Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The dispatches were dull.
Darcy had read them twice. They concerned grain shipments, naval provisioning, the movements of French privateers in the Strait of Messina, and the temperament of a Sicilian magistrate who had developed an inconvenient enthusiasm for revolutionary pamphlets.
They were exactly the kind of work a younger son might find absorbing.
Darcy found them roughly as engaging as a hymnal in a language he did not speak.
He had not taken the assignment for its intellectual rewards. Three days after Hunsford, he had appeared in the Earl's study, requiring either an occupation or a cliff. The Earl had supplied the former.
Colonel Fitzwilliam would have been the natural choice. The Colonel carried dispatches, charmed consuls, and moved through foreign cities with easy competence. Darcy stayed home, managed the estate, attended to Georgiana, and did his duty with grim satisfaction.
He knew it now. Elizabeth Bennet had told him.
The thought arrived without permission, at speed, and with precise aim.
He had replayed the refusal so many times it had lost its chronological shape and existed as a collection of fragments, each capable of striking at random.
The last man in the world. That one arrived at the razor and had nearly cost him an ear.
Had you behaved in a more gentlemanly manner.
That one preferred mealtimes. Your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others.
That one came at night. It came with her voice, her eyes, and her particular expression.
She meant every word and would not take a single one back.
He had deserved it. That was the stone he could not swallow and could not spit out. He had deserved at least half of it, possibly more. The uncertainty left a margin in which he could hope he had not deserved the worst of it. Hope was the cruellest thing she had left him with.
He put the dispatches down, picked them up, and put them down again.
The cabin smelled of wood, tar, and enclosed air at sea.
It contained nothing to look at other than a wall, a dispatch, or his own hands.
His hands reminded him of the moment he had reached for her.
She had stepped back. The step back was the most honest thing that had happened in that room.
Her body had rejected him before her mouth had finished the job.
He stood. The cabin would not accommodate pacing. He settled for standing at the small window and watching the sea.
The crossing to Palermo would take four weeks, weather permitting.
Barely a day from the Thames, the weather was already permitting with a stubborn consistency.
He had nothing to blame for his sleeplessness except the obvious: a woman in Hertfordshire thought he was the worst man she had ever met, and she was not entirely wrong.
He should go on deck. The alternative was to remain here, cataloguing the ways he had failed to conduct himself as he ought. It was an exercise with no natural conclusion.
He went on deck.
The wind was warm. The Adeona was cutting steadily south. Sailors moved with unhurried purpose. Captain Holt supervised the way a hawk supervised its territory: from a height, in silence, looking mildly disappointed.
Darcy liked the captain. This was notable primarily because Darcy did not, as a general rule, like people.
He respected them, tolerated them, occasionally admired them, and reliably failed to make them comfortable.
Elizabeth had pointed this out with a directness he suspected he had found attractive even while it lacerated him.
He stopped thinking about Elizabeth for the brief walk from the companionway to the port railing.
That was the full extent of it. He had been trying to count his steps on this voyage to occupy his mind.
The counting served him little, but it occupied a part of his mind that might otherwise have done something worse.
He leaned on the railing. The sea stretched in every direction, blue-green and glittering. It was comprehensively empty, offering no landmarks, no reassurance, and no sign that anything existed beyond this ship.
It was peaceful. He resented it.
He turned to survey the deck. It offered the usual tableau: sailors, ropes, the captain at the helm, a stack of crates lashed near the bow, and—
His instincts alerted him before he consciously realised it. His breath locked. His hands tightened on the railing. His vision narrowed.
Elizabeth Bennet was standing at the starboard railing with the wind in her hair.
He did not move. He was not certain he could. His mind was producing a single thought with the manic repetition of a jammed church bell:
She is here.
She was here. On the ship, he had boarded specifically because it was leaving England and standing at the railing. In a blue dress, the wind pressed against her body. He would certainly go to hell for noticing.
She had not seen him. The set of her shoulders suggested a heavy weight. The way she gripped the railing suggested she was either angry or seasick. He hoped it was seasick; he could do nothing about her anger except deserve it.
A woman stood beside her — older, handsome, with upright bearing. An aunt, perhaps. The woman said something, and Elizabeth turned her head. He should go below. He should return to his cabin and lock the door for the duration of the crossing. The woman at the railing wanted nothing to do with him.
He did not go below.
He stood at the port railing and thought with desperate clarity: She is going to turn around and see me.
I will have to say something. I do not have a single sentence prepared that does not contain the words 'I am sorry' or 'you were right.
' I cannot say either of those things. I am merely standing on a ship attempting not to be sick.
He was not seasick. He had not been seasick once on this voyage. The nausea was entirely personal.
The aunt turned, casually scanning the deck. Her gaze passed over Darcy, paused, and returned with focused interest. She looked at him the way a shopkeeper looked at goods: appraisingly, without embarrassment, and with confidence.
She touched Elizabeth's arm.
Elizabeth turned.
Their eyes met across thirty feet of deck and the accumulated wreckage of one proposal, one letter, and several months of the most productive misery of his life.
He watched her face — the recognition arriving, the shock behind it, the rapid work of composing herself. He remained at the railing. Moving seemed to require a decision he had not yet made.
She recovered first. He had not expected otherwise. Her chin came up, and she faced him with the composure of someone who had called him the last man in the world and had not blinked.
He should cross the deck and bow. He should say something. The correct forms, the right distance.
He bowed from across the deck. The distance made it absurd. He knew it was absurd. He did it anyway, because his body had decided on decorum, and his body was an idiot.
She inclined her head. The gesture was correct, cool, and exactly what the situation required. It told him absolutely nothing about what she was thinking.
The aunt was looking between them with barely contained interest. She had seen the bow. She had seen Elizabeth's face. She was drawing conclusions, and Darcy suspected they were accurate.
He turned back to the sea. His heart was conducting itself with considerable indecorum.
His hands were shaking. He gripped the railing and thought: Four weeks.
I am on this ship with her for four weeks.
I will speak to her because I must. I will be civil.
I will not look at her mouth. That way lies madness.
The wind shifted. A strand of her hair caught the light at the edge of his vision.
He was going to die on this ship.