She blinked. “A sheep?”
“Enormous. Filthy. Utterly disinterested in us.”
Elizabeth’s shoulders relaxed—but only slightly.
Darcy rubbed a hand over his face. “I should have expected it. Selwyn said the fences here were barely standing.”
She looked out into the trees. “Still… better to check.”
“Yes,” he said. “Better to check. And a bloody good thing it was just a sheep, because between you trying to rouse me and the squeaking of that door hinge, it is a wonder all of Cambridge did not hear us.”
He gestured for her to go inside first. And once the door shut behind them, neither of them reached for sleep again.
Elizabethslicedthroughthedried sausage with a dull penknife, the motion jerky from fatigue. A heel of black bread followed, divided as evenly as she could manage on a flat tin plate. She crossed the room in her stocking feet and set the meal in front of Darcy, who was crouched near the door, oiling the hinges with something he had pulled from a battered kit under the cot.
“Eat,” she said simply, nudging the plate toward him.
He glanced up, surprised. Then nodded once and pulled the food toward him without a word.
She did not sit. Instead, she crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “So. What now? Where to?”
Darcy chewed slowly, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand—a necessity she was certain must have pained his sense of propriety. “Youare not going anywhere.”
“I know that,” she said. “I meant you.”
“I can hardly leave you here alone, can I?”
“So we are simply to sit here until we run out of food?”
He gave a long, tired exhale. “If I am to find Maddox… if we mean to catch any of them… yes. I will have to do… something else.”
“But you might not,” she said quickly.
Darcy looked up, brow furrowed. “What?”
“We might already be setting a trap.” She tilted her head toward the cottage window. “Wemighthave been followed.”
He froze for just a beat. Then he set the bread down. “If we have been followed, it means I failed to cover our trail.”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “You are not the only one trying to outwit the enemy, remember. Someone may have been watching Longbourn for days.”
He rubbed his eyes. “I had hoped the decoy letter would suffice to scatter them. But after that scene in Meryton yesterday… Well. At least it gave us enough time to get out. If they were that close, they would have had any number of chances to shoot us before now.”
Elizabeth swallowed. “Iknewgoing to that festival was a bad idea.”
“Notgoing to it would have been a bad idea as well,“ Darcy sighed tiredly. “I should have dragged you to Scotland and hidden you under a frost heave. Perhaps nobody would have found you then.”
A smile threatened to tug on her mouth. “I also know you well enough to expect you have formed a backup plan by now.”
He arched his brows tiredly as he chewed. “I asked Bingley to send a message to Richard. A coded express, last night. If all went as planned, Richard should already know where we are. Ten pounds says he is on his way already.”
She smiled weakly. “You do not have ten pounds.”
He lifted one shoulder. “Then it is a good thing I feel confident in the wager.”
Elizabeth dropped onto a footstool beside him with a long exhale, her limbs still aching from the night’s ride. She reached for the tin plate without thinking, tore a corner from the heel of bread, and took a bite—only to find Darcy watching her, one brow raised and the barest hint of a crooked grin at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh… oh, that was yours.” She swallowed. “Surely, I… there is a bit more. Let me—”
