CHAPTER 11 #2
The party's arrangements for modesty were decided with swift practicality.
Cobb made it clear that the left of the clearing was given over to the men, and the right was reserved for her use alone.
Bill had told her, none too gently, that when she felt she needed the chamber pot, to find herself a tree.
When at last she lay down near the fire, it was Darcy who arranged himself nearest of all the men to where she settled; he kept a small distance between them but would not fully surrender distance with propriety.
Elizabeth could feel his breadth over the top of her head, and she was glad of it; his presence brought a degree of safety, even if it was entirely false. He is a foolish, stubborn man; what would I do without him, she reflected, before she eventually closed her eyes and slept.
She felt the stark, cold winter air, as she woke and slept again in snatches, only broken by the frigid conditions and shifting of bodies around the dying fire; and each time she woke, she found Mr. Darcy awakened before her, his eyes already turned toward her in the dark.
She did not speak to him, too tired from exhaustion, but each time, she eventually fell back asleep, feeling a type of suspended relief that he was not far away.
Morning came grey and reluctant. Ned found another rabbit, and it was prepared and cooked with immediacy. The party ate what little there was from the rodent, before they moved on for the day.
There was a general grumble about the members of the party, and Cobb assured the tired group that they would arrive at the cottage that day.
Sure to his word, after a long morning of walking, they arrived at the cottage.
It was towards the middle of their second day of captivity, that the door was forced open, and the small band entered into the building.
Elizabeth saw a single low room, and a hearth choked with old ash that Cobb set the grey-haired man to clearing for a fire.
At the cottage, Cobb announced his intention to send Ned toward the nearest town for pen and ink for a letter that would be carefully worded to Darcy's family, so they might be brought to pay, and to do so without any name or direction that could be traced back to the cottage itself.
It was, on its face, good news. Elizabeth felt this was the first concrete evidence of her gamble in the mill; it seemed to have borne some fruit, as the ransom rather than disposal had won out; at least for the present, she told herself, as the gang's settled course.
Elizabeth believed that she ought to feel some measure of relief.
Unfortunately, instead, she found herself watching Cobb; he looked rather tired, and she felt he was slowly wearing-away of whatever reserve he had expressed until this point.
And, his dwindling persistence brought her more alarm with each passing hour.
It was Bill who found the crack in it first.
Bill had grown restless with the day's inaction, pacing near the door as he had paced in the barn the first night, and it was in the course of that restlessness that he came to stand over her where she sat near the new fire, and remarked with cruelty.
“You had a great deal to say for yourself back at the mill, hadn't you; mighty clever with your ransom notions and your fine talk of what a family's money could buy.
Do you think, now, sitting here cold and hungry with a bad ankle and two days' dirt on you, that all that cleverness bought you anything at all beyond a longer wait for whatever was coming?”
"I think," she opened her mouth to finish the sentence, but found she could not. A wordless fear began to grow in her throat, and it closed around whatever wit she had meant to produce.
Elizabeth’s eyes began to fill with tears, despite every effort of will she brought against it. And, at that moment, she looked away from Bill, furious with her own failure and unable, in that moment, to command even the fury into anything useful.
"Nothing to say now," Bill said, with satisfaction, crouching to bring his face nearer hers, close enough that she could smell the sourness of his breath, and close enough that every instinct in her screamed to move.
And yet, she found she could not quite make her body obey even that simple command.
Bill looked at her with a stern face. "Funny, that. Had plenty to say when it was you doing the talking and someone else doing the listening. Not so much fun, is it, being the one that's looked at instead of the one doing the looking."
She did not answer, but sat frozen, her whole carefully constructed composure gone at once, entirely, and simply was a frightened woman, cold and hungry and hurt, with nothing left to spar with.
Darcy had been watching Bill move closer to Elizabeth, and when he deemed Bill had gotten close enough, he moved abruptly. Darcy came up off the floor, bound wrists notwithstanding, and put himself bodily between where Bill was crouching and where she sat.
