CHAPTER 19
That morning, however, the cottage was strangely quiet. The harbor repairs had progressed enough that Mr. Kewley was expected to spend several hours inspecting the remaining damage, and Mrs. Kewley had announced her intention to visit several neighbors who had suffered losses during the storm.
"I will not be gone long," she assured them as she tied her bonnet. "Though I know better than to promise such a thing when there are people to visit and news to collect."
Elizabeth smiled, "Then perhaps you should say you will return when you have exhausted all possible conversation."
Mrs. Kewley laughed, "An impossible task, Mrs. Darcy."
Darcy, standing near the doorway, looked toward Elizabeth with quiet amusement, "I fear she may be correct."
"Mr. Darcy," Mrs. Kewley protested, "you are taking her side? Tut tut, well then, I see you have become wise during your stay."
Elizabeth lowered her head to hide her smile. The ease between them had become so natural that moments such as these no longer felt entirely like an act. That was perhaps why the excuse they offered when Mrs. Kewley suggested they accompany her was so difficult.
"I think," Elizabeth said gently, "that Mr. Darcy and I may remain here this morning."
Mrs. Kewley immediately looked between them, "Are you unwell?"
"No," Elizabeth assured her quickly. "Not at all. I believe we are merely tired from the past several days."
Darcy understood immediately and supported her, "The weather and the work at the harbor have left us both more fatigued than expected."
Mrs. Kewley accepted the explanation, though not without a knowing look, "Very well. A quiet morning may do you both good."
Once the door closed behind the Kewleys, the cottage fell into complete silence. For the first time in days, they were entirely alone, and Elizabeth moved toward the hearth, "That was remarkably convenient."
Darcy looked at her, "What was?"
"Our excuse."
A faint smile touched his expression, "You believe Mrs. Kewley suspected something?"
Elizabeth laughed softly, "I believe Mrs. Kewley suspects everything."
"I cannot disagree."
Then the amusement faded because they both knew the truth, they had chosen to remain behind not because they were tired. But because the previous evening, Mr. Darcy learned that one of the strangers asking questions about English travelers had been seen near the village again.
They had agreed that leaving the cottage unattended would be unwise. And yet, they had not expected anyone to come, not today in daylight.
Darcy stood near the window, watching the road beyond the cottage, and Elizabeth noticed immediately, "You are concerned. Come, sit down, and let us read together."
He looked at her, "Elizabeth—"
"Mr. Darcy," she interrupted gently, "if you continue standing there as though you expect an army to appear over the hill, you will only succeed in making yourself miserable."
"I assure you, I am not miserable."
Elizabeth gave him a knowing look, and he finally crossed the room and sat beside her, "I think, Miss Bennet, that you believe I am being unreasonable. Am I not wrong?"
"I believe you are being Mr. Darcy."
That earned the faintest smile, "And is that meant as criticism?"
"No, not at all.” He looked at her, while she opened her book. Then, she looked up at him and offered Mr. Darcy a warm smile, and for a moment, the tension eased.
Darcy directed his attention to the hearth, watching the fire crackle, and listening to the wind move gently against the windows.
They sat together in the quiet comfort of the cottage, reading as though they were nothing more than a husband and wife enjoying an ordinary morning.
However, beneath the calm, neither had forgotten the potential danger waiting outside the cottage walls.
***
Almost an hour later, a knock was heard on the front door. It was not the familiar knock of Mr. Kewley or the cheerful one of Mrs. Kewley; it was the sound of a stranger.
Elizabeth looked up from her book, and Darcy's attention shifted instantly toward the front of the cottage. The warmth and ease that had settled upon him during their quiet morning disappeared at once, replaced by the alertness Elizabeth had seen only a handful of times before.
She saw it immediately, "Mr. Darcy?" she asked with some degree of uncertainty.
He did not answer, but raised one hand, silently asking for quiet. Elizabeth felt a whirl of nerves hit her stomach. The cottage, which moments before had felt like a place of refuge, suddenly seemed far too exposed.
Darcy rose slowly, every movement controlled. Elizabeth watched him carefully, “Who might it be, Mr. Darcy?” she asked in a whisper.
His eyes moved briefly toward the windows, assessing the cottage as though calculating every possible approach and escape. Another knock was her, it was harder this time.
"Mr. Darcy," she whispered, "we should not open the door.
" Elizabeth's breath caught, but she did not cry out.
She had learned enough of this man's character these past weeks to know that whatever came now, screaming would serve nothing.
"Do you have a weapon?" she whispered, hardly recognizing her own voice as it asked such a question.
"A pistol. In my coat." He did not look at her as he said it, his eyes still on the door. "Elizabeth, I want you in the back room. Now."
"And leave you!" she cried softly in alarm.
"Now." The word was quiet, but it carried an authority she had not heard from him before.
This was not the voice of a man asking. It was the voice of a man who had, she realized with a small cold shock, done this before, or imagined it enough times that the doing of it now cost him nothing in hesitation.
She went, as she understood, they were in danger.
She knew he referred to the back room in the kitchen.
It was small, windowless but for a narrow pane no wider than her hand, and smelled of the dried lavender Mrs. Kewley kept in the linen press.
Elizabeth pressed herself against the wall beside the door, and found that her hands had gone to fists at her sides without her willing them to.
Through the thin wood she heard the front door shudder once, twice, under a fist that meant business.
"Mr. Darcy." The voice again, low, patient in the way of a man who has done violence before and finds no need to hurry toward more of it.
"There is no cause for this to become difficult.
We have not come for the lady. Give us five minutes of your time, and she need not be troubled at all. "
Elizabeth's pulse beat hard against her own ears.
"You have the advantage of me," Darcy said. His voice, when it came, was measured, so measured that Elizabeth marveled at his steady composure. He then said, “I do not know your business, nor your master's."
"You know enough." A pause, and the creak of a boot upon the step. "Wickham sends his regards."
The name struck Elizabeth like a physical blow. She had thought, perhaps hoped, that name concluded, buried with his departure to Brighton. That it should surface here, in a cottage a hundred miles from anyone who loved her, seemed some cruel joke.
She heard Darcy exhale, slow and controlled, the sound of a man absorbing a blow without permitting it to move him. "Then your master is a fool," Darcy said, "and you may tell him I said so, once you have returned to whatever hole he pays you to crawl from."
It was not wise, perhaps, to provoke a man already inclined toward the door with his shoulder.
But Elizabeth understood, even through the wall, even through her fear, exactly what Darcy was doing.
He was buying time. Every word was a minute spent, and every minute was a minute nearer to whatever help might yet be found, the Kewleys, their neighbors, or anyone at all who might come up the lane and see what was plainly not a social call.
The door took another blow, and this time she heard the wood complain, a low splintering groan that told her the bar would not hold indefinitely. She looked about the little room with something like desperation. A washstand. A trunk, too heavy to be useful. And the window, narrow as it was.
Elizabeth Bennet had never in her life fainted, nor screamed for the comfort of it, nor waited passively for a door to be resolved by better hands than her own.
She was not inclined to begin now. She decided to leave her little hiding place, and went directly to the window in the kitchen and began, as quietly as her trembling fingers permitted, to work the latch.