Page 5 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

He bowed from across the deck. The distance made it absurd. He knew it was absurd. He did it anyway, because his body had decided on decorum, and his body was an idiot.

She inclined her head. The gesture was correct, cool, and exactly what the situation required. It told him absolutely nothing about what she was thinking.

The aunt was looking between them with barely contained interest. She had seen the bow. She had seen Elizabeth's face. She was drawing conclusions, and Darcy suspected they were accurate.

He turned back to the sea. His heart was conducting itself with considerable indecorum. His hands were shaking. He gripped the railing and thought: Four weeks. I am on this ship with her for four weeks. I will speak to her because I must. I will be civil. I will not look at her mouth. That way lies madness.

The wind shifted. A strand of her hair caught the light at the edge of his vision.

He was going to die on this ship.

Chapter Three

The Mediterranean was large. The Adeona was not. Mr Darcy was on it regardless.

Elizabeth was aware this was not, technically, his fault. Ships were booked weeks in advance. Passengers did not consult one another before purchasing passage. The Mediterranean was a popular destination, and the Adeona was a reputable vessel. The fact that the man she had last seen receiving the worst refusal in the history of English proposals was standing thirty feet away was a coincidence so thoroughly inconvenient she suspected God of having a theatrical streak.

Gripping the railing, she refused to look at him. She looked at the sea—blue, infinite, and blessedly free of tall men in dark coats bowing from across the deck.

“Elizabeth.” Mrs Gardiner's voice carried a dangerous frequency; she had noticed something interesting and intended to pursue it. “Who is that gentleman?”

“Which gentleman?”

“The one who just bowed at you from across the deck as though he were signalling a passing frigate.”

Elizabeth's jaw tightened. “That is Mr Darcy.”

A silence. Mrs Gardiner was a woman of formidable composure. Still, the name produced a pause — brief, weighted, and followed by the slight elevation of both eyebrows that was Mrs Gardiner's equivalent of a gasp. She knew the name. She knew it because Elizabeth had brought it up in London before leaving for Kent, mentioning him four times in one conversation with studied casualness to prove she was not thinking about him. She knew it because Jane's careful letters had contained enough about Netherfield's occupants to assemble the relevant picture.

She did not, however, know about Hunsford. Nobody knew about Hunsford.

“Mr Darcy,” Mrs Gardiner repeated. “The gentleman from Netherfield. Mr Bingley's friend.”

“The very same.”

“The one you described as — let me recall — 'disagreeably proud and not worth the trouble of conversation.'“

“I may have been hasty in my assessment.”

“You were very thorough in your assessment. You gave it twice.”

Elizabeth turned from the railing, projecting the composure of someone merely choosing to inspect a different portion of the deck. “He is a fellow passenger. The ship is large enough for both of us. I do not anticipate difficulty.”

Mrs Gardiner looked at Elizabeth's hands, clenched at her sides. She looked at Elizabeth's face, performing valiancy with its colour. She looked across the deck at Mr Darcy, staring at the sea with rigid concentration, trying to bore a hole in it through sheer force of will.

“No,” Mrs Gardiner said mildly. “I can see there will be no difficulty at all.”

Dinner was unavoidable.

The Adeona carried a small number of passengers, and they dined together in a common cabin that had been fitted with a table long enough for twelve and narrow enough that one's elbows were in constant negotiation with one's neighbours. Captain Holt sat at the head and dispensed hospitality with the enthusiasm of a man fulfilling a contractual obligation. A clergyman and his wife occupied one end. A merchant from Bristol occupied the other. Mr Darcy sat directly across from Elizabeth. He looked tired. She noticed it involuntarily, with a wince. His face was thinner than she remembered. The lines around his eyes were deeper. He had not been sleeping well, concealing the want of it through rigorous posture — a device she recognised because she was employing it herself.

He stood when she entered. Of course, he stood. He would have stood if she had entered a burning building — the manners were structural, built into the architecture of his bones; no amount of personal catastrophe could dislodge them. He bowed. She curtsied. The formality achieved a kind of absurdity. They were performing the rituals of polite society as though they had not last spoken in a room where she called him arrogant, and he told her he loved her in the worst possible way.

“Miss Bennet.” His voice was careful. Controlled. Stripped of everything except the consonants.

“Mr Darcy.” Hers was no better. She sounded as if she were reading from a card.

Mrs Gardiner, who missed nothing and forgave everything, extended her hand, intending to make this dinner tolerable through sheer force of social competence. “Mr Darcy, I am Mrs Gardiner. Elizabeth's aunt. My husband and I are very pleased to have company for the crossing.”