Page 20 of I Have Faults Enough

“I acted unpardonably, Miss Bennet; I am well acquainted with the truth, but I recognize there is a difference between a thought and saying it. A man may privately hold an opinion of another's family and still owe that family the courtesy of keeping it to himself, unless asked for it plainly." He paused. "You did not ask me for it, and I gave it regardless.”

His tone was more frank than kind. He did not retract what he had said, for he did not believe it untrue, but he allowed that he had wanted the forethought to hold his tongue in the saying of it. It was rather surprising, hearing such a confession from a man she had always taken for someone who would sooner defend a wrong opinion to the last than admit any fault in the manner of its delivering.

Before she could reply, he continued. "You are a gentlewoman, and my equal. I should have spoken to you, from the very first, in a manner that reflected as much, rather than in whatever careless or unkind fashion my own temper has too often permitted me to indulge; and I admire you, besides, for a kindness you extend not only to your family, but to all who cross your path."

Elizabeth sat quite still. She was aware of the fire settling in its bed of ash, of the cold air pressing in. For the length of several breaths, Elizabeth tried as she may to to understand what Mr. Darcy had just told her.

Careless or unkind fashion? She repeated the words to herself, thinking them so very strange to hear. Does he not know that he has always treated me thus? His speech left her utterly at a loss. She could not fathom what he meant by any of it; how his actions this past hour had run so entirely counter to the manner she had always known him by, nor how he could speak to her now, so plainly, as though she had always been his equal, when she could recall a great many occasions on which his own conduct had suggested he believed nothing of the kind.

"I confess I cannot know your meaning, sir,” she said, in a tone that suggested she was somewhat confused.

"I find there is a clarity that comes from believing oneself may die, Miss Bennet. It does not leave a great deal of patience for maintaining opinions one no longer believes, merely because one has held them a long while and finds them comfortable in their familiarity," he admitted.

Elizabeth studied him in the low firelight, and found herself, for perhaps the first time in the whole of their difficult acquaintance, entirely uncertain what to say to him. It was not from any want of feeling on the subject, but from the strange, disorienting sensation of believing that a man might change his character overnight, and still hesitate to know whether to believe it or not.

"I do not know what to do with this version of you," she said, at last, with more honesty than she generally permitted herself in his hearing. "I had grown rather attached to my list of your faults. It answered a great many questions for me, and required very little further thought once it was assembled."

"I am sorry to have inconvenienced so tidy an arrangement," he said, and there was, beneath the dryness of it, something that was very nearly a smile.

He looked up at her then, in the low firelight, his face marked still with the fading bruise from the garden and the exhaustion of two days' hardship, and for a moment she thought he meant to answer her fully, to say whatever was on his mind. But then, his eyes moved, involuntarily, toward the cottage door, toward Bill's returning footsteps audible now on the frozen ground outside, and whatever he had meant to say folded itself back into the folds of his mind.

"I believe," he said, low and even, withdrawing his hands at last and settling back against the wall beside her, "that this is neither the time nor the place to say anything more.”

Elizabeth did not press Darcy further, as Bill's shadow filled the doorway and the cottage's small stock of quiet dissolved back into its ordinary tension. She was glad, upon reflection, of his restraint. Some part of her wanted, as much as he plainly did, to hear whatever he had nearly said delivered somewhere the words could be trusted.

Cobb woke fully at Bill's entrance, and there was a quiet conference between the two of them near the door that Elizabeth could not entirely follow, though she caught enough of it: too long, if the boy's not back by morning, and can't sit here indefinite waiting on a letter that might never be answered at all.

From their discussion, she understood that whatever patience their captors had brought to the cottage was wearing thinner than Cobb's earlier confidence had suggested, and that the ground beneath their fragile stay of execution was considerably less stable than either she or Darcy had allowed themselves to believe.

It was near midnight, the cottage quite dark, that Ned came back, alone, breathless, and paper and pen. Cobb quickly had Darcy write a small part of the letter, which Cobb then took and wrote his demands. Then, he had Ned go back to town. Apparently, the boy had gotten lost, and took much longer than he had anticipated to return to the cottage.

Nevertheless, before Ned left, he explained that the town he had gone to was crawling with searchers, magistrates' men and gentlemen both, offering reward money loud enough that half the inn's common room had been talking of little else, and that a description had gone round already, close enough to the mark that Ned had not dared linger long enough to purchase the supplies, for fear of being marked himself as the boy who matched a description of his own.

Cobb's face, hearing it, went very still, and it was in that stillness, more than in anything Bill had said or threatened across the whole of the preceding two days, that she understood that the ground had shifted beneath all of them at once, and that whatever came next would not wait upon anyone's patience to be ready for it.

CHAPTER 13

Cobb had them moving again within the half hour, no waiting now for morning. He was driven by an urgency, recognizing that whatever bargain he had hoped to strike had been overtaken by a search grown too large and too near to outrun.

As they walked on, a wind began to rise out of the west that carried, by the time they were pushed out into it, the unmistakable smell of a storm not far off. And, it was within the first mile of their flight that the storm broke over them; rain began pouring down in near-horizontal sheets, taken across by a treacherous wind.

The dark went absolute between one lightning-flash and the next, while the ground underfoot turned in minutes from frozen to a treacherous, sucking mud that made every step a fresh fight with the earth itself.

Bill shouted over the wind, "This is madness moving in this! We'll break our necks on ground we can't even see!"

"We'll hang for certain if we sit still," Cobb shouted back, "so unless you've a better notion than drowning ourselves in a puddle, keep moving."

Elizabeth kept moving because there was nothing else to do, her bound wrists slick with rain. She was thankful that her ankle was newly wrapped, but despite its binding, her ankle throbbed with a steady pulse; she had long since tried to ignore it, as it melted into the general misery of the night.

Darcy's shoulder was a constant, steadying presence against hers each time the ground betrayed her footing. He remained by her side, and kept a firm hand within reach, should she need it; which, in this muck, was rather more often than she cared to admit.

Elizabeth could not have said how long they went on so, only that the storm showed no sign of easing and Cobb's confident sense of direction seemed to fray along with everything else.

Eventually, they came, without any warning, to the bank of a swollen river; the water level was well past whatever modest course it kept in gentler weather, and it was running fast and black. The river was considerably wider than anything Cobb appeared to have seen or whatever route he had planned.

"There's a ford," Cobb shouted, pointing with his hand and motioning towards some distant route, "not fifty yards down, I've crossed it before."

"Not in this you haven't!" the grey-haired man shouted, close behind him, his voice for once raised loud enough to carry real alarm. "That's no ford now, Cobb! That's a river in spate, and you'll drown the lot of us trying it!"