Page 66 of Shipwrecked with Mr Darcy

“Thank you, Captain.”

“The door has a lock.”

“I appreciate your thoroughness.”

Rossi almost smiled. He moved immediately to practical matters: food, water, the loan of clean clothing from the crew's stores, and their exact course to Valletta. Darcy answered his questions with automatic, grateful precision.

Darcy took charge of the arrangements. He had begun governing the situation the moment the boat reached the beach, falling back on his natural authority because the alternative was to collapse altogether. His staggering relief was too large for the deck of a trading brig.

They were rescued. Elizabeth was safe. The simple words felt wholly inadequate. Six weeks of fear, labour, and love on an unnamed island had not been simple. The rescue had finally lifted the crushing weight of uncertainty he had carried every day—a weight far heavier than the stones he had moved, or the fever that had nearly killed him.

They sat in the cabin Rossi had assigned to Elizabeth, eating bread and olives. They drank water from a tin cup rather than a coconut shell. The bread was terribly stale, the olives were far too salty, and the water tasted faintly of the barrel, but it was the best meal Darcy had ever eaten.

Elizabeth ate with a silent, focussed intensity. She finished her piece of bread, stared at the empty plate, and then looked up at him. She was attempting to smile, but her eyes were brimming with tears.

“Bread,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“It has flour in it. And yeast. And someone baked it in an actual oven.” A tear spilled over her cheek. “I do not think I shall ever recover.”

He reached across the small table and took her hand. Her fingers laced tightly through his. They sat together in the cabin, feeling the ship move steadily beneath them. Neither spoke.

Night fell. The Santa Chiara moved steadily westward under clear skies. Darcy stood on the deck and watched the island disappear.

It vanished slowly. He watched the hill and the tower's silhouette fade into the dark mass of rock. The signal fire was still burning; he could see the faint glow of orange light on the horizon. They had not thought to put it out before leaving. It continued to burn as a beacon for no one, a stubborn habit of hope.

The light finally dimmed, and the horizon absorbed the island wholly. There was only the sea, the stars, and the sound of Elizabeth's step on the deck behind him.

He turned. She was wearing a borrowed sailor's shirt, the sleeves rolled to her elbows, the hem falling over her torn skirt. Her loose, salt-stiff hair was far lighter than it had been in England. She did not look like a gentlewoman, but she looked exactly like the woman he was going to marry.

“It is gone,” she said. She stood beside him at the railing, looking at the empty horizon where the island had been.

“Yes.”

“I expected to feel relieved. I feel something else. I have not determined what.”

“Grief,” he said. “Or something near it.”

“For an island?”

“For what we were on it. The island did not require us to be anyone other than who we were. The world will require more.”

She leaned against his shoulder. The contact had been natural on the island, but here, on a crowded ship with a perceptive captain, the intimacy was a deliberate, public choice.

“Your cabin has a door,” she said.

“It does.”

“And a lock.”

“Captain Rossi was thorough on that point.”

“I should like to see this door. And this lock. I have not encountered either in some time, and I believe I have forgotten how they operate.”

He looked at her in the lamplight. She was inviting herself to his cabin, openly defying the rules of England that were already reassembling around them.

“The operation is straightforward,” he said. “One turns the key.”