Chapter Twelve
Sleep came to him unevenly, as it often did when his mind refused to relinquish its hold upon the day.
He lay aware of the bed, of the hangings stirred faintly by a draught he had not noticed before retiring, of Brutus shifting once at the foot of the mattress before settling again.
It should have been enough. He had known harder nights than this.
Yet when the dream took him, it did so without even a hint of warning.
He was walking—no, inspecting—a stretch of land that ought to have been familiar. By the view of a low hill in the distance, the river cutting across the valley below, it was the same land he had stalked with Bingley only yesterday.
The lie of the hedge, the thinning grass where water gathered, the shallow descent toward lower ground—all of it answered to expectation. His attention moved as it always did, measuring, noting, arranging what he saw into habit and record.
One moment, he was filling his lungs, marking breaks in the grass where a hare had flushed, trees in the stand still green and full, listening to Brutus ranging on ahead.
Then his stride shortened.
Not by intention. Not by misstep. His foot lifted and set down again, but the distance it carried him had diminished, as though the ground itself had subtly altered its measure. The next step required attention. The next, effort.
He stopped and drew breath.
The breath came, but without force behind it. His chest rose; the air reached him thinly, as though some deeper correspondence had failed. A faint tremor passed through his legs—not pain, not alarm, but enough to set his nerves on edge.
He waited, but the sensation did not pass. Fatigue, he told himself. A residue of poor sleep. Of long days. Such things left impressions even in dreams.
Perhaps there was a slight incline here, gradual enough that he had not marked it. He adjusted his stance and went on.
The weakness deepened with the next step.
His sight remained clear; the world did not reel.
Yet something essential drained from him with each attempt to advance, as though the effort of standing upright were no longer fully his to command.
His arms hung heavier. His knees answered him by degrees so small they might have gone unnoticed, had he not been watching himself so closely.
He stopped again, his heart pounding as if he had run a mile.
The ground ahead was broken.
Not by hedge or ditch or any deliberate boundary, but by a long, jagged fissure torn through the earth itself—as though floodwater or tremor had split the land open and never been mended.
The edges were raw. The soil beneath lay exposed, dark and uneven, falling away into a depth he could not determine.
He knew it at once—not by detail, but by recognition.
Hertfordshire lay beneath his feet, but what rose on the far side belonged to another order of knowing.
In the distance, that same mountain lifted against the horizon, its shape unmistakable.
He had seen it before, surely! From afar. Never like this.
At the edge of the rupture stood a thorn tree. It did not mark a boundary in the common sense—neither hedge nor orchard nor fence—yet it claimed the place with an authority that halted his gaze. He could not have said why. Only that his attention fixed upon it and would not be persuaded elsewhere.
At its base stood a woman, turned from him.
Her cloak hung loosely from her shoulders, hair snarled free of its pins by wind or neglect. He could not see her face, and the absence did not feel accidental. As though to look upon her directly would require more than he yet possessed.
But he knew her.
Not by feature or dress, not by any detail he could later name, but by the certainty of her presence. The line of her shoulders struck him with a familiarity that burned, like the sudden recall of a name learned long ago and never spoken since.
“Madam,” he said, meaning only courtesy.
She did not turn.
“I am not—” He faltered. Whatever ought to follow refused coherence. The words he reached for—explanation, entitlement, insistence—collapsed before they could take form, as though they did not apply here.
“You are not real,” he said instead, the words brittle, offered as resistance rather than belief.
She turned.
Not all at once, but enough that he knew her utterly.
Her face would not resolve—featureless in that peculiar way of dreams—yet recognition struck him with a force no clarity could have improved.
She lifted her hand toward him. Not imploring.
Not urgent. Simply held out, as one might indicate the only course that exists.
The ground between them yawned open. A raw break in the earth, torn wide by water and upheaval, its edges crumbling still.
He saw at once what no courage could alter: there was no bridge, no footing, no leap to be made.
