“Your sister had better make haste,” he said, though there was no one waking to hear him.
He left the parlour and shut the door with care. The passage was empty. No one called to him. No new demand had yet found him. He went to the study because there was nowhere else to go with what had got into him.
Inside, with the door closed, the shaking began.
Not visible enough, perhaps, to be remarked by another man at ten paces. Enough to make the tinder slip from his fingers when he tried to mend the fire. Enough to send a hard bright fury through him at the weakness of his own hand. He set the flint down and stood gripping the mantel until the worst passed.
He knew the look of a patient who might be kept and the look of one who might be lost. He had taught himself the distinction by candlelight beside Georgiana’s bed. Miss Bennet had strength of mind, insolence enough to answer him, courage enough to keep from crying out when even the movement of breathing tore at her. None of it signified against blood already spent, fever waiting in the wound, and the long cruelty of recovery if recovery came at all.
He had pulled her out of the lake. He had held her down while her leg was set. He had fed her like a child. He had no right to be frightened by her now, yet fright had him by the throat.
He went to the desk and braced both hands against it until the room held still.
A stranger.
That was the proper word. A stranger with a broken leg on his land. A burden he had taken up because no decent man could have done otherwise.
The word would not hold.
Theafternoonhadgonea long way toward evening before the front door opened again.
By then, the light had altered. The panes of the study window held that thin winter dimness which had less of descent in it than of withdrawal. He had mended the fire twice. He had gone up to Georgiana and down again. He had taken no dinner worth naming. Once, not half an hour earlier, he had stopped outside the parlour and heard nothing within but the low murmur of Mrs. Reeves and the occasional answer from the bed.
When the bell rang in the hall, he was already on his feet.
The woman on the threshold had come fast and apparently without stopping for breath. Snow clung in a whitening band to the hem of her dark cloak. Her gloves were damp. A few strands of fair hair had worked loose at her temple under the bonnet that had plainly been tied in haste. She was not handsome in the polished style some women cultivated, but there was an elegance in the face, breeding in the carriage, and urgency so severe it had burnt all self-consciousness away.
“Mr Darcy?”
“Yes.”
“I am Mrs Marsden. I had your letter. My sister is here?”
Thank heaven.
The name altered everything at once. The sister was real, had come at his summons and in apparent concern. Married. Established and respectable, and someone else to fret and grieve over that poor woman’s bedside when her wound… No, he would not think of that.
What he had now, standing in his doorway, was every form of comfort and decency for all concerned. Miss Bennet could not be moved, but Mrs Marsden must have some resources of her own, must she not? She would not be another soul thrust into his keeping. She could make decisions… the ones that inevitably must come.
He bowed. “Mrs Marsden. Yes, your sister is here. Pray come in.”
She stepped inside at once. “How is she?”
“Alive.”
Mrs Marsden tore off her bonnet and stared at him with wide blue eyes. “That is a very strange reassurance. What has happened?”
“She has broken her leg, and the bone went through the skin. She lost a deal of blood.”
The woman gasped and reeled faintly. Darcy took her arm before she could be yet another collapsed figure on his property today. “Doctor Aldrige has seen her. The leg is set. She has taken some broth. She remains in great pain, but her senses are clear.”
“I must see her.”
“This way.”
She followed him down the passage with swift contained steps. She must have walked thus all the way from her cottage, for she had come more quickly than he would have believed possible when the note left the house. The efficiency of a household prepared to move at once when called. A servant left with orders. A husband informed. All the solid machinery of established domestic existence. Thank God for it.
At the parlour door, he turned back to her.
