CHAPTER 23
Mr. Darcy made every effort to remain in the small room with Elizabeth through the day, but found it grew steadily harder to sit so near her without something to distract himself.
He resolved, therefore, to go below and secure some manner of reading material to occupy them both.
Darcy returned some minutes later bearing an almanac and a copy of the Morning Chronicle, a few days old by the look of it.
Before setting out on his errand, he had first made use of the washroom, and Elizabeth had taken the opportunity of his absence to see to her own necessities; a relief she had been putting off for some time, too embarrassed to ask him to quit the room on her account, given how thoroughly she had already been obliged to assist him in the same office.
His absence proved timely for more than one reason, though it left her uneasy on his account.
She could not help but fear he might cross paths with Wickham somewhere in the town, which, however sizeable, she could not be certain was large enough to keep them entirely hidden.
She pushed the thought from her mind as best she could, seeing to her own needs and returning the chamber pot beneath the bed for the maid to collect later.
Some while after, a knock sounded at the door, followed at once by its opening.
Every knock brought a fresh wave of nausea, her stomach tightening with dread each time.
Please, let it be Fitzwilliam. She had been watching the street below from a careful distance at the window, taking in the row of buildings opposite, and, further beyond them, a ridge of jagged hills against the sky.
To her relief, it was indeed Mr. Darcy who entered, closing the door carefully behind him, something tucked beneath his arm and a faint air of triumph about him that made her smile before he had even spoken. She rose to meet him, glad of the small distraction from her own idle, restless thoughts.
She smiled, as he closed the door behind him. "What success have you had?"
"An old London paper, and an almanac, to help pass the time." He drew the materials from beneath his arm and held them aloft with a flourish entirely unbefitting so modest a haul, as though presenting a trophy won at considerable cost. "Which would you care to begin with, madam?"
"The almanac, I think, thank you." She would have preferred the newspaper, in truth, curious as she was for news of the wider world after so many days entirely cut off from it, but suspected he would want the closer study of it for himself, and found she did not much mind giving up her preference for his.
He crossed to hand her the book before settling upon the settee. Elizabeth was left to choose between the settee, in the company of an uncommonly handsome man, or the considerably less appealing prospect of the bed alone. The decision cost her no great effort, and she joined him.
He was soon entirely absorbed in his reading, and she judged it best to occupy herself with the almanac rather than distract him with idle talk.
She found it contained both Welsh and English text for common use, alongside monthly calendars noting market days for the county, points of law and the local assizes, and a set of astronomical tables charting the moon's phases and the rising and setting of the sun.
The tide tables caught her particular interest, a novelty to a lady from so thoroughly landlocked a county as Hertfordshire, and she lingered over them, struck by their evident connection to the moon's movements.
Further along, she found guidance on the proper seasons for sowing wheat and oats, for lambing and calving and haymaking, matters rather more familiar to her, given similar practices at home.
She pressed on to a short moral essay, several Welsh proverbs, and finally a passage detailing the ancient Welsh princes, Roman remains, and notable anniversaries across the country.
Like Mr. Darcy, she found herself entirely absorbed in her own reading, the almanac's small, ordinary details, market days, tide tables, the phases of the moon, offering a strange comfort in their utter unremarkableness, and did not remark the lateness of the hour until he rose to look out the window, stretching stiffly after so long in one position.
"Do you suppose it is time for tea, Mr. Darcy?"
He turned from the window, something faintly sheepish in his expression. "I should think it rather time for supper."
"Supper?" She sat up straighter, surprised.
"We rose quite late this morning; later, in fact, than I had realised until just now." He glanced back at the darkening sky as though it might contradict him.
"Slept past morning? I had no notion it had grown so late." She could hardly credit how thoroughly the hours had slipped past her, lost entirely to reading and to the quiet, easy comfort of his company nearby.
"No matter. We are confined here at least until tomorrow regardless." He turned fully to face her. "Are you hungry?"
