She remained there, clutching the trunk of that unyielding old willow, until her fingers grew numb with the chill. Sighing deeply, she at last stepped back and looked once more on that hallowed ground where he had once stood. The grass, the leaves, even the lively brook were now muted. All was shriveled and dying in the ruthless grip of winter. Could her heart not similarly freeze? For a few months at least, could her love not slumber so she might know some measure of rest?
Oh, but even if the gift of merciful oblivion were offered her, she could never choose it. Elizabeth’s eyes scanned up the barren tree to the dwindling glow of the frost-obscured sun. To forget the pain of losing Darcy would be to grow insensible to her own conviction that there could never be another like him. Not for any inducement would she sacrifice the joy of being loved by one such as he, even for some relief from her sorrow. She would cling to that knowledge, that once she had been loved and loved in return, and it had wrought a tenderness and a beauty in her that left her forever marked by its passing. She would content herself—she must! —for the power of this love must suffice for a lifetime.
Elizabeth clutched a hand to her chest, wishing to seize that ache and to never let it go, for it was now her only token of him. I will always belong to you! she vowed silently. Never will another touch my heart, for you took it with you.
Her mouth worked frantically as she made her resolution, desperate to avoid another wild outcry of anguish into the woods. None should know of her sorrow—it was hers to bear willingly and alone. Trembling, she dashed the cold tears from her cheeks. Then she turned quietly and resumed her solitary march to Longbourn.
~
Porto, Portugal
Six paces.
That was the limit of his freedom. Six of his measured steps described the length and breadth of the chamber he now occupied. Enough light was permitted through a grate above his head for him to account for the passing of days, and sixty-two new etches stood out in the opposite wall against the darker gray stone. His were not the only marks upon this wall—only the most recent.
Darcy spent most of his days pacing. He had tried at first protesting the injustice of his captivity to any passing voice, but all he ever earned for his trouble was disappointment and bruised fists. How quickly his circumstances had taught him to surrender!
No, he quickly corrected himself. He had not surrendered, merely discovered the futility of one approach. There would be another. After all, no one ever forcibly captured a man such as he, then kept him alive to no purpose. Someone wanted something of him, and it only remained for whatever external circumstances had driven his abduction to ripen to the fullness of their depravity. That there must be some reason for the delayed explanations and demands of his captors, he did not doubt. What it might be was the question that baffled and tormented him in his solitude.
As prisoners went, it is likely that he was treated well, though the experiences of his life to this point lent him no proper frame of reference. New clothing had awaited him upon his arrival to… well, he had no idea if this were a proper prison, or somewhere more secretive. A steady supply of fresh food and drink came thrice daily, and the food was of a far higher quality than might normally be accorded a prisoner. There was tea each morning and afternoon, and even wine some evenings—both of such quality that they were not objectionable even to himself, one accustomed to the very best. Most curious of all, there was meat each day of the week, save one—Darcy had determined that one day to be Friday, and had marked it as such on his stone calendar.
What manner of villain first violently kidnapped a wealthy man, then transported him in so careless a manner, as though his date of arrival were of lesser import than the cargo the ship carried? Why then leave him to himself without so much as a question or word of demand, yet feed him like a prince?
The mystery savaged his mind in those dark hours alone. With each day, he would the more readily have sworn away all that was his own, simply to regain his freedom and see another human face. Perhaps that was the intent, after all—the longer he remained locked away, the greater chance his captor believed for success to his objective. Let them have it all! Only that morning when his tray slid under the door had he cried out, “Ask of me whatever you wish! It is yours, whatever is in my power to give, only free me!”
His plea was met directly with silence, of course, followed by a few muttered words in another language in the outer corridor. He had been able to gather little of the language, or the country he was in, but he no longer thought it to be Spain or Italy. He was nearly fluent in Italian and reasonably familiar with Spanish, and the spoken words he heard were not quite right. Portugal was his best guess. But why? He had no business or contacts in that country. No enemies of whom he was aware, but it was a universal fact that a man of wealth never wanted for foes. Enough English soldiers had passed through this land in recent years, it was not impossible that he was known to someone.
