Page 64 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

She lit the fire using the tinderbox. The flint and steel had been the difference between life and death. She was now privately certain she could light a fire faster than any man in Hertfordshire.

The kindling caught. She fed it carefully with small sticks, and then larger pieces of wreckage. The fire grew steady and hot. It had to last the night and hold its coals, so it would be ready in the morning for the green wood. The resulting white smoke would signal any passing ship, and perhaps bring a crew to their shores.

She laid the first green juniper branch on the flames. The sap hissed loudly, and the smoke rose thick and white in the still evening air. It formed a stark column against the darkening sky. She prayed it would be visible from the sea.

Darcy stood closely beside her. His hand found hers in the dark. It was the oldest gesture between them, born in the pitch black of the pirate ship's hold.

They watched the smoke rise, a brilliant white column climbing steadily into the dark.

“We will keep it burning,” she said.

“In shifts. I will take the first watch. You will take the morning.”

“Agreed.”

The sun slipped wholly below the horizon. The new signal fire burned against the night sky, small, bright, and exceedingly stubborn.

The shell was safe in her pocket. She traced its smooth spiral through the fabric.

The coals banked hot and red. The stars came out over the Mediterranean, and the white smoke rose steadily into the dark.

She was certain of very little on this island, but she was certain of one thing: they would keep the fire burning. The smoke would rise again in the morning, and every morning after, until rescue finally came. They had built a life together, and they were not going to stop.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The sail appeared during Elizabeth's watch.

Darcy was properly asleep for the first time since the fever. It was a heavy, exhausted slumber that pinned him to his pallet. It did not release him for dawn, or light, or even the distant sound of Elizabeth shouting his name from the top of the tower.

He was awake by the second shout. By the third, he was on his feet. By the fourth, he was climbing the stone steps to the upper platform with terrifying speed. Elizabeth did not shout without cause, and the cause was immediately visible the moment he cleared the last step: a white rectangle on the eastern horizon, sharp against the morning blue.

A sail.

He had seen sails before. Over six weeks, six ships had appeared on the horizon and vanished again without stopping. He had watched them come and go with Elizabeth standing tightly beside him. He had felt her hand grip his when the ships passed, and slowly loosen when they disappeared. The loosening was an agony.

This sail was different. This sail was close.

Elizabeth was frantically feeding green juniper branches onto the banked coals of the fire pit. The smoke was already rising in a thick, white column against the sky. She was working fast, her face set in concentration.

“How close is it?” he demanded.

“Two miles. Perhaps less. It is moving northwest, but it altered course three minutes ago.”

“Toward us?”

“I cannot tell yet.” She fed another branch onto the fire, thickening the smoke. “But a ship does not change its heading without cause.”

He went to the edge of the platform. The ship was clearly a two-masted merchant vessel, riding low in the water under a heavy cargo. A trading captain with a strict schedule and a destination would have no interest in investigating an uncharted island unless the distress signal was massive.

They needed more smoke.

He fed every piece of green wood they had onto the fire. The white column doubled in size, climbing high into the air before the wind finally caught it and bent it eastward.

Elizabeth stood beside him. She had taken the largest piece of sailcloth from the tower's lower room, and was waving it over her head in a slow, deliberate arc.

The ship held its northwest course. He watched the angle of the hull and the set of the sails, trying to gauge the captain's intentions across the distance.

The ship turned.