CHAPTER 17
When morning came, grey and cold as every morning that week had been, Elizabeth woke again in his arms. For a few moments she did not move. The warmth of him at her back, the steady rise and fall of his breathing, and the strange familiarity of waking beside him.
She still did not know what she felt, and she could not make herself pretend otherwise. Elizabeth was not prepared to call it admiration, nor could she say with certainty that what she felt was anything more than the deep affection born of hardship shared.
Yet neither could she return to the certainty she had possessed before. I have been wrong about him, she decided; and, perhaps she might even have been wrong about herself as well.
Whatever waited for them beyond these trees, rescue or further danger, her family's relief or their horror, she found that she did not wish to face it without him. And, this realization made her question her feelings even more.
“We must find our way home today,” Darcy said quietly into the hair at her temple, when the light had grown strong enough that neither of them could pretend any longer that the day did not require it of them.
Elizabeth smiled faintly. “I suppose you are right, Mr. Darcy.” She did not move immediately, and neither did he.
For another moment they remained as they were, saying nothing, as though both understood that whatever had changed between, it was not one that needed addressing immediately. At last Elizabeth shifted, and Darcy released her without hesitation.
Within half an hour they had left the charcoal-burner's hut, both still weary and hungry, but with something lighter between them than there had been the evening before.
The uncertainty remained, but it no longer felt like something either was obliged to resolve before they could continue.
They had spoken honestly. For the moment, and that was enough for them both.
Elizabeth's ankle was no better for a second hard day's use, and both of them were hollow with hunger. No hedgerow's remaining sloes seemed quite equal to answering either need that morning, and Darcy's expression grew increasingly grim each time Elizabeth's step faltered.
“We must find a road properly,” he said, as they struck out from the trees into open country once more, “or better still, some soul who can tell us plainly what parish we have wandered into. I confess my confidence in yesterday's direction has not improved.”
“You navigated us successfully to both a shepherd's hut and a charcoal-burner's,” she said. “I call that a tolerable record.”
A ghost of a smile appeared on his face. “I call it fortunate, and would rather trust to a signpost than to my own fortune continuing indefinitely.”
Elizabeth looked toward him. “You are becoming rather humble.”
He offered a slight smile, and shook his head precipitously. “I assure you, I remain perfectly aware of my abilities.”
“Of course you do,” she replied with an eyebrow turned upward.
“But I assure you, madam, I am becoming increasingly aware of their limitations,” he teased her then, alluding to his disagreeable behavior.
She smiled and teased him, a warm glint shining in her eye as she did so. “That,” she said, “is progress.”
His mouth twitched, but he did not speak further. And, they continued walking slowly, hoping and praying to find someone to help them.
The signpost, when it came, arrived by way of a narrower mercy; it had a cart track, rutted but unmistakably a proper road rather than the hedgerows they had followed the day before. Beyond it, perhaps a quarter mile on, low smoke rose steadily from a cottage chimney into the grey morning sky.
They approached it with caution. Darcy's hand found hers, and his pace slowed to study the cottage's yard before committing them to it.
However, much to their relief, the woman who answered their knock, elderly, sharp-eyed, drying her hands on an apron already well-used to a morning's work, took one look at the pair of them, mud-streaked and hollow-eyed and plainly gentry, did not wait to be asked before ushering them in toward her own fire.
"There's been men through here twice this week asking after two lost from Netherfield way," she said, setting bread and a wedge of hard cheese before them both with no more ceremony than she might have shown any ordinary guest, "and I'll wager, seeing the state of you, I needn't ask which two you'll be.
You're a fair way north of that country, mind.
Storm must have carried you further than you'd any notion of. "
"How far, would you say, to Meryton?" Darcy asked with the politeness of a gentlebred man, despite the dirt and muck about his sodden clothes.
"A good fifteen mile, near enough, if you're wanting the direct road," the old woman said, "though my Thomas has the cart out this very morning taking eggs to Ware market, and Ware's not above six mile from here on his usual road, and Meryton's not so very far past Ware besides, if you'd a mind to beg a ride partway and walk the remainder.
He'll be back for his meal within the hour, if you can bear to wait that long on cheese and bread and my own poor company. "
They could bear it, and did, the hour passing warmly, as she allowed her limbs to rest and be thoroughly warm; and it was in the course of that waiting hour, the old woman occupied with her churning in the yard beyond, that Elizabeth found herself turning to Darcy with a question she had not yet had leisure, amid everything else, to properly consider.
"They will have told my family I am found, once we reach Meryton. What will you tell them, of how we came to be found in this condition, together?"
He answered confidentiality. “The truth.
That we were taken from Netherfield's garden by robbers, held some days, and escaped by way of a river in a storm, and found our way home as best two people with no better resources than their own wits and a farmer's cart could manage.
I do not intend to lie about the whole of it, nor could I, I think, if I tried, for half the county will have some version of the truth already, from whatever the gang themselves let slip once caught, if caught they are. "
"I suppose the truth must serve," she said, "though it will come as a shock to a great many people, and place me in a position I can hardly call comfortable.
" She looked into the fire as she spoke, her eyes wide and fixed upon it, her mind still woolgathering about the implications of her abduction.
And beneath that, worse for being quieter, the fear that it might cost Jane something too; that a scandal so attached to her name might undo, in one stroke, all that Jane had so lately and so deservedly won with Mr. Bingley.
Unaware of her concerns about Jane, Darcy looked at her, “It will be a shock, I do not doubt that. But, I do not think it need be a disgrace. Afterall, there is very little the world cannot forgive a woman for, provided she does not hide behind it.” Then, he reached out and took her hand, and spoke more softly.
“We cannot undo what was done to us; we can only choose how it is known and how we might, together, respond to it.”
A sound from the yard brought their conversation to a halt.
Elizabeth was uncertain whether it was a bucket set down too heavily, or a hen disturbed into indignant complaint.
Regardless, neither of them stopped to determine which, and by the time the old woman came back through the door a moment later, she found the pair of them sitting at a careful distance from one another, warming themselves by the fire.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s heart was racing and she could not stop thinking of the warmth and care that she felt at his gentle, reassuring touch.
Thomas returned within the hour as promised.
He was a broad, unhurried man entirely unmoved by the strangeness of his mother's guests.
And, when she explained the barest outline of their trouble to him, Thomas readily agreed to carry them as far as Ware without any payment beyond their sincerest thanks.
After bidding the kind, old woman goodbye, Darcy helped Elizabeth into the cart. And, soon they were off, the cart carrying them, not too gently, the six miles to Ware.
As they were slowly carted onward, Elizabeth's head found a resting place against Darcy's shoulder.
His strong arm came round her against the cart's jolting in a gesture that had, by now, long since ceased to require any explanation between them.
And, it was somewhere in the last mile of that ride, that the market rooftop of the small town of Ware appeared.