Page 14 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

“I intend to.”

“And the letter you wrote me. In April.” She did not turn around. “I have read it. Many times. You should know that.”

She walked away without stopping again. He watched her go, gripping the railing. He drew a deliberate breath, struggling to steady himself after what she had just said.

She read it. Many times.

He stood at the railing for a long time. The gull settled on a crate, entirely indifferent to human emotion, simply waiting for someone to drop a fish.

The day passed. At dinner they spoke with careful, surface-level civility. They had said too much and were now pretending they had not. The performance convinced no one. Mrs Gardiner’s expression throughout the meal suggested she was actively restraining her applause.

Returning to his cabin after dinner, Darcy sat at his desk. He neither wrote nor read the dispatches. He thought of Elizabeth at the railing, not turning around, saying I have read it many times. The sentence hung in the dark of his cabin like a lit lamp.

She had read the letter. The letter that had been written in anguish and delivered in fury and had contained, alongside its self-defence and its confessions, the only honest account of his feelings that he had ever committed to paper. She had read it many times.

He did not know what that meant, though he wanted it to mean everything. His acquaintance with disappointment taught him it might mean nothing. Reading a letter many times could indicate anger, confusion, or the unhappy habit of returning to a wound. It did not necessarily indicate what he hoped. He refused to name that hope; naming it gave it power, and hope had never reliably served him.

He put out the candle. He lay in the dark.

Tomorrow they would dock briefly for water at a Mediterranean port. He would send the letter to Bingley from there. He would do it because Elizabeth had asked, and because it was right. Doing the right thing was all he had left, even if the returns were uncertain and she had clearly told him they should not be friends.

She was right. Friendship was too small a word for what existed between them, too easily managed with good manners and careful distance. Their connection was the wreckage of a proposal, a refusal, a letter, and a reckoning. The wreckage was still smoking. Standing near it was dangerous. Yet neither of them was walking away.

Closing his eyes, he recalled her short, startled laugh. He was going to make her laugh again. He did not know how or when. But laughing against her own will meant she was fighting herself, and that was not contempt. That narrow, implausible ground was where he intended to build whatever came next.

He slept. It was the first full night's sleep he had managed since April.

Chapter Seven

The sun had not yet cleared the horizon when Elizabeth came on deck, which put her approximately twenty minutes ahead of the light and, as it transpired, considerably ahead of the pirates.

She slept badly. She had spoken too much truth the previous day and now felt its weight. The cabin was too small for her and her thoughts simultaneously. The sea, at least, was very large.

The sky was the improbable blue of Mediterranean dawn, a shade London weather did not produce. The air was warm already, carrying salt and something faintly green from wherever the nearest land was concealing itself. She stood at the starboard railing. She attempted to think about nothing, which meant she thought about Jane and the letter to Bingley. She thought about Darcy’s polite, careful expression at dinner, which she had been revisiting since nine o'clock.

She was failing at nothing. This was customary.

The sea was very still. It was glassy in a way the open Mediterranean had not been on any previous morning. The surface was undisturbed except for the Adeona's own wake spreading behind them in a slow, pale V. The stillness was ominous only in retrospect.

She heard shouting first. Then a pistol fired, sharp and close. It was a signal. She spun around, understanding very little of what she was seeing.

Pirates were, she subsequently reflected, considerably less romantic in practice than literature suggested. Two vessels sat close off the Adeona's port side. They were low and fast, already emptying men onto her deck by rope and grapple. The attackers moved with practised, unceremonious efficiency. They came over the sides while the crew was still waking. A man ran past Elizabeth, close enough that she felt the wind of his passage. A sailor followed immediately, trying to catch him and failing.

“Miss Bennet.”

There he was: Darcy, appearing from the companionway. He was slightly out of breath, his coat missing, his hair disordered in a way she had never witnessed. She noted the disorder despite the chaos.

“Mr Darcy⁠—”

“Stay close.”

He did not touch her. He positioned himself between her and the nearest boarding men, efficiently blocking their path.

She stayed close.

What followed was chaos administered with professional purpose. The Adeona's crew fought above and behind her, defending their ship but losing ground by increments. The attackers moved with the quiet purpose of men seeking only the conclusion. They wanted the cargo, and they wanted passengers with ransom value.

She saw her uncle first. Two men held him with the practised ease of men directing livestock towards a gate. He was steered towards the hatch leading to the hold, where other passengers had gathered. He caught her eye across the deck and mouthed something. She could not read it. Her aunt was not on deck; she must still be below.