“Well—” Bingley toyed with his hat. “Surely, some news will come soon. I cannot fathom that there is absolutely nothing to be learned.”
“Agreed.” Darcy stroked his moustache, tugging on it and taking some relief in the mild sense of pain—pain that had the power to bring clarity to a point, to chastise the failings of his frame and focus his wandering thoughts.
“Will you return to Pemberley soon?” Bingley wondered. “I hate to be seen as begging an invitation, but…”
Darcy sighed. “I do not know. I do not… know anything.”
“Lizzy—Lizzy,wakeup!”
Elizabeth shot upright, filling her lungs with gasp after suffocating gasp of air that felt hot… sticky… and altogether too pressing. One hand twisted in the sheets, desperately tightening them about herself, while the other…
“Lizzy, it is me! It is Jane!”
Elizabeth froze, staring at the knotted fist she had been slinging at her own sister; the way Jane held one arm protectively over her face and tried to grasp at the threatening fist with the other.
Elizabeth swallowed and lowered her hand as she mumbled a confused apology.
“Is aught amiss, ma’am?” quaked a small voice from the end of the bed. “Shall I fetch a doctor, Miss Bennet?”
Elizabeth levered herself about and saw Margaret—pale and shaken in her nightdress, and apparently just awakened from her sleeping quarters off of Elizabeth’s room.
Jane steadied Elizabeth’s hand, securing the sheets, and waiting until her sister could focus on her face before answering in tones of forced lightness.
“I am certain it is nothing of concern, Margaret. Only a bad dream. Is that not right, Lizzy?”
Margaret’s eyes were still round and startling white in the shadowed room, but she bobbed her curtsey and composed herself with a quiet, “Yes, ma’am. Shall I bring some tea?”
Elizabeth found enough of her voice to decline the maid’s offer. “I will be quite all right, Margaret. Please, get some rest. I will try not to awaken you again.”
After Margaret had gone, Jane went to the basin and returned with a cool cloth. Elizabeth’s brow was dripping with sweat, and the inner parts of her cheeks raw and bleeding. She swiped at her face with the back of her hand and gratefully accepted the cloth.
“I am sorry to wake you again, Jane.”
Jane sank beside her on the pillow. “I had hoped the nightmares would stop, now that we are… well, we are perfectly safe here, are we not?”
Elizabeth sighed and cast the damp cloth on the floor. She ought to care—ought never to be so slovenly—but all her limbs seemed turned to water, and the last thing on her mind was a soiled cloth. She flopped back to the pillow and stared at the ceiling. “Was I carrying on very dreadfully? I must have been to wake both you and Margaret from different rooms.”
“Worse than before,” Jane agreed. “You were crying for some while. I only heard it faintly at first, but by the time I was awake enough to understand that it was you, you had begun to thrash and shout. Poor Margaret came in carrying a bed warmer, thinking there was an attacker in your room.”
“Good heavens! I was shouting? What… what did I say?”
“Nothing anyone could repeat,” Jane reassured her. “Most of it was unintelligible. What terrified me was that I thought for a moment you truly meant to do me harm. Had I not managed to cover my face, I am sure you would have. You don't remember any of it?”
“No.” Elizabeth swallowed again—more of a sob—and rolled towards Jane. “I was dreaming, I think. All I remember was the feeling of being chased. They caught me in a corner—it was the same as all the times before, but this time there were more of them.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
Elizabeth squinted into the darkness. “They caught me, and they were dragging me… and I saw…” She gasped and bit the back of her fisted hand as the tears started to flow again. “And then that smell! The coppery one—oh, Jane, I'm going to be sick!”
Jane leapt from the bed, and only just in time to snatch a basin. Elizabeth heaved and retched, mostly in vain as her overtaxed body shook with paroxysms of terror and revulsion. Jane soothed the sweat-streaked hair from her brow and murmured comfort as Elizabeth finally collapsed back to the mattress.
“Lizzy, perhaps we should see a doctor. It seems to be getting worse.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “What can a doctor do? Nothing but prescribe Laudanum and keep me ill and weak all the time. I would rather be dead than in a forced stupor. Or an asylum! Have you heard what they are like? And besides—” Here, she turned away and pressed her face as deep into the pillow as she could. “If I told what was haunting me, I would never leave it behind. Richard’s family cannot know what happened—I cannot tellhim…”
“Mr Darcy?”
Elizabeth nodded into the pillow.
