Chapter Four #2
Elizabeth rubbed her hands together once, briefly, and stopped when she realised he had noticed.
“You are cold,” Mr Darcy said, sounding surprisingly concerned.
“Not at all,” Elizabeth said, in a tone of polite, meaningless reassurance. “It is nothing.”
Mr Darcy did not trouble himself to dispute the obvious untruth in words, but shrugged off his jacket instead.
“Mr Darcy, please,” Elizabeth protested.
“You are cold,” he said matter-of-factly, “and there is no fire. Here.” His directness suggested that he was making a practical offer rather than a gallant gesture.
As a continued refusal seemed more theatrical than acceptance, Elizabeth took the jacket.
It was warm, heavier than she had expected, and carried the faint cedar-and-wool smell of well-kept clothing.
She put it around her shoulders and felt immediately more comfortable, and entirely conscious that she was wearing his jacket.
And with a sudden, terrible swoop in her stomach, Elizabeth realised that, in the context of everything, it was not ideal to be wearing any of Mr Darcy’s clothing.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It is nothing,” he said.
Neither of them seemed to find anything further to say for a moment.
∞∞∞
Elizabeth had grown quite tired of waiting for someone to return with the key. Her desperation mounting, she moved to the desk and examined the drawers, thinking a key might be within.
No such luck. “Surely there must be some alternative means of escape,” Elizabeth said in frustration.
“There is no adjoining door,” said Mr Darcy.
“The windows?”
“Too high. And conspicuous.”
She studied the lock. Elizabeth had read, somewhere in a novel or one of the more sensational periodicals that found their way to Longbourn through Lydia’s readership, that a determined person with a hairpin could negotiate a simple lock.
She was not certain this was true, but she was becoming rapidly certain that standing in a cold room waiting for a rescue that showed no sign of arriving was not, on balance, a better use of the time.
“I have been told that a hairpin may accomplish wonders.”
Mr Darcy stared. “You cannot be serious.”
“I assure you I am.”
Before he could object further, she withdrew a slender pin from her hair and knelt by the door.
“Miss Bennet —”
“Pray, do not distract me. This task will be difficult enough without distractions.” Elizabeth’s dark curls slipped loose as she bent forward, a cascade tumbling over her shoulder. She blew an errant strand from her face with ill-suppressed irritation.
“You will injure yourself,” Mr Darcy said, more softly.
“If I do, you may consider it penance for my foolish failure to remain silent,” Elizabeth said.
She squinted at the keyhole with the concentrated attention of someone who does not know what they are looking for but intends to look thoroughly.
The pin went in. She felt the pin catch on something.
There was an internal resistance that suggested a mechanism.
Elizabeth turned the pin carefully and felt the resistance shift without yielding.
“I meant only to preserve your reputation,” Mr Darcy said quietly.
“And you believe my reputation so fragile that a closed door will shatter it?”
“In certain circles, yes.”
Elizabeth paused, glancing up at him briefly before returning to her task. “Then I must hope those circles are not in residence.”
A beat of silence passed between them.
“To the left, perhaps,” said Mr Darcy, who was now crouching beside her. His expression suggested that he knew well that he had no better ideas and was therefore in no position to be critical of the existing one.
Elizabeth tried twisting the pin to the left. The mechanism produced a sound of metallic protest and then an ominous click that suggested something had given way in a direction that was not opening.
“I think I may have made it worse,” Elizabeth admitted grimly.
“That was my assessment, also.”
With a final, frustrated twist, the pin bent beyond all usability. Elizabeth withdrew it from the lock and sat back on her heels. “Alas, my mechanical career is brief. I believe I had best stop before I ruin our chances of ever leaving this room.”
Mr Darcy nodded solemnly. “Perhaps that would be for the best.”
Elizabeth stood and wiped her brow. Her efforts had made her warm. She removed the jacket and thrust it towards Mr Darcy. “I thank you for the loan, but I am quite comfortable now.”
Mr Darcy hesitated.
Elizabeth shook it towards him impatiently. “If, by some great turn of fortune, the door is opened, and I am seen wearing your jacket, I fear it will allow the imagination of those in ‘certain circles’ to be entirely overcome.”
Mr Darcy stepped forward and relieved her of the garment. He shrugged into the garment and turned his attention back to the door. He dug into his pocket and procured a penknife, and knelt before the lock once more.
Elizabeth said nothing and took a step back, giving him space to work.
The penknife accomplished nothing except to scratch the escutcheon. When that method did not work, Mr Darcy applied force to the door with his shoulder, though without useful result; the door held with the solidity of good English carpentry.
His jacket was not so lucky. The force of the impact caught his right sleeve on the handle on the way back. There was a sharp tearing sound and a muttered word that Elizabeth generously did not hear, and then Mr Darcy was standing with three inches of his jacket seam open at the shoulder.
