Page 49 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

The ship altered course.

Elizabeth's hands went quite still. She watched, her body rigid with the effort of suppressing her hope. The effort failed. Hope rose through her defences like water through sand, unstoppable and wholly unwelcome.

The ship turned further, shifting from northwest to north. It was turning towards them. The angle of approach was consistent with a vessel responding to a signal; it was the turn of a captain who had seen smoke and decided to investigate.

“It is turning,” she said. Her voice was flat, controlled, the voice of a woman who had been broken by hope once and would not be broken again.

“It is turning,” Darcy said. His voice was the same.

The ship turned further north, then northeast, and finally east. The turn continued in a long, slow arc that had nothing to do with their signal, and everything to do with the wind. The breeze had shifted, driving the ship's course away from the island. It moved steadily away from the smoke, and away from the two people standing on a hilltop with their lungs full of shouting. The great hope they had felt was, even as they watched, curdling back into despair.

The ship sailed east, and the sail grew steadily smaller. Elizabeth watched it go with her arms hanging at her sides, the sailcloth trailing from one hand. Her face was set in an expression of frozen blankness; she had run out of both despair and composure.

She sat down heavily on the stone ledge. The smoke continued to rise from the fire beside her, quite purposeless. She sat and watched the empty horizon, and the horizon remained perfectly, indifferently empty.

She did not cry. She had cried the last time, and it had not helped. She was not going to cry again. Tears served no function on a deserted island, and she refused to waste her strength on them.

She sat for hours as the sun and the shadows moved across the stone. The smoke died as the fire burned through its fuel. Darcy did not rebuild it. Rebuilding it would have been a pretence that the fire still held a purpose, and they were long past pretending.

He sat beside her. He remained close, but did not touch her. Company was required, but comfort was not, and he understood the distinction.

They sat together on the upper level of the tower with the dead fire between them. The sea spread out in every direction, blue, flat, and enormous. It was beautiful, but its beauty was quite irrelevant, which was perhaps the cruellest thing about it.

“I was counting sails,” Elizabeth said. Her voice was raw from the great effort of not crying. “Six ships in six weeks. Four were within visible distance. Two were close enough to theoretically see the signal, yet none stopped. The numbers do not improve.”

“No.”

“I have always been a practical woman. My mother considers it a failing, while my father considers it a virtue. They are both correct. Practicality feels very much like a failing when the only logical conclusion is that no one is coming.”

He did not answer. The not-answering was correct.

“No one is coming, Fitzwilliam.”

“We do not know that.”

“We know the probability. The probability is that we will grow old and die on this island, and no one will find us until long after it matters. The probability is that my father will die believing I am dead. Jane will marry someone who is not Mr Bingley, because he will never receive your letter. My mother will wear black for a daughter who is alive, growing figs on a rock in the sea.”

Her voice cracked slightly. It was a small fissure in the composure she was maintaining with iron determination. She had decided she was not going to fall apart, and she intended to hold to that decision.

He put his hand over hers on the stone ledge. He was warm, present, and steadfastly silent.

She turned her hand under his, lacing their fingers together. She held on.

They sat until the sun was low and the shadows grew long. The horizon had given them nothing, and would continue to give them nothing. They went down the hill together, hand in hand. They made dinner and ate without speaking of the ship.

That night in the tower, her exhaustion was complete, yet she found she desperately needed him to touch her. The shift was sudden, a decision made by instinct. Her mind was exhausted from the day's punishing hope, but her body sought the only solace available: to be here, firmly anchored on this island, with this man, and nowhere else.

She kissed him hard and without prelude in the dark, tangling her hands in his hair — fierce, undecorated need. She had spent the day staring at an empty horizon, and she wanted, with a ferocity that surprised her, to be filled with something other than loss.

He responded instantly. His hands caught her waist and pulled her hips against his, matching her urgency with a desperation she had not expected. He had been carrying the day's terrible weight as well. They were setting the burden down together. His mouth sought her neck as her hands dragged his shirt over his head, the fabric tossed into the dark and forgotten.

She pushed him onto his back. The dried grass beneath the sailcloth crackled under his weight. She straddled him, bunching her dress at her waist. The position was new, and the newness was precisely what she wanted.

“Elizabeth,” he breathed into the dark. His hands gripped her thighs, and his face below hers was drawn with a concern she did not want.

“Do not ask me if I am well,” she said fiercely. “I am angry, I am frightened, and I want you. This is the only one of those things I can do anything about. Let me do something about it.”

His hands tightened on her thighs. The tightening was an answer.