CHAPTER 16
Elizabeth felt a warm hand close gently upon her shoulder, and a low, urging voice calling her back from the depths of sleep.
She was in her bed, surely, feeling the soft pillows and sensing the familiar dark of her own curtains; she was, at that very moment, in no humour whatsoever to rise so early.
"Elizabeth, we must go." There was kindness in Mr. Darcy's voice, but urgency ran beneath it, sharpening every word.
She wondered, still tangled in the fog of half-waking, what business he could possibly have in her bedchamber at such an hour; before she woke fully, with a jolt that seemed to travel the whole length of her body, to the recollection that she lay not in her own bed at all, but on hard, cold ground somewhere in a forest, with Mr. Darcy crouched beside her, his hand still resting where it had woken her.
"Mr. Darcy!" She sat up at once, every muscle protesting the sudden movement. "Forgive me, I did not mean to sleep so long." A wave of sick apprehension rose fast in her throat, threatening to choke her. "Have they found us?"
She was still holding tightly onto the front of his shirt, and he gently pulled each finger off his person. "Not yet, and I mean to see they do not." His voice was steady, though his eyes moved constantly past her shoulder, scanning the trees behind. "Come, Miss Elizabeth. We must begin."
She rose, every part of her aching from the previous night's exertions; her legs stiff, her feet raw within her ruined shoes, a dull throb settled deep behind her eyes from too little sleep and too much fear.
He stood ahead of her already, waiting, his whole posture coiled with the same restless urgency she could feel radiating from him, and she moved swiftly to take her place behind him as he set off once more without further word.
Faint with hunger, her stomach a hollow ache she had almost grown accustomed to, she stopped first at the stream to drink her fill, cupping the cold water eagerly to her mouth, before turning to him. "Sir, before we go on, I must attend to a private matter."
“A private matter?” He watched her glance, quick and self-conscious, toward the treeline, and understood her meaning a half-second later, colour rising faintly in his own face at having required the moment to grasp it.
"Of course. I shall keep my back turned, toward the stream.
We will go on the moment you are ready."
She gave him a brief, grateful nod and made her way upstream, moving as quickly as her sore feet allowed, toward a suitably large and private tree.
Darcy resisted the urge to call after her not to go too far, the words rising and dying in his throat twice over, though he could not entirely stop himself from glancing over his shoulder to mark where she went, telling himself it was only prudence, that he might find her quickly should the need arise, and not admitting, even to himself, how much he simply did not wish her out of his sight at all.
Once satisfied she had settled behind a sufficiently large trunk, he turned back to face the stream, as he had promised. A minute later, the rustle of returning footsteps announced her.
She is lovely, he thought, watching her pick her way nimbly back down toward him. He found himself imagining, quite without meaning to, the two of them walking together through the woods of Pemberley, talking, exploring, and something a good deal more than either.
He caught himself in the reverie and forced his thoughts back to more proper ground.
She had neither wept nor complained at being denied any proper convenience; she had simply seen to what needed doing, with no fuss at all.
She would make, he thought, an admirable mistress of Pemberley.
The notion arrived and settled in his mind as easily and inevitably as water finding its course downstream, and once arrived, he found he could not dislodge it. Elizabeth would be perfect for it.
She stood before him now, weary-eyed and hollow-cheeked from hunger and flight, and yet there remained something entirely undimmed in her, a look of pert curiosity, one eyebrow raised, as though even exhaustion itself could not quite subdue her.
"Ready, madam?" he asked, though he knew the answer already, and found himself almost smiling despite everything at the certainty of what it would be.
"Yes, I’m ready." She offered a small smile in return, one that did not quite reach her tired eyes but was genuine for all that, before looking past him toward the stream, plainly expecting him to lead the way once more, as she had come, in so short a time, to trust that he would.
***
They set off in silence, he keeping to his usual brisk pace, though she noticed he shortened his stride, almost without seeming to notice he did it, to something nearer her own.
After a few hours' walking, Elizabeth found herself more at ease than she had felt in days, and ventured a question, glad of anything to fill the quiet between them.
"Do you prefer London, Mr. Darcy, or the country? "
"The country, without question." He answered at once, with none of the careful measuring he brought to so many other questions. "Derbyshire above all counties. The peaks there are as singular as they are beautiful. I could pass my whole life among them and want for nothing else."
"I have long heard of their beauty. My aunt Gardiner lived, as a girl, in a small village there. She has often spoken of the views, with such fondness I have half believed her exaggerating. I should like very much to see them myself one day, and judge for my own part."
This pleased him a great deal more than the remark perhaps warranted, and he found himself wishing, quite suddenly and with unexpected force, to see that particular wish fulfilled, to be the one who showed her.
"I am certain you would find as much pleasure in them as I always have.
" He spoke with real conviction, something warmer than his usual reserve creeping into his voice.
"What village was your aunt from, might I ask? "
"I cannot quite recall it." She frowned slightly, searching. "Bakewell, perhaps? No, that is not it. Lyme? Larriston?"
He looked over his shoulder towards her, "Lampton?" he offered, watching her face for some flicker of recognition.
"Yes, that may well be it, though I could not swear to it without asking her myself."
He turned back towards the path, but asked, "What was her father's trade?"
"A draper's shop, I believe," said Elizabeth with some uncertainty in her voice.
Darcy inquired further, "And your aunt's name, before she married your uncle?"
"They married when I was very young. I confess I cannot recall it." She laughed a little at her own failing memory. "You will think me a poor niece indeed."
"No matter." He waved the thought away gently. "I only wondered whether I might know the family, if she is indeed from Lampton. My own home lies not five miles from the village."
"Does it?" She turned to look at him properly now, something new in her expression. "How very curious. It would be remarkable indeed if you knew her people.
"Lampton is a small place,” Darcy reflected. “I spend little enough time there myself, but I know a good many of the families established in the neighbourhood."
Elizabeth found herself keenly aware, in that moment, of the distance between their two stations.
That he knew of the village's inhabitants while making plain he did not concern himself much with them told her a great deal about the man, one who did not, as a rule, trouble himself with those beneath his own circle.
It put her in mind of the Meryton assembly, and Mr. Darcy's evident discomfort there; his dismissiveness, his careless slight, delivered as though she were merely one more unremarkable person unworthy of his notice.
And yet she had learned something else of him besides, in the days since.
He was shy, she thought, perhaps something more than shy; ill at ease, even awkward, in company he did not know well.
Some while later, he pointed ahead. "Look there, a clearing! We may find our way toward it."
Elizabeth saw it too, a break in the dense wood where sunlight fell freely through. She felt a measure of relief at the sight, though her fear of pursuit remained undiminished, pressing at her still, that they might yet be found before reaching any true safety.