced herself upright. Her knee ached. Her skirt was damp through. The cold was no longer an inconvenience; it had become a presence; patient, industrious, working steadily inward.
She began again, slower now, choosing her steps while trying not to let her imagination fill the woods with men tracking her.
The clouds thinned at one edge, enough to allow a pale beam of moonlight to slip through. Suddenly the woods had shape again: trunks, branches, the line of the ground. Beyond the last ranks of trees, a straighter darkness appeared—clearer, more deliberate.
The road.
Elizabeth’s heart lifted. She moved toward it, careful now. Light did not mean safety; it meant visibility. But it also meant she could see where she was going, which was an improvement upon stumbling into whatever awaited her.
At the edge of the trees, she stopped and peered out.
The road lay empty.
For a moment she allowed herself to hope that empty meant freedom, that Sir Reginald and Mrs. Hobart still were unaware of her escape and she could simply walk until she found a place to stop and warm herself.
She glanced back in the direction of the house, and there, somewhere behind her, she could make out a shape. She began to walk in its direction.
In the moonlight it was only a dark mass at first, but then her eyes caught the curve of the wheel, the clean line of the panel, and then the crest upon the side, bright where the moonlight illuminated it.
Mr. Darcy’s carriage.
Elizabeth went still. If his carriage was here, then he was near. If he was near, then she was not alone.
And if he had brought his carriage and his men onto this lonely road, then Mr. Darcy had not travelled ahead and left her to the mercy of her own poor choices.
But the road remained silent. No call came from the trees, no lantern-glow shifted between the trunks—there was no sound at all but the thin stirring of wind. Elizabeth stood with her hand on the carriage panel, listening.
Cold crept in again the moment she stopped moving.
It slid beneath her collar and into her sleeves, turning her fingers clumsy, her thoughts slow.
If she grew much colder, she would have no choice but to crawl back to the Gregory house—and this time Sir Reginald would not leave a window unbarred or a door unbolted.
He would lock her up tight, and she would never have another chance to seek her freedom.
The carriage, at least, offered shelter from the wind. And if Mr. Darcy had gone to the house to confront them, he must return to it.
She eased the door open and climbed inside, careful to leave it slightly ajar.
If footsteps approached and they were not his, she would still have a chance to run.
She drew her skirts close and sat rigidly upright, willing her teeth not to chatter, willing Mr. Darcy to find her.
She searched for a rug and pulled two out, draping one over her legs and pulling another over her shoulders.
Minutes passed—she could not have said how many.
The cold made each breath a small labour.
Now and again she leaned toward the open door to listen, straining to hear the crunch of boots on the snow or to see the swing of a lantern through the trees, but there was only silence.
Silence and cold that numbed her hands and feet, cold that froze her ears and nose and made her head ache.
Just as she was beginning to wonder whether she had been foolish to shelter here, whether she must either move again or risk freezing solid where she sat, a voice cut through the dark.
“Miss Bennet!” A pause, and then, “Elizabeth!”
Elizabeth’s thoughts scattered like startled birds. She leaned forward, gathered air into her lungs, and called, “Here!”
The word came out as a pathetic scrap of sound—no more than a breath. It vanished into the trees as if the night had simply swallowed it.
She tried again, louder, forcing the shape of the syllable past lips that felt numb and stiff. “Here! Here!”
It was, if anything, worse. Her throat produced a thin rasp that might have been a leaf skittering along a branch. She might have been addressing a squirrel for all the effect it had.
Outside, the voices continued, maddeningly unchanged.
“Miss Bennet!”
“Answer, if you can!”
I am answering, she wanted to scream.
She dragged in another breath and tried once more, putting all her will into it, as if that alone could warm her throat and make it obey.
“Mr. Darcy!” she attempted.
What emerged was a hoarse whisper that felt like tearing paper.
She stood there, shaking with cold. Papa often teased her about talking too much. Tonight, when speech was required, her voice had turned traitor.
The calling moved away again.
She tried to stomp her feet, to clap her hands, but nothing produced a noise loud enough to make a difference.
Finally, she tugged at the gloves on her hands, pulling them off, putting two fingers in her mouth in an entirely uncivilized manner, and whistled as she had when she was twelve and needed to startle her younger sisters into listening.
Nothing.
Elizabeth blew on her bare fingers. Just as she was tugging the second glove back on, a lantern flared outside the window, bright and warm. The carriage door was pulled open with brisk decisiveness.
Mr. Darcy stood there, framed by the lantern’s glow.
For a heartbeat he only stared at her. Relief flashed across his face so quickly she almost missed it, chased at once by incredulity, and then by something else, deeper, held fiercely in check.
“You are here,” he said, as if accusing her of existing.
Elizabeth attempted dignity and produced a faint, chattering, “I have been t-t-trying to t-tell you.”
His gaze dropped to her hands, to the rugs, to the damp hem of her skirt. His expression altered immediately.
“You are freezing.”
“I had n-noticed,” Elizabeth replied, shaking harder still.
He stepped in at once, without asking or hesitating, to seize the rugs and wrap them around her properly, with an irritation that seemed aimed not at her but the cold.
“Why did you flee?”
Was he really asking her that? “I d-did not know anyone was looking for me. And I h-heard . . . Sir Reginald and Mrs. H-Hobart are brother and sister. And they . . . meant to ransom me.” The shuddering increased.
Mr. Darcy scowled, pulling off his coat and flinging it around her shoulders.
Elizabeth made a small sound, half protest, half gratitude. “You cannot—”
“No,” he said sharply. “For once, I beg you to simply accept my help.”
His coat was marvellously warm. “For once,” Elizabeth managed to say, “I shall.”
Mr Darcy’s hands stilled for the briefest moment, and she saw then that he had been afraid. He wore control as other men wore their hats; the control was still there, but tonight it was . . . fragile.
Before she could produce anything clever to say, he had lifted her, bundled in rugs and his coat, and carried her out into the night.
His coachman Anders stood near, and the other, Johnson, remained by the horses. She noticed vaguely that they too seemed relieved. And also that they seemed to have a great many horses with them. She closed her eyes and told herself it did not matter.
Mr. Darcy put her on her feet, swung up onto his horse with practiced ease, then Anders and Johnson lifted her up and he settled her before him with one arm. She thought of his wound but thought Mr. Darcy would only become gruffer if she mentioned it.
She was positioned in front of him on his horse, caught securely between his arms, her back against his chest, the warmth of him immediate even through the layers she wore.
“This is h-highly improper, sir,” she protested in a whisper.
“Yes,” Mr. Darcy said, and the word was perfectly calm. He made certain she was secure, and they began to move away.