“One.”
“A triumph.”
“She played too fast.” The next breath caught at her ribs.
“A fault I can forgive in youth.”
“You are very indulgent all at once.”
“Do not spread the report. I have a character to maintain.”
Her eyes closed again. “Mr Darcy?”
“Yes.”
“Do not go yet.”
“I had not intended to.”
“Good.”
Her hand moved a little over the blanket, searching without strength. He took it before the effort could wake her fully again. The restless line of her brow eased by a fraction.
“Now,” he said, in the tone one might use with a child too weary to know it is safe, “you may sleep a little. I give you leave.”
“Mr Darcy.” She gathered air for it. “I will not take the laudanum tonight.”
“I will not urge you.”
“The dose Jane measured earlier has worn off. I would rather lie here with pain I can bear than return to the country the drug took me to last night. I suspect that country is not a safe one for me.”
“Laudanum has peculiar and uncomfortable effects.”
She swallowed. “It… was not that.”
His brow creased. “What did you see there?”
“I cannot tell. It is covered by the silence.”
He frowned and looked down at his bruised hand once more. “Would you like me to read to you?”
The question surprised her. She turned her head to look more fully. The motion sent a small ache through her shoulder and she closed her eyes against it, then opened them. “Read to me?”
“There is a book in the study. I was reading it before I came an hour ago. I could fetch it.”
“What is the book?”
“A volume of Cowper. His letters, the ones my father favoured. I have been rereading them in the evenings.”
“I should like that very much.”
He left. She heard him cross the passage, the study door open and close, his footsteps return, then he was back with the volume in hand. He built the fire a little higher—enough for reading without waking her—and drew the chair close to the bed, opening the book at a marked page. His voice was low, unhurried, the reading of a man who had read this to himself and now let another hear what he had heard.
She closed her eyes but did not sleep. The pain was still there, the leg was still there, the morning was still coming, the surgeon was still coming, the bone saw still in its case eightmiles away in Bakewell. But the room contained the sound of Cowper’s letters read aloud in the small hours by a man who had asked her not to lie and had offered her, in return, the strange gift of not requiring her to speak. Her hand was near his on the bed’s edge—not touching, but near—and she did not move it, nor did he, and the reading went on until the fire was low again and the first grey of dawn crossed the curtain’s edge.
When he closed the book, she remained awake. He looked at her.
“Miss Bennet. The surgeon will be here within the hour. Your sister will wish to be with you when he arrives. Shall I wake her?”
