Page 55 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

“I have not worn shoes in three weeks.”

“The path will be covered in broken stone and debris. We have no surgeon and no clean bandages. If you cut your foot in the dark, an infection would be deadly.”

She angrily conceded the point. She was far too cold and wet to argue the matter gracefully.

He left her in the dark. She listened to his footsteps sloshing on the muddy path until they grew faint. Then, she was left to listen only to the rain, the wind, and the sound of her own rapid breathing. Her pulse was racing towards sheer panic, and she forced herself to breathe slowly, demanding composure.

He was gone for twenty minutes. They were the longest twenty minutes she had experienced on the island, far worse than the agony of watching the ship pass, or the terror of the raft sinking. Those events had contained action; these twenty minutes contained nothing but blind, helpless waiting in the dark.

Finally, he returned. She heard him before she saw him; his breathing was terribly laboured, and his footsteps dragged heavily on the wet ground. When he crouched beneath the overhang, she could barely make out the shape of his face in the dark, but she instantly knew something was wrong.

“The tower is intact,” he said. “The upper level lost a section of roof. The lower room is flooded but the walls held.”

“You are hurt.”

“A broken branch on the path. I could not see it in the dark.”

“Where?”

“My side. The same side.”

Her hands blindly searched for him in the dark. His shirt was wet and torn. Beneath the fabric, her fingers found his skin, and traced along the familiar scar on his ribs. Just below it, she felt a new, jagged wound. It was covered in a warm wetness that was quite distinct from the rain.

“How bad?”

“I do not know. It is bleeding. The bleeding is steady but not heavy.”

“Lie down.”

He lay down upon the cold ground beneath the overhang, and she knelt beside him. Her hands explored the wound in the dark with desperate, systematic attention. She had no medical training, no supplies, and no light. She tore a long strip of fabric from the ruined hem of her dress without a second thought.

She pressed the wadded cloth hard against the wound. He hissed sharply. It was the sound of a man attempting to suppress his agony and failing. The failure was strangely reassuring; silence would have meant he was unconscious.

“Hold this,” she said. She placed his hand over the cloth, pressing. “Pressure. Do not release it.”

“I know how to apply pressure to a wound.”

“Then apply it and be quiet.”

She tore another strip of fabric, wadded it, and layered it directly on top of the first. Using a much longer strip, she bound the makeshift bandage tightly around his torso. She tied it as securely as she could manage in the pitch black with her wet, shaking hands. She refused to name the rising terror in her chest.

The fever started before dawn.

She knew because his skin, which had been cold and clammy for hours, became intensely hot. It was the dry, radiating heat of a body fighting a severe infection. The battle was visible in the violent shaking that began in his shoulders and spread to his limbs, until she could no longer hold him still.

“Fitzwilliam.”

His eyes were open, but they were not seeing her. His gaze was turned wholly inward, lost to whatever delusions the fever had constructed. He was somewhere she could not follow.

“Fitzwilliam. Look at me.”

He looked at her. He found a sudden moment of clarity, his eyes focusing on her face in the grey pre-dawn light that had finally penetrated the overhang.

“Elizabeth.” His voice was rough, scraped. “The tower.”

“The tower can wait. You cannot.”

“The fire.”