Chapter 44 #2
Darcy did as she bade him, though it was not the coat that produced the powerful feeling of warmth in his breast, but her beloved compassion.
That warmth was instantly usurped by the same lurching feeling that had plagued him all night, and since he could not seize her to him to eradicate it, as he wished to, his only other recourse was to keep running away.
“I must return to the search. Two men are still unaccounted for.”
Another hour passed before anyone remarked on the futility of the exercise.
Even if they were fortunate enough not to have already suffocated, the sheer amount of rubble was more than this many men could shift in a fortnight, and as the night wore on, more and more mutterings to that effect reached Darcy’s ears.
With a mounting sense of repugnance, he comprehended that the instruction to cease the search could only come from him.
“They will not stop until I tell them to,” he confided to Elizabeth on one of her many forays out of doors to help distribute refreshments.
“Then pray tell them. They are exhausted. You are exhausted.”
“And condemn two men to death? I cannot do it.”
She squeezed his hand. “Yes, you can, because you must.”
He closed his eyes for a second, taking strength from the feel of her grip and bracing himself for the grim task, when a shout went up from the other side of the toppled wall.
Darcy heard Elizabeth suck in her breath, and he held his with her while they waited to hear what had been found.
It was not a body. It was not a person at all.
“There is a bloody great hole down here!” someone shouted.
“We know that you clodpole! Where do you think the rest of the library disappeared to? Up the Devil’s arse?” shouted Howes.
Elizabeth tried unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh and hastily marshalled the girls back indoors.
“No, sir,” the man called back. “I don’t mean downwards. I mean alongways. Looks like a tunnel.”
“How far underground is it?” came another voice—Jacobs’s.
“Hard to tell in the dark.”
In short order, a lantern had been lowered into the newly exposed cavity, and the architect had peered down after it.
“It is impossible to say with any certainty until I can look in the daylight,” he reported to Darcy. “But from what I can see, it bears a very striking resemblance to a drift mine.”
“That is not possible,” Darcy replied flatly. None of his forebears were fool enough to dig a mine under their own house.
Jacobs shrugged. “As I say, sir, I shall have to investigate more in the daylight. But it would explain an awful lot.”
It explained nothing to Darcy. He felt as though he were back in the dream state of earlier, where nothing made sense, and he had no power over any of it.
So preoccupied was he with attempting to recall whether his father had ever mentioned mines on this part of the estate that it was a moment before the rising tide of shouts around him broke into his consciousness.
“Is it true?” Howes bellowed furiously from nearby.
Following his gaze, Darcy saw someone jogging towards them from the house. The shape materialised into Matthis.
“They have been found, sir!” he puffed as he arrived in front of Darcy.
“According to his wife, Mr Ferguson has complained about these two lads before, for being work-shy. We sent a few footmen to look for them in case they were never here. And it turns out they were not. One was in his bed, the other was in the alehouse.”
A chorus of extremely vulgar oaths passed around the men, along with the clatter of two dozen tools being thrown down.
Darcy did not object in the slightest. He would have shared their outrage had not he felt a bone-deep relief that he would not be required to give the command to cease searching for them.
The men quieted themselves when Elizabeth and her trusty legion of maids returned, this time with steaming hot toddies for everyone.
As Darcy watched her move among the men, handing them drinks and thanking them all with her indefatigable vivacity, the strange feeling he thought had finally gone returned with a vengeance.
It did not help that the ruin of the east wing loomed over her in the darkness like some monstrous beast with a mouthful of broken teeth—a hellish memorandum of what almost was.
It disposed him to keep his departing speech brief, though he doubted any of the men would object, given the hour.
He expressed his and Elizabeth’s sincere gratitude, commended their endeavours, and sent them home with very little ceremony.
He returned inside to discover that the saloon had been returned to perfect order.
As he perched on one of the sofas, holding the plate of food Matthis had given him, he fancied he could be forgiven for thinking he had dreamt the whole disaster.
If his wife were not moving about the room covered from head to foot in mud and dust, he would almost have believed it.
He set the plate aside, his appetite long fled.
“I have had a room made up for you, Mr Jacobs,” Elizabeth said. “Matthis will show you.”
Jacobs thanked her and, also declining any supper, excused himself directly to bed, leaving the family alone. The room was so silent, Darcy’s ears began to ring, but then Georgiana said, quietly, “I never thought it would actually fall down.”
