The ground under his body was freezing, and the cold was starting to seep deep into his bones.
She wrung her hands, anxiously looking at him, and sat next to him on the cold, dusty ground. “Are you well? Are you? Let me try again. I think I can—”
“I hate this. I hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. For George’s sake — by—” Darcy cut off an oath. “If only I could walk once more. Just stand myself up without needing to have another person pull me upevery single damned time I fall. If only I didn’t need these… accursed crutches. I’m a cripple and I’m tired of it. Sometimes I wish I’d died instead of being left a useless lump only fit to be moved around by others.”
Elizabeth grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Never, never, never, never say that! Never!” She put her arm around his shoulders. “You must never think or say that again.”
Just the sound of their breathing together and the wind whistling. It was suddenly much colder than it had been when they set out, and the wind cut through his coat, and he knew it must be nipping through Elizabeth’s as well.
He looked at Elizabeth and smiled cautiously, and she smiled cautiously back at him. He loved her desperately, and he did not know what to say.
He was frightened of becoming the sort of man that other men mocked: a henpecked husband who let his wife wear the spurs and govern the reins, as some poem he’d read while at university had described it.
He’d always had an instinctive resistance to changing his mind when faced with pressure, the need to be stiff necked and stubborn when life made itself difficult, when his father suddenly died and he needed to care for Georgiana and the estate. The need to simply nod and then continue living as capably as he could when the illness was gone, and his legs did not improve.
But sometimes one ought to bend rather than break.
He was tired, heart-sick, and terrified of losing Elizabeth. He needed to make things right, but he feared speaking, and he thought Elizabeth did too.
She made a motion, and Darcy glanced at her. “You are shivering.”
She nodded.
“Let us return inside.”
No response but then she looked at him with a scared smile. “We must still speak. I do not want to… to not. No matter what I said, I love you dearly. And—”
“Yes.” He nodded. “We will speak more, and we will remember that.”
She nodded.
He now put his own arm around her shoulder, and supported himself with it, and with the other crutch pulled himself to a standing position, and then using Elizabeth as a support they slowly, and almost stumblingly worked their way back towards the house.
When Darcy and Elizabeth emerged onto the drive, Darcy’s footman Thomas rushed up to him, holding out a package. “Sir, sir! There has been an express from Ramsgate. From Miss Darcy’s residence.”
Chapter Nineteen
Darcy’s expression was deeply anxious as he sat in one of the chairs in Longbourn’s entry hall and ripped open the seal on the letter he had been sent.
The emotional tumult Elizabeth was in after their argument that was hardly resolved was still in her, and now it was combined with an intense anxiety for the beloved sister of Mr. Darcy that she had never met.
As he scanned the page, Darcy’s face went cold, pale and stiff. He told Thomas, his footman, “Bring the carriage round, bring it round — then run to the inn in Meryton to collect Athena and the other horses, they can follow and meet us at a post station. We must be off immediately.”
Elizabeth went pale. As the footman ran off to the stables, she asked, “What is it? Is she deathly ill? Or horridly injured, and—”
“No.” Darcy shook his head and he smiled a fraction. “It is a small happiness to know that there are outcomes which would be worse — for a moment I felt as though nothing could be worse, and I was wrong. She eloped with Mr. Wickham. The godson of my father who I once told you about. The man who swore vengeance upon me if I did not give him further compensation for the living my father intended for him. Mrs. Younge, Georgiana’s companion, is his cousin. To continue her in employment after he made such a threat was clearly a mistake of the worst sort.”
“But can anything be done — there must be some hope, or you would not set off.”
“Little hope enough. They left two days ago, and though we are closer to the Great North Road here than in Ramsgate, it is not likely that I shall catch them before Gretna Green. They have a start of a day and a half, and Georgiana will have ample funds for the rent of the best horses.”
Elizabeth could do nothing but take his hand and clasp it. He looked at her, and the anger and stress between them was forgotten. In this moment Elizabeth felt nothing but a need to somehow comfort him. She pulled her chair directly next to his, and embraced him tightly, holding him tightly, and whispering something she did not understand.
“She is but sixteen. Just sixteen.”
“Fitzwilliam, my dear Fitzwilliam.” Elizabeth rubbed her hand up and down his back, and he clasped her against him, burying his nose in her shoulder.
“I ought to have…” Darcy took a deep breath, as though he wanted to capture her scent. “I ought to have… I hardly know what all I ought to have done. Paid him off, I suppose.”
