Page 31 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

She averted her eyes. She had stared too long, and she was aware of it. She could no longer ignore her physical sense of Fitzwilliam Darcy, and the realization was distinctly uneasy.

She looked at the fire, but it offered no help.

They then swam together immediately. The illusion of taking turns broke down within two days, worn away by practicality and heat. The cove was spacious enough for both, and maintaining the pretense proved more noticeable than the swimming itself.

Elizabeth swam in her chemise; Darcy swam in his trousers. The wet garments clung to them, revealing more than dry fabric ever could. This unspoken exposure was present every time they stood together in the shallows, water running off their skin.

Neither spoke of it. The silence stretched between them, thick and heavy, and could not, she suspected, continue much longer.

She caught him looking once as she came out of the water, her chemise plastered to her body, her hair dark and heavy down her back. She looked up and met his gaze. His eyes were not polite. They were direct and precise, observing her with a focus that had nothing to do with civility. The look lasted a second, perhaps two, before he looked away. His jaw set, his shoulders squared, and his composure snapped back into place.

A second was enough.

The raft was Darcy's idea.

He constructed it from the leftover wreckage. It was a simple square, about six feet across, made of planks tied with rope, with a vertical plank serving as a rudder and a piece of sailcloth as a sail. He worked on it for two days with intense focus. Elizabeth started to associate this focus with his worst ideas; her best ideas came with doubt, but his worst ones seemed certain. The raft was one such certainty. She stayed silent because her hope gave her a sense of certainty, and she couldn't argue against hope.

His plan was to paddle to a shipping lane. He believed the merchant routes between Sicily and the Italian mainland ran within fifteen or twenty miles of the island. A man on a raft with a sail could cover that distance in a day if the wind was favourable. If it was not, he could paddle. The plan was rational and detailed, yet it ignored the realities of the open Mediterranean. Elizabeth chose not to raise these realities. Voicing them meant saying aloud that the raft might kill him, and she was not prepared to say that.

He launched at dawn. Elizabeth stood on the beach, watching him push the raft into the shallows and climb aboard. The raft sat precariously low in the water. He paddled out of the cove. The sail caught the breeze and billowed weakly, and the raft moved. Elizabeth watched it grow smaller. Dread settled in her as she watched. He was floating away on a collection of wood and rope that she privately expected to fail within forty minutes.

Her assessment was optimistic. The raft lasted thirty-seven minutes.

She saw it happen from the tower, where she had climbed to track his progress. The raft was perhaps half a mile from the island when the port lashings gave way. The planks separated with a leisurely inevitability. Darcy went into the water, and the raft's remains drifted apart.

It took him an hour to swim back. Elizabeth spent the hour standing at the waterline, watching his dark head in the blue water. She counted his strokes the way she had once counted stitches in embroidery—mechanically and compulsively. The counting was a substitute for the one thing she could not do: swim out and drag him back. Her helplessness was a new and particular kind of misery.

He waded ashore, soaked, furious, and breathing hard. His wound was flushed from the exertion. He stood in the shallows with water streaming off him, his hands on his knees, his chest heaving. He did not speak.

Elizabeth tried not to laugh, but her mouth did not cooperate. The amusement was wretched, inappropriate, and irresistible. The image of proud, meticulous Darcy standing in the surf after his raft so thoroughly disassembled itself was the funniest thing she had seen in two weeks.

Her mouth revealed her true feelings. The corners lifted, she pressed them down, and they lifted again.

He saw it.

His face changed. She had expected anger, or at least the rigid dignity he wore when embarrassed. Instead, his composure shattered, revealing his amusement, directed squarely at himself. It was so unexpected, and so entirely out of character, that she stared at him. The staring broke the last of her control, and she laughed.

It was not a polite laugh; it was ungraceful and hearty. Seeing Darcy's dripping, raftless, angry figure allowed her to finally let go of two weeks of built-up tension.

He also laughed, though it was short and hesitant, as if it was forced out of him unwillingly. The laugh was rough, unfamiliar, and she immediately wanted to hear it again.

“The port lashings,” he said.

“Yes.”

“They were insufficient.”

“I noticed.”

“I should have doubled them.”

“You should not have built a raft.”

He looked at her. Water dripped from his hair onto his shoulders. His shirt was transparent. She did not look at his shirt.

“The shipping lanes are too far,” he said.

“Yes.”