Hissing in frustration, Darcy ceased his pacing and flung himself on the small bunk of his chamber to think. His wealth seemed the most obvious objective, but before anyone could lay claim to a farthing of the Darcy fortune, they first had to deal with… his heart seized every time he thought of it. Georgiana! He daily cursed himself for an imbecile that he had not placed some legal barrier between her and her potential inheritance, but never could he have imagined that her fortune might have endangered her. Damn you, Richard, you had better guard her well!
Richard was no fool, surely. He would understand her vulnerability and would not leave her—unless recalled to his regiment. Heaven only knew what might then be arranged for her! Certainly, the entire Fitzwilliam family would rally to her—the poor child!
Again, he tormented himself, imagining what they believed had become of him. Did they know where he had been when attacked? What speculation must arise from that circumstance! And what of his appointment the following day—had Wickham done the honourable thing and wed Lydia Bennet? Good Mr and Mrs Gardiner, what were their thoughts when he had not appeared? Had Bingley ever reconciled himself to Miss Bennet? How everyone must have thought he had failed them!
His head in his hands, he allowed his heart to wander back to the reason for it all. Elizabeth. Does she believe I could ever have abandoned her? He scarcely permitted himself to think on her, for when he did, a fury such as he had never known welled up within him. Fool that he had been, he had done himself harm enough in her eyes! To be now robbed of his chance to make things right, to lose all hope of ever winning her favour, was surely the greatest wrong ever perpetrated against him. Would he ever see her again, and would she have wed another by the time that day came?
Darcy’s fists clenched, his fingers tangling painfully in the tousled hair at his brow. Elizabeth! His chest heaved, his heart raging at the injustice of it all, until he could no longer remain seated. A cry of anguish and hatred for his captors ripped from him and he leapt to his feet, his arm slashing the air as if it were a man.
Inspired, he repeated the motion. Slash. Parry. Thrust! Again and again, his body rehearsed the well-schooled manoeuvres. Parry. Retreat. Advance—Thrust! Darcy spun and slashed, his sword hand gripping the empty air with a ferocity he had never brought to his exercise.
Half an hour later, wrung with sweat, he sank to the cool stone of the floor. What he would give to have Wilson there with a towel and a basin of fresh water! Yet, despite the exhaustion, he felt the best he had in weeks. Would that he had a face to attach to his enemy, that deplorable figure on which to focus the full measure of his just wrath!
Darcy mopped his bearded face with his under shirt, his chest heaving as he contemplated the light from the grate above. Truly, he had a better face than his enemy’s to fill his imagination. It was the very one that faded from his eyes each morning when they opened to take in his solitary chamber—the one face that had awakened in him all to which true manhood might aspire, and the one that had the power to soothe and comfort him in the darkest places.
He closed his eyes, his heart beating a little more evenly now.
Heavily, he lowered his tired body to his cot, draping his arm over his face. This night, at least, he would have rest, and his dreams would be of his own making. Elizabeth.
8
Longbourn
Elizabeth raised a trembling hand to her brow, shading her eyes. Yesterday’s head ache had returned, and with it, an unreasoning irritation with all surrounding her. Perhaps no room in the house might have brought her peace, but this one least of all. “Kitty!” she snapped, “must you hit every sour note?”
Kitty dropped her hands from the pianoforte with a petulant little huff. “I play just as well as you do, Lizzy, and I daresay I am nearly better.”
“Perhaps you must choose pieces better suited for your abilities then, for this one is a torment for the rest of us,” Elizabeth groused.
Kitty’s eyes widened in offence. “Mama!”
“Oh, Lizzy, let her play! Goodness knows you are making no efforts to improve yourself. Kitty at least has a thought for her poor mama when your father dies, for I shall not remain here to see Charlotte Lucas take my place!” She finished with a frown that was meant for Elizabeth’s benefit, but that young lady was already shielding her light-sensitive eyes once more.
