Chapter 8 #2
None of it bore examination. He kept his attention on the hedgerow and added only, “She carries herself well.”
The words felt safely neutral, though his mind refused to agree.
Behind them, Hurst reined in with a sigh that could have been mistaken for a groan. “Gentlemen, I believe this incline is designed to humble mankind. I will go no further. Mrs Nicholls promised broth at eleven, and I intend to find it.”
Bingley glanced back with a laugh. “You have not been out half an hour!”
“Exactly my point,” Hurst replied, already turning his horse. “You will forgive me if I choose sense over valour.”
He executed a lazy salute and trotted off toward Netherfield, leaving Bingley shaking his head. “I suppose that leaves the true sportsmen to continue.”
Darcy nudged his horse forward. “If we wish to see the coverts before midday, we should keep on.”
Bingley leaned forward in his saddle. “Come—there’s excellent cover near the eastern line. Williams swears he saw at least a dozen birds rise there yesterday.”
They continued along the narrowing path. Bingley drew a deep breath and let it out with satisfaction. “There is something remarkably civil about this neighbourhood. Everyone greets one another, and even the roads appear to approve of visitors.”
Darcy allowed a faint smile. “You will credit the roads next with opinions.”
“Why not? Miss Bennet said much the same—that Hertfordshire prefers to welcome rather than impress. I like the notion.”
Darcy tipped his head in acknowledgment. “She has a sensible manner, though far too agreeable to my taste.”
“Why, Darcy, you speak as if that is a bad thing! And the countryside itself—look at those trees.” Bingley pointed with his riding crop toward a distant stand of ash beyond the hedgerow. “They make a better canopy than anything in London.”
Darcy studied the line. Pemberley’s trees were nearly bare by now, but the leaves here were hardly even turning, though they were fully into October.
Perhaps the unseasonably warm weather accounted for that.
Still, his mind returned—unbidden—to Pemberley’s weakened harvest. He doubted very much that Hertfordshire had seen any such ill luck this autumn.
Bingley nudged his horse a little closer. “Darcy, if you stare at those trees any harder, they will pick their leaves back up out of sheer modesty.”
“Only considering whether those in Derbyshire are faring as well,” Darcy grunted. “After last week’s storms, we ought to be watchful.”
“Well, the groves at Netherfield seem perfectly content.” Bingley gave a little flourish of the reins. “No reason we cannot enjoy a morning without improving the world’s forests, Darcy.”
“True enough.”
The hedgerow ahead opened slightly, offering a view of the lower slope. Darcy glanced at the field out of habit. A man accustomed to managing a vast estate rarely walked anywhere without taking stock. The ground here appeared even, the rise gentle, the colour of the grass unremarkable.
Bingley pointed toward a patch of scrub. “Williams swears he saw partridge there yesterday. If we circle round that way, we may flush a few.”
Darcy nodded. “Lead on.”
Bingley glanced over. “Are you brooding already? It is barely ten. Smile, man. The countryside is good for you.”
“I am not brooding,” Darcy said.
“You are,” Bingley replied cheerfully. “If you brood any further, the pheasants will surrender out of pity.”
Darcy offered no answer. His gaze lingered on the line where the hedges met the field, a faint tremor of instinct drawing him forward faster than reason could account for.
Bingley slowed first, lifting a hand to signal the change. The ground ahead dipped toward a narrow copse—thin trees pressed together in a way that suggested shelter for birds. If they rode straight in, they would scatter whatever game hid there.
“Wind’s turned,” Bingley said, glancing at the angle of the branches.
Darcy felt it too—the faint shift of air brushing the right side of his face. Coming from the copse toward them. Any approach on horseback would be folly.
“We go on foot,” Darcy said.
Bingley nodded. “Downwind and quiet, then.”
Darcy looped his reins over a low branch, testing it with a brief pull; the horse stood quietly at the end of the rein. Bingley tethered his own mount beside it. The cover ahead offered a clear line through the undergrowth if approached carefully.
Darcy stepped forward first, boots sinking into the softer earth beneath the trees. The air grew stiller here, muffled by the cluster of trunks—a good sign for game, though something about the silence prickled faintly against his awareness.
Bingley followed close behind, keeping enough distance to avoid breaking twigs or rustling brush. “Birds might lift from the far edge,” he murmured. “If we circle, we may see them rise.”
Darcy inclined his head and continued toward the opening between the trees, prepared to scan the ground for movement. They rounded a bend in the rise, and Darcy stumbled to a halt.
A shape lay in the grass ahead—small, still, and out of place.
Bingley’s steps carried onward, light and untroubled, but Darcy only stared. That was no fallen branch. The outline was wrong; the colour did not belong to the field. Fabric, not bark. A figure, not debris.
His heels hit the earth in a rapid staccato before he formed any conscious decision. The distance between them and the shape closed too slowly for his liking. Something in him had already leapt to recognition, though he could not yet see enough to name it. He dropped his fowling piece and ran.
“Darcy—?” Bingley began, but he had already quickened his pace to keep up.
The form resolved as they neared. A woman’s gown, the skirt rumpled, the figure half-turned toward the earth.
Elizabeth Bennet.
Cold went through him—not a chill, but a clarity that jolted every thought into sharp order. He dropped to one knee beside her while Bingley called her name in alarm.
She lay curled upon her side, one hand slack in the grass, the other tucked near her chest. A smear of damp earth darkened her glove; her sleeve had slipped back enough to expose the tender skin above her wrist he had seen yesterday—flushed and angrily inflamed.