Darcy was close enough that Elizabeth could hear the harsh tone he used, as he started Bill down.
"You will step back, Bill. I do not think, whatever grievance you carry against either of us, that you wish to explain to Cobb how a frightened woman came to be the target while he was occupied elsewhere. "
Bill shot upward, and stood near an inch from Darcy’s face. Although Darcy was taller, Bill was heavier built; neither man looked willing to back down. "And what's a man with his wrists tied going to do about it, if I don't?"
"Considerably more than you appear to be crediting me with," Darcy said gravely, "and I would rather you did not put me to the test while she is obliged to watch it, for her sake if not for your own comfort."
At that moment, Elizabeth was entirely thankful for Darcy’s cold demeanor; he looked and sounded intimidating, despite his tiredness and hunger, and Bill held his stare for a long moment.
Although, it was Cobb's voice, sounding aggravated from across the room, that broke the standoff before either man committed further to it.
"Bill. Leave them be. I'll not have you spoiling a ransom worth having for the sake of frightening a woman who's worth nothing to us harmed, and you know it as well as I do."
Bill straightened, slowly, with a last look at Darcy that promised the matter was deferred, but not concluded, and moved off toward the door.
With Bill’s departure outside, the room's tension broke; the grey-haired man, who had only just stepped in during the dispute, moved his attention to the fire.
Darcy remained where he was, between her and the room, for some time after. When at last he turned, he looked at Elizabeth, and she saw in him a demeanour of fury. She did not speak, and he moved slightly to lower himself down, this time directly bedside her.
Once on the ground, next to her, Elizabeth flinched, as she felt his bound hands move and clunch onto hers.
He held her hand, in a clumsy, awkward fashion, hampered down by the rope binding each of them separately.
Nevertheless, he closed around what part of them he could reach, and held on.
She was shocked at first, feeling the warm, roughness of his hands, but she did not push him away.
Elizabeth found, in that moment, a plain sort of comfort with his hands around hers. It was perhaps the first time, since their abduction, that she did not feel entirely afraid.
They sat together, hands bounded, for quite some time, before she felt her voice return, and their throat slacken.
"I could not answer him," Elizabeth whispered softly. "I feel a fool."
Darcy shook his head slightly, but did not look at her.
However, he replied just as quietly "You are not a fool; it only speaks of your exhaustion; you have managed no sleep and less food for two days together.
Even the sharpest wit in England is not built to run without rest." He was quiet for a moment, and then, more quietly still said, "I am sorry I did not manage to prevent it happening. "
Elizabeth was surprised, hearing this, by how nearly it sounded like praise, as though he believed her to possess one of the sharpest wits in England, and had said so not to comfort her but because he believed it true.
However, it was easier, in her present exhausted state, to believe he had only reached for whatever kind words came readiest to hand, meaning to soften her own failure rather than to pay her any compliment he had actually meant.
For, she wagered, Mr. Darcy is not a man given to compliments, under ordinary circumstances, and he must only be doing so, given their situation.
She replied, not looking up at him. "You have protected me from the start, Mr. Darcy, and I am grateful for you.”
He replied barely above a whisper, in a rough tone. "It was considerably less than I wanted to do."
Elizabeth did not press him to say more. She sat instead in a strange, suspended stillness of her own, feeling something that was not quite numbness and not quite relief but some exhausted mixture of both.
She was relieved that Bill had not made good on whatever violence had stood so plainly behind his crouching, and beneath the relief, a slower, colder recognition of exactly how near the moment had come to turning out otherwise.
Now that the danger itself had passed and left her with nothing further to do but sit in the whole confused mess of what she felt.
It was, she found, very difficult to think clearly about any of it, the fear, the relief, and with his hand still warm and steady around hers, doing rather more to occupy her attention than she thought either sensation strictly ought to be permitted to manage on its own.
Nevertheless, they remained sitting so, hands loosely bound together, while the fire waged its own small battle against the cold room, and neither of them said anything further for a long while; although, neither of them, this time, seemed to feel any particular need to.