“Are you hurt?” Elizabeth asked.
“No,” he said.
“Your jacket —”
“It is of no consequence,” Mr Darcy said, taking off his garment for the second time that morning and studying the tear with a decidedly neutral expression.
Elizabeth was suddenly acutely aware of all of it at once: the smallness of the room, the state of her hair, the tear in Mr Darcy’s jacket, which remained casually slung over his arm.
“Mr Darcy,” she said, and then stopped, because she was not entirely sure what she had intended to say after that.
He seemed to recognise the sudden alarm in her expression at the impending spectacle that would result when the door was finally opened.
“We will say only what is true,” he said.
Against all expectation, Elizabeth found his quiet steadiness rather bracing.
“We came in separately. The door would not open, and we waited for someone to find us.
Nothing more occurred. Anyone who wishes to interpret that otherwise… well, we shall manage it. “
Elizabeth studied him. There was something in his expression that she had not seen there before: sincere concern that was directed unmistakably at her situation and not his own.
Surely most men in this position would worry primarily about themselves.
With a quick intake of breath and a sudden clarity so sharp it was almost painful, Elizabeth realised Mr Darcy did not appear to be most men.
“Manage it,” she repeated, her eyes inexplicably trained on the tear in his shoulder. “Yes. Of course.”
Elizabeth turned to the glass above the writing desk. It was a small one, barely adequate. She did what she could with her hair, which was not much. She frowned at her reflection, noting that she gave the appearance of a woman who had been doing emergency repairs, which was not ideal.
The sound of an approaching party of moderate size drew Elizabeth’s attention to the door. For better or for worse, it was soon followed by the scrape of the key in the lock. After a moment, the door swung open with almost mocking ease.
Mrs Nicholls stood just outside, accompanied by two housemaids, the footman from the eastern corridor, and Miss Bingley.
Elizabeth stepped into the corridor and felt the slight shock of the sudden increase in observers.
Mrs Nicholls kept her face schooled into the careful blankness of a good housekeeper who notices everything and will say nothing.
The housemaids were looking at her with the undisguised attention of young women who notice everything and will say it in the kitchen within the half hour.
The footman was, rather pointedly, studying the wall.
And Caroline Bingley stood at the back of the small crowd, slightly out of breath. Her expression was odd, at once concerned and annoyed.
But perhaps that was not odd at all, Elizabeth realised with a sickly feeling.
Miss Bingley, too, would know this for the potential disaster it was.
And while she would likely feel little concern for Elizabeth’s reputation, she would not wish for any scandal to attach itself to Mr Darcy, and still less for him to feel… obligated.
“Miss Eliza,” Miss Bingley said, with a warmth that arrived slightly too late to be spontaneous. “You are here, too. I did not know. Are you quite all right? I had the most terrible difficulty. The key was nowhere we expected. I am so very sorry. I hope you have not been — I hope it has not been —”
“We are perfectly well,” said Mr Darcy, from beside Elizabeth. His voice was even, controlled, and contained a flatness that was in precise contrast to the warmth of Miss Bingley’s belated concern. “Thank you for your assistance, Miss Bingley.”
He said nothing further. He did not need to.
Mrs Nicholls stepped forward with calm, capable authority. “I am very sorry indeed, sir, miss. I cannot think how this must have happened, but we shall look into it at once. If you would like to come through to the sitting room, I can have some tea sent up. You must be quite chilled.”
Elizabeth tried not to become overly preoccupied with how she must look. She put a hand briefly to her hair and then dropped it, because the gesture itself would draw eyes.
Mr Darcy had pulled on his jacket, which was perhaps a mistake, since it drew eyes in its own way. The tear at the shoulder was visible from six feet. Between the two of them, their dishabille created a picture that an overactive imagination would require no supplementary detail to complete.
One housemaid leaned to the other’s ear and whispered, while her companion stifled a giggle and made an attempt at a look of stern disapproval.
“Thank you, Mrs Nicholls,” Elizabeth said in her clearest and most ordinary voice. “I think we are all quite well. I believe the carriage is nearly due, so I will go up to Miss Bennet directly.”
She said it with the intent to have the last word on the subject, and then she walked down the corridor toward the stairs with her back straight and her expression composed, and her heart beating faster than was comfortable.
Behind her, Miss Bingley spoke again. Mr Darcy answered her in that same flat, even voice, and then Elizabeth was around the corner and on the stairs, and none of it was audible any longer.
She reached the landing and stopped, one hand on the banister, and stood there for a moment in the quiet.
Elizabeth had been so very nearly out of the door, so close to returning to Longbourn in peace.
She closed her eyes briefly and prayed that the curious incident would not have any further impact.
Let it be disregarded entirely. Elizabeth was content to forget that she had ever spent a morning locked in a room with Mr Darcy, and let everyone else with any knowledge of the mishap forget likewise.
Surely that was not too much to hope.