“Is she hurt? Darcy, is she—good heavens, what happened? Did she fall from a horse?”
Darcy knelt and touched her shoulder lightly. The contact drew a sharp, unwelcome sensation through his chest, as though his breath had misjudged its own depth.
“Miss Elizabeth?”
No response. Her breathing came shallow and disordered, not the soft rhythm of a simple faint.
He shifted to support her, turning her carefully to rest against his arm—and had to pause.
A brief wave of vertigo passed through him, swift and disorienting, the world narrowing to the press of her weight and the heat of her skin against his sleeve.
He set his jaw and continued, adjusting his hold until her head rested more securely.
Her head lolled, a faint crease between her brows as though some discomfort still gripped her even in near-unconsciousness.
“No sign of hoofprints,” Bingley mused, shading his eyes up and down the lane. “What could have brought her out here alone? She must have stumbled—though there is nothing to trip her. You do not suppose she was attacked, do you?”
Darcy scarcely heard him. The field around them held an odd quiet.
Not absolute stillness, but a pause in the natural sounds he expected—the wind seemed to have forgotten its movement.
The hedges almost seemed to lower themselves to a more modest height, as if they had bowed to watch the woman on the ground.
The earth seemed less reliable beneath his feet, not enough to alarm, but enough that he adjusted his stance without thinking. “We must take her back at once.” His voice sounded easy, confident, though he had to apply somewhat more effort than usual. “Fetch my horse. Quickly!”
Bingley sprinted toward the small copse where they had tethered the animals.
Alone, Darcy adjusted his hold on Elizabeth.
Her skin felt warm through the fabric of her gown—overwarm—and the slight tremor in her fingers washed a wave of weakness through his arm that did not belong to him alone.
For an instant, his stomach turned sharply, as though his body had mistaken her distress for its own.
He gritted his teeth and brushed a fallen strand of hair from her cheek. Her eyelids fluttered with faint distress.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he murmured, though he did not expect her to wake. “You are safe now.”
The effort of speaking left him briefly light-headed, as though he had given away more strength than the words themselves required.
Her lips moved. A fragment of sound escaped—no more than a breath, but it carried the shape of a word.
“…wrong…place…”
His body went still—not from fear, but from the sudden, undeniable sense that in coming to her aid, he had crossed something of his own. He bent slightly, straining to hear, but the rest dissolved into an indistinct murmur.
Her brow creased; a shudder passed through her shoulder and into his arm, faint but unmistakable.
Darcy adjusted his hold without thinking, drawing her closer to keep her from slipping, and felt again that quiet draining sensation, as though the strength required to steady her had been taken from him rather than summoned.
He set his jaw and bore it, unwilling to loosen his grip even by a fraction.
Bingley returned with both horses, breathless from haste.
“Is she worse?”
“She is insensible, nothing more,” Darcy said, keeping his voice even. “We must take her back to Netherfield.”
He gathered her in his arms and rose. She felt light, far too light, and when her head fell briefly against his shoulder, a sharp flicker of protectiveness shot through him—unwelcome, unbidden, but impossible to ignore.
“Netherfield!” Bingley cried. “Would not her family be better—”
“Longbourn is three miles from here. Heaven only knows how she got so far on her own, but she needs a doctor at once. I can take her if you will ride ahead for help.”
Bingley nodded. “Right.”
Mounting with her proved difficult until Bingley lent a hand.
Darcy felt the delay keenly, not from impatience but from the way his arms protested the effort, strength answering more slowly than habit promised.
He dismissed it at once and swung up, settling Elizabeth before him, his arm secure around her to prevent any slip.
She stirred once, a faint sound of protest or confusion, then fell quiet again.
For a brief instant, the thought crossed his mind that it would be simpler to send her with Bingley. Safer. He could not have said why the idea felt wrong, only that it did. Before he could examine it further, he tightened his hold and gave the word.
Bingley urged his horse into a gallop, the sound of hooves striking the cold earth fading quickly along the rise.
Darcy set his own mount in motion at a more cautious pace, every shift of Elizabeth’s weight requiring adjustment, each correction demanding more attention than it ought.
The effort of keeping her steady drew upon him steadily, as though the act of bearing her diminished what remained.
She lay against him without resistance, her head tucked beneath his chin, her breath warm but uneven.
The warmth did not comfort him. It only made him more aware of the strange heaviness gathering through his chest and arms, the sense that his body was lending itself where it would not easily be reclaimed.
A long strand of hair had come loose from her bonnet and brushed against his sleeve in a slow, dragging arc that unsettled him more than any cry would have done. A conscious woman protested, complained, demanded release. This utter quiet screamed louder in his thoughts than protests ever could.
The field blurred past them, hedgerows dipping and rising, but he scarcely marked it.
Her earlier words—half-formed, unmoored—returned again and again without sense.
Wrong place. No coherence, only distress.
As the distance between them and Netherfield shortened, he adjusted his seat once, then again, annoyed to find that balance now required care.
He looked down at her face—pale, drawn, lashes resting motionless against her cheek—and felt a colder thought intrude, uninvited and unwelcome.
Whatever had overtaken her in that field was not exhaustion, nor injury, nor anything he had known how to remedy.
And though he continued to ride on without faltering, Darcy was conscious, for the first time in years, that his strength was not equal to his resolve.