“It behooves us all,” Mary observed, “to practice as diligently as Kitty, for a woman of noble and chaste character has but few opportunities to exhibit her worth. Gentlemen value these feminine accomplishments far more highly than… less modest means of attracting notice.”
“Aye, and where should we all be if Mary or I flirted with all the starving officers, or made ourselves offensive to wealthy gentlemen by engaging them in topics of masculine discussion?”
Elizabeth felt her cheeks heating beneath her hand. Lydia, who had seated herself beside Elizabeth and was attempting to learn a new embroidery stitch, gaped at her formerly favourite sister in betrayal.
“Oh, Kitty, you know very well that all the officers are not starving!” Mrs Bennet was seated too near the fire, and was constantly obliged to fan herself as she spoke. “Mr Wickham has a fine share to his name, does he not, Lydia? What can have kept him from writing, my love? Surely, he has procured an establishment for himself by now. It has been above three months!”
“Perhaps he has forgotten the direction,” snickered Kitty.
“More likely,” Elizabeth muttered toward the floor, “he has been on assignment with his regiment and unable to look to his domestic comforts.” She ground her teeth as she spoke—oh, what it cost her to defend that man! But for Lydia’s sake, she could not allow the conversation to continue as it was.
“There, I am sure you have the right of it, Lizzy,” seconded her mama. “Dear Wickham, he takes such prodigious care for his family! So good of him to allow my dearest girl to remain with us while he settles, and certainly no mean establishment will do! Lydia, love, when you do hear from him, you must direct him to examine the attics, for a house with low attics does not give half the room for keeping the space well-tended and for storage of an infant’s things, but it does make more than ample room for rodents.”
Elizabeth’s eyes were pounding by now, and she could bear no more. With a mumbled excuse, she rose in such haste that she dropped her own needlework from her lap. Righting it, she sped out of the room to the stairs, and did not slow until she had regained the sanctuary of her own bedroom. She dropped to her bed, clasping her pillow over her face to block out all light and sound. Oh, when did the world become so harsh and jaded that it cut and bruised her merely to look upon it? Even the softness of her own bed was no longer welcoming, but a trap, for she could go nowhere else but that the cold hardness of her days soon drove her back to it.
She meditated some while in solitude, brushing a stray drop or two from her cheeks onto her pillow. What she would have given to sense Jane’s tender hand caressing over her shoulders then, and to hear her sister’s soothing tones lovingly in her ears! Jane was too good, too cheerful to enter in to the dark places plaguing Elizabeth’s waking hours, but her compassion would have been most welcome. Jane, however, had another now to whom she must devote all her gentleness, and so Elizabeth must go on without.
Well… perhaps not entirely without. Elizabeth propped her chin upon the pillow as a light tapping sounded at her door. She stared at it, knowing full well who the owner of the knock was. It sounded again, and Elizabeth’s brow twitched as her steady eyes held the door. With a little sigh of resignation, she rose and opened it.
“Lizzy, what was that all about?” Lydia demanded. “I have never known you to be so missish as to run to your room like you have done of late. Are you ill?”
“It is not missish to retire when one is indisposed. My head pains me again today, that is all.”
“La, it ought to be I who complain of such things just now, not you.” Lydia crossed her arms over her middle.
Elizabeth sighed and stepped back from the door. “You may as well come in, for I do not expect you intend to go away.”
“And listen to Kitty playing that concerto again? I would rather sit with Papa in his study!”
“He is still reserved with you?”
“Oh,” Lydia shrugged as she dropped herself into the seat at Elizabeth’s vanity. “Papa and I never were great companions.”
“Has he even spoken ten words to you in the last week?”
Lydia squirmed in her seat. “I do not remember. He is not speaking much to anyone, though, Lizzy—even to you, unless it is about the account books. Do you think his health troubles him?”