“None of us did,” Elizabeth replied.
“How sudden it was in the end! Was there any warning?”
Another flash of pink, vanishing in a sea of dust, filled Darcy’s vision. “Yes, there was a twenty-foot crack in the wall, Georgiana, but I think I can be forgiven for assuming the several tonnes of shoring would hold it up.”
“Of course! I only meant, was there any warning today, before it fell. A noise or a—”
“ No, there was no warning !” Darcy rubbed a hand over his face in frustration, regretting his incivility. He had not meant to shout, but he wished Georgiana would cease forcing his mind back to that damned moment!
“Your brother is very tired,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps it would be best if we all went to bed now.”
“A very sensible suggestion, Mrs Darcy. I shall go up as well.”
Darcy had not even noticed his aunt was still there. She inclined her head solemnly and left without another word. Georgiana hastened after her.
Elizabeth came to stand in front of Darcy and held out her hand for him to take. “Come. Vaughan and Garrett will never get to bed if we do not go up soon.”
Upon arriving, alone, in his bedroom, the surreal quality settled even more oppressively over Darcy’s world.
He tried not to picture it again, but when Elizabeth walked through the door, he could do nothing to ward off either the memory of crashing stone or the appalling feeling that accompanied it.
He did not think he made any sound, but he must have done something, for Elizabeth cried his name and dashed across the room to him.
“For heaven’s sake, sit down!”
He let her push him into a chair. He heard her ask Vaughan to leave them, and the door close behind his man.
He watched her kneel on the floor in front of him and listened as she told him how profoundly sorry she was for him.
She began saying things about Pemberley, and legacies, and rebuilding, and—
“I know all of that, Elizabeth. That is not—” He was obliged to stop speaking because he was either going to be sick or start crying.
He shook his head to clear it, but he could not bring his breathing under better regulation and was all but panting as he forced himself to say what had been haunting him all evening.
“I thought you were underneath it. I thought I had lost you.”
There was so much pity in the way she said his name it made him squeeze his eyes shut against it.
She picked up his hands and brought them to her own face. “I am perfectly safe. See?”
When he could not answer, she grew more insistent, smoothing his hair and stroking his face as she repeated her assurances.
He did not stop her because he had never needed reassuring of anything more than this, but her words were not enough.
With something inside him howling for her, he kissed her—harder than he meant to, but not as hard as he wanted to. He made himself stop.
“’Tis well, my love,” she said softly. “I am flesh and blood, not stone. I’ll not crumble. I promise.”
Darcy might have wept in earnest, then, except he wanted her too badly.
He put his hand at the back of her head and pulled her back into the kiss.
She met him with urgency that matched his own, her hands on his chest, then around his shoulders, then in his hair.
When he kissed her neck, she tasted of rubble, and though it wrenched his gut to be reminded of why he felt this way, it only inflamed his need for her.
Nothing but being as close to her as it was possible to be would suffice now.
With an arm cradling her shoulders, he slid forward off the chair and lowered her onto the hearth rug.
He still felt as though he were in a dream—an intense, unsettling, impassioned one.
He had never been as in love, never been as terrified, never been as aroused, never felt as much in his life.
Elizabeth welcomed him to her, let him love her with unfettered emotion, whispered to him again and again that she was safe, she was well, she was his, until words failed her, too.
Firelight caught her rapture in glorious relief, and in that moment, still in her pink dress, still covered in the dust of his ruined house, Darcy’s beloved wife banished his fear completely.
“I shall never be able to put into words what you mean to me, Elizabeth,” he told her quietly. “I would not have survived today without you. I have never known anybody with your courage or strength.”
He was not expecting a response and was taken aback when she took his face in her hands and lifted his head until he was looking down at her.
“I was terrified today, Fitzwilliam! I was terrified when the wall fell, I was terrified that people were hurt and missing, and I knew not what to do or how to help. Do you know how I survived? I had you! We all had you. Every servant, every labourer, every man and woman in this house was looking to you, taking your lead, following your instructions. And you let none of us down.” She let out a small huff of the tenderest laughter and shook her head.
“Never known anybody with my courage and strength? You foolish man. Try looking in a mirror.”
He settled for carrying her to his bed and looking at her while he loved her again—less urgently but no less ardently, until her fears were banished as incontrovertibly as his own had been.