Page 13 of Not Without Me, Miss Elizabeth

"Darcy!" the man next to her, equally surprised, let out.

Elizabeth recovered herself first. "Mr. Darcy, whatever are you doing here?"

He looked down upon her with hard eyes, "Miss Elizabeth, I might ask the same of you. I saw you enter the thicket and followed.” He crossed to her at once, taking her by the shoulders with both hands. “Are you hurt?" His eyes began to scan her from head to toe, making her feel a sudden blush.

"No…” she began to shake her head. “No, sir, I am quite unhurt.” She turned to find the hound staring at the scene, and pointed to it, “I had only followed a hound, and was on the point of leaving…" She did not continue to explain the scene.

Satisfied that she had come to no harm, Mr. Darcy turned his attention at last to the man who had held her, his countenance darkening the moment recognition set in. "Wickham." The name left him like an accusation. "Of all places on this earth."

"Darcy! Why, of all the men in England, you are precisely the one I hoped to find." Wickham's smile did not waver. "And how do you come to know so charming a lady?"

Elizabeth looked from one man to the other, her confusion deepening with every word that passed between them, for whatever quarrel this was, it plainly ran a good deal older than the last quarter hour.

"That is none of your concern, Wickham." Darcy's voice had gone low and hard. "You have no business laying hands upon Miss Elizabeth?"

"I laid no improper hand on her, I assure you." Wickham spread his palms, all wounded innocence. "The lady had only just wandered upon us. I meant nothing more than to see she came to no harm."

"Wickham!" one of the other men called out, straightening. "This the bloke you been on about, then?"

Mr. Darcy turned his attention briefly to the remaining three, calculating, even as he did so, that he was badly outnumbered, and that his best hope lay in drawing their notice long enough to see Elizabeth safely away. He had known Wickham too long, and too well, to doubt what the man was capable of, and he wanted nothing so much as to remove Elizabeth from his reach.

"Aye, this is he." Wickham's smile widened, easy and untroubled, as though the whole business were nothing more than a pleasant reunion. "Told you he'd turn up, didn't I."

"What do you want, Wickham?" Darcy demanded again, each word bitten off short.

Elizabeth had never before seen Mr. Darcy in such a temper. His face had darkened with a fury she could not have imagined in him, his voice thick with a rage that seemed to strain against every particle of his usual composure. It frightened her, a little, and yet she found she could not move, rooted to the spot, unable to look away from a man so entirely unlike the one she thought she knew.

"Why, I want you, Darcy. We have been tracking you these several weeks. You will be coming with us." Wickham was quick to point out.

A sharp metallic click drew Darcy's eye from his old acquaintance to the group beyond; one of the heavier-set men had drawn a pistol, and leveled it directly at his chest.

Elizabeth's hand flew to her mouth. The whole scene had taken on a quality of unreality she could not fully grasp, that Mr. Darcy should have followed her into the wood; that he should stand now exchanging such bitter words with a man she had never before laid eyes upon; that a pistol should be trained upon him, here, on a morning that had begun with nothing more alarming than birdsong, seemed altogether beyond belief, the sort of thing that happened to other people, in other stories, and not to herself at all.

At Wickham's command, Mr. Darcy was forced to the ground and made to lie upon his front, arms drawn behind his back. A moment later Elizabeth felt herself seized in turn, brought roughly to her knees, and directed to lie down as he had.

She obeyed, entirely without voice, unable to protest or even cry out, so complete was her shock. She had no notion who these men were or what they intended, only that they held every advantage over her, in numbers, and now in arms, and the sight of the pistol had left her thoroughly frightened.

Wickham bound Mr. Darcy's wrists behind him with a length of leather while he lay upon the ground; another man did the same to Elizabeth, drawing the leather tight about her wrists as she lay face-down in the dirt, a wordless panic ringing in her ears.

"What do you want, Wickham?" Darcy asked again, low and hard.

"Never you mind, Darce. You'll know soon enough." Wickham's tone had lost none of its easy good humour, which somehow made it worse.

Darcy turned his head as far as his bonds would allow, seeking her out. Her face was turned from him, toward the trees, and she had not spoken a single word since being bound, as though she had retreated somewhere he could not follow.

"Miss Elizabeth." He kept his voice low, urgent, meant for her alone. "Do not be afraid. I will see you safely home; I give you my word." It was little enough to offer her, bound and helpless as he was, but it was all he had.

"Enough talking, Darcy!" Wickham's voice cracked like a whip. "You are not to speak to the lady, or we shall be rid of her sooner than you'd like."

"Bag 'em up, Chub." One of the men held out two coarse sacks, his voice flat, as though the matter were no more remarkable than tying off a sack of grain.

Darcy felt a fist close in his hair and wrench his head upward as the sack came down over it, plunging him into a close, musty darkness that smelled of old grain and damp burlap. The coarse weave scraped at his cheek with every movement. Elizabeth was treated no more gently, and could not entirely suppress a small, pained sound as her own hair was pulled roughly in its turn, her scalp still smarting from it long after the sack had settled over her head.

Once both were hooded, Darcy heard the men withdraw a little way off, their voices dropping into a low, muffled exchange he could not quite follow, though one among them spoke with some evident agitation, his words rising and falling in a register he did not recognise.

That is not Wickham.Darcy knew his old companion's voice too well to mistake it for another's, however he strained to place it. He held himself still, breathing shallow behind the sack's rough weave, straining to catch more, but the wind and the distance defeated him, and he made out nothing further.

Then, without warning, a single heavy drop struck his wrist, cold enough to make him flinch, and a moment after, another fell squarely between his shoulder blades. Within a minute the rain had set in for good, and lying as they were in the open clearing, with no shelter to speak of, both he andElizabeth were soon soaked through, water running in thin, cold rivulets down the backs of their necks and pooling beneath them where the leaf litter could not drink it fast enough.