“I think his conscience troubles him,” Elizabeth retorted.
Lydia bit her lip and looked down to her stomach. A casual observer might have noticed little through her loose-fitting gown, but one who had been previously familiar with Lydia’s youthful figure could easily discern a widening to her hips, a fullness to her bosom, and a decided roundness to her middle that had not before been present. “La, he cannot be angry with himself! No, Lizzy, he assigns all the blame to me. He thinks me the stupidest girl alive; I know he does.”
“I think it unwise for us to debate another person’s feelings,” Elizabeth sighed. “I have learnt that in the most humiliating of ways. We are like to assign thoughts and motives that were never held by another, and thus cause ourselves even more distress than is warranted.” She had seated herself again on her bed, drawing her knees up to her chest and dropping her head over them as she gazed out the window.
“Lizzy?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you ever afraid?”
Elizabeth raised her head. “Afraid? Of the future, do you mean?”
Lydia’s teeth sank more deeply into her plump lower lip. She blinked, then nodded jerkily.
“Come,” Elizabeth gestured to a place beside her. Lydia came, and Elizabeth draped a comforting arm about her as her younger sister began to tremble. “I think perhaps you have reason to be,” Elizabeth mused quietly.
“But you are not?”
Elizabeth stroked a wayward tendril from about Lydia’s ear. “I think fear would not describe what I feel. No, I look to the future and I feel… lost. As if I once had hope, and it has become a mist in my dreams.”
“It is all my fault,” Lydia rubbed her eyes miserably. “Had I not run away with George, it would have been so much easier for you to marry well!”
“That is nonsense, and you know it,” Elizabeth admonished—though half-heartedly. “Jane has done well, you see. I could easily have gone to London for the Season, so it is my own fault if I do not meet a promising gentleman this winter.”
“You stayed at Longbourn for my sake. Do not pretend I do not remember that, for I cannot think how dreary it would be for me here if you had not!”
Elizabeth’s lips wavered into a reluctant little smile. “And I shall hold you to account one day. I should think nothing less than your finest bonnet will do.”
“And my goo
d pelisse. You ought not to forget to ask for that! It is brand new, you know, for it was with the wedding clothes Mr Darcy gave me.”
The warmth livening Elizabeth’s cheeks froze, her eyes hardening to some point beyond her sister. Lydia sat up in some alarm at this sudden shift in Elizabeth’s manner. “Lizzy, you are making the face again.”
“’The face’?” Elizabeth drew in a breath. “Which face do you mean?”
“That one right… no, look that way, just… yes, when your eyes squint just so and you grit your teeth. You do it all the time since Jane got engaged, and I shouldn’t wonder that you have headaches. Does that make your jaw sore?”
“I had not realised… no, Lydia, I am sure it has nothing to do with my headaches. I simply have not been able to take as much exercise as I wish. The weather, do you know, it has been far too wet.”
“Balderdash! Yesterday was perfectly lovely by your standards, yet you did not take your long walk. I expected you would be off to see Jane.”
“I was helping Papa,” she scoffed defensively. “Some of the accounts had come due, and—”
Lydia poked her in the chest. “You, Lizzy Bennet, do not like being around happy people anymore.”
“What? How can you think so, and what can it have to do with anything?”
“I think so because I feel the same. I can hardly stand to hear people gibbering about their pointless fancies, and no one is more disgustingly happy than Jane and her Mr Bingley.”
Elizabeth’s brow arched. “You are correct in that last, if not the first. I am pleased for her, Lydia.”
“But jealous all the same, and I confess, I am as well. If only George had turned out to be worth a farthing!” Lydia sighed and propped herself back upon her elbows on the bed. “Now, only look at me! What is it they say among the farmers? ‘In the family way’? That’s what I am, Lizzy, a silly old cow wondering where her bull has gone.”
These Dreams: A Pride and Prejudice Variation Page 12
