Page 51 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

“I have said nicer things.”

“You have certainly said more romantic things. Nicer is different. Nicer is someone who sees what you are actually good at, and acknowledges it. You said that I am good at surviving, and I am. Hearing that matters to me, perhaps even more than hearing that I am beautiful or beloved—though I appreciate those as well.”

He laughed warmly against her hair. She could make him laugh in the dark after the worst day they had spent on the island.

She fell asleep against him while he held her. The stars turned overhead. The island held them, as it had held them for six weeks, and would hold them for however many weeks remained. It was neither rescue nor prison, but simply the particular, daily fact of their lives. The fact was bearable only because they bore it together.

The horizon stayed completely empty, and the fire stayed dead. But morning would eventually come. Elizabeth would rise to count her figs, and catch her fish, and survive. She would continue to survive because that was who she was. And who she was, on this island, was wholly enough.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Darcy made lists.

He made them in his head, for the island had no paper and no ink. He had discovered that this lack of materials was insufficient to stop a man who had managed a ten-thousand-a-year estate since the age of two-and-twenty. The lists formed the way weather formed: involuntarily and atmospherically. They were the natural product of a mind that could not observe a problem without immediately seeking to organise it.

The lists were about England.

His first list concerned legal matters. He required a special licence, obtainable through the Archbishop's office, which his solicitor, Kensington, could prepare in advance. The marriage must occur immediately upon their return to English jurisdiction; Malta had an Anglican chapel, and so did Gibraltar. The speed was essential, not because he doubted Elizabeth's commitment, but because the ton possessed ruthless arithmetic. They would count the days between rescue and marriage and draw terrible conclusions. Those conclusions would inevitably fall on Elizabeth, for custom dictated that the woman bear the burden of scandal. Custom was the enemy he was preparing to fight.

His second list concerned settlements. Elizabeth would require an independent income. The settlement must be generous enough to protect her if he died—a thought he had been unable to avoid since the fever scare. It must also be particular enough to demonstrate to the Bennet family that his intentions were strictly honourable.

His third list concerned the ton. Lady Catherine would present a problem, as would Caroline Bingley, and the general population of London drawing rooms. He could manage his aunt through the simple expedient of ignoring her opinion, though in practice this would require withstanding an untested level of rage. Caroline could be managed through Bingley; his friend's good nature and loyalty, once properly redirected, would provide a buffer. The drawing rooms would require time, carefully managed invitations, and the slow work of social repair. It was not his strength, but it was his very great obligation.

His fourth list concerned Georgiana. She would need preparation—not for the match itself, which she would welcome, but for the circumstances surrounding it. Her brother had been stranded on an island with a woman for weeks. Georgiana was seventeen and perceptive. She would understand the implications, and that understanding needed to arrive gently from his pen, before it arrived brutally from societal gossip.

He was composing the letter to Georgiana in his head, selecting words with the care of a man building a stone wall, when Elizabeth said: “Stop.”

They were resting on the warm sand of the beach. The routine of their days had become so settled it resembled domesticity more than survival. He was sitting against the rocks with his knees drawn up and his hands tightly clasped.

“Stop what?”

“Stop whatever you are doing in your head. You have been somewhere else all morning. Your face bears the expression of a man sitting at a desk with correspondence. There is no desk, and there is no correspondence. You are on a beach, and I would appreciate your company, if the beach is not too inconvenient for your schedule.”

He looked at her. She was sitting on the sand with her dress pulled over her knees, her hair loose and salt-tangled. Her brown face was direct. She held a particular expression that meant she had been observing him for some time, and had reached a conclusion she intended to deliver whether he wished to hear it or not.

“I am planning,” he said.

“I can see that you are planning. What are you planning?”

“England.”

“England.”

“The return,” he said. “The legal arrangements, the marriage, and the management of our situation in society. I am arranging the letters that must be written, and the people who must be managed.”

She regarded him with steady attention.

“Fitzwilliam,” she said. “We are on a beach.”

“I am aware.”

“We are on a beach, on an island that may never permit us to leave. We have sand, fish, figs, and each other. We possess no paper, no solicitor, and no Archbishop. We certainly have no access to the ton, who are at this moment doing exactly what they always do: talking about people who are not in the room.”

“I am trying to protect you.”

“From what?” she asked. “The sand? The fish? I believe I can manage the fish without legal counsel.”

He tried not to smile, but he was unsuccessful. The smile escaped him involuntarily.