"I believe I am, yes, famished, now that you mention it."
"Then I shall call for supper directly. Perhaps we might exchange our reading while we wait."
"I should like that." She could not help but smile, pleased at the small prospect of an ordinary evening together, however strange the circumstances that had brought them to it.
"Very well." He answered her smile with one of his own, the small dimple she was growing rather too fond of making its appearance, and she felt a flutter of nerves that left her feeling thoroughly foolish, unable to hold his gaze a moment longer.
He left to arrange their supper and returned before long.
Her fear eased the moment the door opened to reveal him, as she had prayed it would.
They resumed their places on the settee and traded reading materials, and once again she found him entirely given over to concentration, and left him to it without interruption.
She had no notion that he was, in truth, faring rather worse than she supposed.
He could not afterward have said what he had read in the better part of three hours, having attempted the same page of newsprint what felt a dozen times over without retaining a word of it.
She was a thoroughly distracting presence, seated so near him, and yet he found he had no wish whatsoever to send her further away.
And so he read, or attempted to, forcing himself through each passage until some sense of it finally settled in his mind, before moving doggedly on to the next, a process he repeated, it seemed, without end.
Supper arrived at last, and they set their reading aside in its favour, speaking over the meal of what each had read, news from London, curiosities from the Welsh almanac, until, their conversation having run rather longer than their appetites, the food had gone quite cold before they finished it.
Neither much minded. They passed a thoroughly pleasant hour together, speaking of everything and nothing between bites.
As night drew on, they parted at last, Elizabeth to the bed, Darcy again to the settee, each retreating to their own small corner of the room with a courtesy that had, by now, become almost habitual between them.
He found himself acutely aware of her presence across the darkened room all the same, in a way he was not yet accustomed to and did not entirely trust himself to examine too closely.
Weariness, at least, came somewhat easier after a day spent so entirely in conversation, and sleep found them both before long.
***
Morning light found its way once more into the room, and Darcy woke to a bright Welsh dawn. Elizabeth slept, across the room, her breathing soft and even, turned once more toward the window. A side sleeper, he had by now concluded, having found her in the very same position the morning before.
He let her sleep undisturbed, judging she had earned every hour of it after so many sleepless nights on the road.
It was a good two hours later before she began to stir, a soft sound escaping her as she rolled onto her back and stretched her arms overhead with the unconscious grace of a cat.
Turning onto her side once more, she found him watching her.
"Good morning, Mr. Darcy," she said, her voice still thick with sleep, one hand pushing a stray lock of hair from her eyes.
He could not help but smile at the state of her, hair escaping its pins in every direction, one cheek still creased faintly from the pillow, looking entirely unlike the composed young woman he had first met at the Meryton assembly, and entirely more dear to him for it.
"Good morning, Elizabeth. Did you sleep well? "
"I did, and you?" She propped herself up slightly, studying him with the frank curiosity of the newly woken.
"I shall be glad to return to a proper bed, I confess." He rolled one shoulder as he said it, wincing faintly at whatever protest his back offered in reply.
"I am sorry, Mr. Darcy. I ought to have taken the settee last night, and given you the bed." Guilt crept into her voice as she said it, genuine and a little stubborn.
"I would never have permitted it, Elizabeth." His tone left no room for argument, though it was gently given. "You needed the rest, and I am only glad you felt comfortable enough to take it. You look the better for it."
"Thank you, sir." She could not entirely suppress a small, pleased smile at the observation. "You, on the other hand, look rather as though you spent the night wrestling a bear, and lost."
He laughed at that, a real laugh, still rough with sleep. "A fair assessment. I begin to think that settee was built for a rather smaller man than myself."
She raised her eyebrows at him, as was her way, a familiar spark of mischief lighting her tired face. "Perhaps we ought to petition the innkeeper for a better one, once we've the leisure to complain of such trifles."