Not by a man. Not by a horse. Not by any means he had ever trusted.
His breath staggered, sharp and panicked, and the old instincts rose in him—measure, retreat, command.
“What is this?” The words scattered even as he spoke them—Netherfield, the morning, duty, the ordinary course of things—each excuse failing the moment it touched the air. “I want nothing to do with any of this!”
Her hand did not withdraw.
Something in him broke loose then—not fear, not pain, but the last, desperate motion of assent. He stepped forward without ground to receive him, reaching for what could not yet be reached—and the strength that had held him upright, intact, certain of himself, simply ceased.
His arms pinwheeled as he stumbled backward, but no power of man could save him now. Whatever had held him together—muscle, balance, the habit of standing—gave way all at once. He did not feel himself fall. There was simply no ground left to meet him.
There was no suffering in it. Only the certainty that Fitzwilliam Darcy had ended—not because he failed, but because he had answered.
Darcy bolted upright in his bed.
The chamber lay in darkness, the familiar lines of it momentarily strange.
His heart beat hard against his ribs, not from terror but from a furious need to understand.
He dragged in a breath that felt sharper than it ought, and pressed his hand against the mattress as if to reassure himself of its substance.
Brutus stirred, rising halfway before settling again at a wordless sound from Darcy’s throat.
It was only a dream. A wild one—one that was already fading from memory.
Yet even as he told himself so, the image of the stone—newly uncovered, cold beneath his hand—was a sliver that refused to fade.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rose, crossing to the window, though the night beyond offered nothing but darkness and the faintest suggestion of movement in the trees.
He stood there longer than he meant to, his thoughts circling restlessly, seeking purchase.
Utter insanity, he told himself again, with more force this time.
And yet sleep did not return.
Elizabeth snapped awake with the curious conviction that sleep had abruptly withdrawn from her, leaving her behind.
The chamber lay as she had last known it: the fire reduced to a steady glow, the curtains fallen into their proper folds, the air neither chill nor close.
Nothing ached; nothing pressed upon her.
And yet, remaining where she was felt impossible, as though rest had reached its limit and left some necessary motion unfinished.
She sat up.
The effort brought a brief wave of delirium—not pain, but a faint thinning of strength that required patience rather than alarm. She waited until it passed, then set her feet upon the floor and rose.
Once upright, she crossed the room, turned, and crossed it again, the narrow space between hearth and window marking her pace.
With each circuit, her breathing eased, her pulse settling into its usual rhythm.
She was not restored, precisely, but she was awake in a way she had not been since before the field—before that inexplicable yielding of ground which she could recall only as sensation, not event.
She opened the door.
The corridor beyond was empty, a single lamp burning at its far end, its flame steady and untroubled by her movement. Elizabeth stepped out and closed the door behind her with care, the soft click of the latch sounding louder than she liked in the quiet.
She walked on somewhat randomly. She was conscious of the floor beneath her feet—where the boards answered firmly, where they dipped by degrees scarcely worth remarking.
She noted the faint current of air near the window recess, the thinning of the carpet runner along the wall.
Everything was orderly, familiar, and unremarkable in the way of places one knows well enough to stop observing closely.
At the head of the main staircase, she halted. She was stronger now. Perhaps this time, she would not be beset by delirium.
Her foot lifted—and remained suspended. There was an unmistakable check, as though some inward balance had been disturbed by the direction itself. She lowered her foot again.
At once, the resistance… or whatever it was… eased.
Elizabeth stood for a moment, her hand resting lightly upon the banister. She tried again, more deliberately, as though a slower approach might make some difference.
It did not.
Facing the stairs produced a quiet but insistent wrongness that turning away did not. The distinction was immediate, beyond persuasion, as if she were attempting to begin where no beginning lay.
She stepped back. She had long since learned that the body sometimes refused cooperation without offering explanation, and that such refusals were rarely improved by argument.