Page 21 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

“I am asserting a tested capability. I walked down a gangplank with this wound two days ago.”

“You walked down a gangplank at knifepoint. I am not certain the motivation transfers.”

“Miss Bennet.” His voice was dry and tired and faintly amused in a way that cost him effort. “I can walk.”

He could walk, though slowly, with his hand pressed against his side. The careful precision of his steps betrayed the pain he refused to admit. They climbed to the spring together. He drank desperately, gratefully, on his knees with his hands cupped in the water. She watched him. They were alive; they had water; the next item on the list was food.

Food presented itself in a form Elizabeth had not previously considered edible: small creatures clinging to rocks in tidal pools.

“Limpets,” she said, prying one off with a flat stone. It came away with a reluctant sucking sound. The limpet sat in her palm, grey, conical, and entirely unappetising. She knew they were edible because of a book Mr Gardiner had lent her—a book now at the bottom of the sea, along with her clothes and an excellent pair of walking boots.

She put the limpet in her mouth. It tasted of distilled seawater and remarkable chewiness. When it finally surrendered, she swallowed, looked at the tidal pool, and reached for another.

Darcy was watching her. His expression mingled admiration with concern; he was evidently revising his definition of an accomplished young lady.

“They are edible,” she said. “They are not good. They are edible.”

He took one. He chewed. His face did not change. He simply locked his features into a neutral position and waited for the experience to pass.

“There are mussels as well,” she said, pointing to a cluster of dark shells on the rocks at the waterline. “And I believe those may be sea urchins, although I cannot be certain, and I would rather not discover I am wrong by eating one.”

They ate limpets and mussels, raw, sitting on the rocks with their feet in the warm water. The mussels were marginally better than the limpets—softer, and less aggressively briny. Elizabeth ate until the sharp edge of hunger dulled. She rested her hands on her knees, looked at the sea, and reckoned what they had.

They had water. Food — barely, raw, monotonous, but food. Darcy's wound was bound. The sun was warm, and the air was kind, and the cove was sheltered from the wind.

Beyond that, they had nothing. They lacked shelter, tools, and any means of signalling. Darcy's tinderbox was soaked; it might or might not work when it dried. They had no knowledge of their location, and no certainty that anyone alive knew it either.

The merchant ship's crew had seen them taken by pirates. The Gardiners had watched her disappear. Mrs Gardiner's scream still echoed across the water in Elizabeth's memory. They knew she had been taken, but they could not know where the pirates had sailed. The storm, the sinking, and this island had no witnesses. Any search would look in the wrong waters for a ship that no longer existed.

No one was coming.

The thought landed this time. She let it.

The sea, having nearly killed them, spent the rest of the day delivering apologies.

Wreckage washed into the cove throughout the day, deposited piece by piece on the sand. Elizabeth and Darcy collected everything. They waded into the shallows, dragging sodden planks, tangled rope, and waterlogged canvas up the beach. By late afternoon, they had assembled a dismal collection of salvage.

Sailcloth. Heavy, salt-stiff, torn but usable. Several arm-lengths, enough to rig a shade or a lean-to or, if Elizabeth was being optimistic, a very unconvincing tent.

Rope. Yards of it, knotted and tangled, hemp fibres swollen with seawater but intact. Rope was undeniably useful, far surpassing the practical value of hair pins or novels.

Timber planks. Broken pieces of the hull and deck, splintered at the ends, salt-darkened. Fuel, if they could make fire. Building material, if they had anything to build.

They found a breached barrel, half-full of seawater and hard tack. The biscuit was waterlogged and soft, but it provided sustenance. Elizabeth fished out every piece and spread them on a rock to dry, or at least to become less wet.

Darcy worked beside her, hauling planks and coiling rope with his jaw set against the pulling at his wound. She told him to stop twice. He stopped neither time. She considered telling him a third time and did not, because she was learning the limits of his stubbornness. He would stop only when his body forced the issue.

He had also retained the knife he took from the pirate ship — she had not asked how — and the tinderbox, pulled from his ruined coat. Flint and steel in a small tin box. Darcy opened it, examined the contents, closed it, and set it in the sun. His expression gave nothing away, but his hands placed the box with deliberate, careful precision.

If the tinderbox worked, they could make fire, cook, and eat more than raw shellfish. Their immediate future depended entirely upon a small tin box drying in the sun.

“The hard tack will last three days,” Elizabeth said. She was organising. She had managed Longbourn since she was fifteen. The habit of competence did not dissolve simply because the household in question was a beach. “Perhaps four if we ration. After that, shellfish and whatever else we can find.”

Darcy nodded. He was standing with his hand against his side, looking at the hills behind the beach. His gaze moved slowly, cataloguing the terrain with the same methodical attention she had seen him bring to a room at Netherfield — assessing, evaluating, storing away. She had thought, then, that he was judging. She was less certain now.

“There may be fresh water further inland,” he said. “We found the spring, but on islands this size there are sometimes cisterns, or ruins. Old structures.”

“You have extensive experience with deserted islands?”