Page 23 of I Have Faults Enough

She looked at him, and Elizabeth realized that well enough was his particular manner of saying not well at all. And, she decided to tell him as much. “I hardly think that is true, Mr. Darcy.”

He looked down to his chest. “I’m bruised, I think, though not broken.” He shifted carefully, and the effort was enough to make his jaw tighten. “I have felt worse from a fall off a horse and thought little of it. It is not the ribs themselves that trouble me so much as taking a deep breath.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest, but his attention had already moved beyond her. He was looking toward the boarded wall behind them, toward the river still raging somewhere beyond it.

“We ought not remain here,” he said, and she heard a subtle shiver in his speech, as he said it.

She followed his gaze, but still did not reply.

He continued. “This shelter sits too near the bank. Once Cobb and his men have gathered themselves enough to search, this will be one of the first places they look.”

Elizabeth did not disagree with the logic, but the thought of putting any weight at all upon her swollen ankle was enough to make her stomach turn. However, she, more than anything, wanted to be rid of Cobb and his party, and she did not argue.

Darcy got himself upright again first. And, then, for one alarming moment he swayed, and Elizabeth instinctively tried to catch his arm, but he caught the side of the hut and steady himself. Once he was more firm on his feet, he offered Elizabeth his hand, and he lifted her up.

They went slowly again, and he looked intently into the night, searching for some place to settle and attempt to get warm. Scarcely twenty yards up the rise behind the shelter, he spotted a fallen tree that had thrown its roots into the earth and formed a shallow hollow beneath it.

He urged Elizabeth over to inspect the tree with him, and they saw that the tree’s roots had been deep against a hill, and resulted in a screened hollow on three sides that was hidden from the river below.

While the inspection was little enough distance, by the time they reached it, both were breathing hard, from the exertion and growing cold.

Darcy quickly judged the hollow to be sufficient, believing that it was enough to reach without killing them both in the attempt. And, it was far enough away from the bank that anyone searching the riverbank would be unlikely to glance beneath the roots.

Only when they entered the hollow and had sunk down against its walls, this time upon drier ground, did he address the next matter of concern, their clothing.

“We must get out of these wet things,” he said. “Both of us. Nothing else we do tonight will matter if we remain soaked.”

Elizabeth looked down at herself, only slightly able to see the soak gown she wore. A few days ago, the suggestion would have been enough to send every modest instinct she possessed into revolt.

But now, in the grim of winter, escaping captives that sought them harm, she looked at the freezing water still dripping from her sleeves and felt only an unshakable cold.

Here, beneath the roots of a fallen tree, Elizabeth had a swollen ankle, wet clothes, and a man beside her whose ribs had been injured hauling her out of a river. She told herself that was why she did not object in the slightest to removing her soaked clothing; she did not even allow herself to consider that she had already grown accustomed to trusting him. For, in that moment, survival was the most certain course forward than any manner of propriety.

She told him that he was right, and he explained that he would look the opposite way, and moved to the other wall of the small hollow to begin to remove his winter coat.

They worked on opposite sides of the hollow, in the darkness, and by feel more than sight, wringing what water they could from their clothing. Darcy took to hanging the worst-soaked pieces over the broken branches above them.

Elizabeth kept her shift on, and Darcy, his drawers and undershirt, and they stared everywhere but each other.

Once Darcy had rung as much water as he could out of his coat, he reached out and gave her his coat despite her objections.

“Please, you must have this; you will surely suffer more.” He insisted, still looking away, as he held the coat out to her.

Elizabeth might have argued further, but she found that she no longer had the energy, and fumbled to take the coat from his outstretched arm, before wrapping it around her to cover as much of herself as she could. Fortunately, Darcy was a tall man, and the coat, though wet, offered a shield.

Still freezing, the question of a fire occupied them longer. Darcy was firmly against it, even though he remained shivering. He argued that the shelter was still too near the river, and any light might draw attention from men searching the banks.

However, Elizabeth, whose teeth had begun to chatter again, refuted his claim and insisted that a fire small enough and well enough screened could scarcely be seen beyond the roots, and that the alternative was to remain wet and cold until morning.

It was the return of her teeth clattering that settled the matter. Darcy looked at her white face for several seconds, then down at his own hands. “Very well, a small fire,” he said at last. “And the moment we hear anything beyond the river, we put it out.”

Elizabeth nodded. He found dry wood where she would not have thought to look for it, breaking open the heart of a fallen branch where the outer wood had been soaked through.

From within his coat he produced a small tin containing flint and steel and a scrap of charred linen. It was not exactly dry, but he would try nonetheless.

Elizabeth watched him work. His hands betrayed him at first. The cold had made them clumsy, and more than once the steel slipped. The first spark died almost immediately.

He tried again, and Elizabeth leaned closer, instinctively shielding his hands from the draft that crept through the roots. She did not think about the impropriety of it. She only knew that his fingers were trembling, and that hers were too, and that somehow the two of them seemed warmer together.