Page 27 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

“Then what is the use of it?”

He looked at her directly. The firelight was in his eyes and she did not look away this time because the question was real and she wanted the answer to be real.

“The use of it,” he said, “is that I wrote it. I sat in my cabin and told my closest friend that I had lied to him. I believed I knew better than he did about the woman he loved. I was wrong, and I was sorry. Whether the letter reaches him matters enormously. Whether I wrote it matters more.”

Elizabeth's hands loosened on her knees. The physical release was involuntary, a response to the unvarnished honesty of a man offering no excuses.

The anger was still there, familiar and necessary. It had carried her through Hunsford, the voyage, the shipwreck, and seven days on this island. But the foundation of that anger had shifted. She was no longer certain of her footing, nor was she sure whether the shift brought relief or loss.

She stood and walked out through the archway, down the hill, and across the beach to the far end of the cove, where she sat on a flat stone above the waterline, looking out at the dark sea. The last light faded from the horizon. The water moved against the rocks with steady, ancient patience.

She sat there until the stars came out. Her thoughts were disjointed. The anger, his admission, and the letter to Bingley moved through her mind without settling. He had been wrong, but he had admitted it and tried to make amends. The attempt might fail, but the effort mattered.

The effort mattered.

She did not want it to matter. She wanted the anger clean and justified. Justified anger was armour, and she needed armour on an island where she slept four feet from the man who had broken her sister's heart. Yet this same man had rebuilt their chimney with his bare hands. The contradiction could not hold. Eventually, she would have to decide what to do with it.

But not tonight. Tonight she would merely sit on the rock, listen to the sea, and allow her resentment to settle.

She went back to the tower when the air turned cold. The fire was low. Darcy was lying on his pallet with his back to the room, and whether he was asleep or awake she could not tell and did not ask.

She lay down on her own pallet. The flagstones were hard beneath the grass and sailcloth. His breathing was even; he was either asleep or feigning it perfectly.

She was four feet from him, looking at the ceiling, at the sailcloth patches and the stone and the one gap where a star was visible, a single bright point in the dark.

She was closer to him than she had been the night before. She had placed her pallet an inch, perhaps two, nearer to his. The movement was so small it might have been accidental, but it was not. She closed her eyes and did not move it back.

Chapter Twelve

Darcy told her about Wickham on a Tuesday.

He did not know it was a Tuesday. He had lost count of the days somewhere between the fifth and the eighth. The rhythm of the island had replaced the calendar. Mornings were defined by the spring and the fire; afternoons by fishing and foraging; evenings by the tower and the careful proximity he and Elizabeth had negotiated. Yet it felt like a Tuesday—unremarkable and unheroic.

They were on the beach, carrying stones. Elizabeth had decided they should spell out HELP in rocks on the sand, large enough to be read from a ship's crow's nest. The logic was sound, but the execution was punishing. The Mediterranean beach stones were heavy, requiring committed labour to arrange into massive letters. They had been hauling them since morning and were currently working on the E. Darcy's back ached in strenuous objection.

“The P will be the most difficult,” Elizabeth said, setting a stone into the curve of the E. “Straight lines are simple. Curves require planning.”

“You are being excessively precise for a rescue signal.”

“I am being as precise as necessary for a ship half a mile away to read it. There is no point in spelling HELP if the letters are illegible.”

He laughed. He had laughed more on this island than in the entirety of the previous year. Elizabeth Bennet produced wit as naturally as other women produced watercolours.

They worked in silence for a while. The stones were warm from the sun. The sea was calm, lapping at the edges of the cove with the drowsy patience of mid-morning. Above them, the tower stood on its hill, the signal fire's remains visible as a dark smudge against the stone.

“Mr Darcy,” Elizabeth said.

She was not looking at him. She was adjusting a stone with her foot, her expression hidden by her hair. It hung in salt-stiffened waves that she pushed back impatiently. Darcy observed her with discreet attention.

“Your letter at Hunsford,” she said. “You wrote about Mr Wickham.”

His body went still before his mind caught up. It was an old, deep reflex—the same response he had to the name regardless of context. Even here, on an isolated island, Wickham's name carried the weight of old and particular grief.

“I did,” he said.

“You wrote that his character was not what it appeared. That the living at Kempston was refused him because of his conduct, not your malice. That his debts were considerable and his habits worse.”

“Yes.”