Page 107 of Homeless

She was not asleep. He could hear the uneven breaths, even a shuddering sigh or two, but he dared not try to soothe her again. He turned on his back, letting her keep the blanket, and stared at the roof of the warm loft until blackness claimed him.

XLI

Resentment and Ruin

The country had turned green now, wholly green, lush past anything Elizabeth had seen since England — steep wet valleys thick with oak and chestnut, ferns to the knee, water everywhere, running in the ditches and dripping from the leaves and hanging in the air as a fine cool mist that beaded on what was left of her fine silk-merino travelling gown. Somewhere ahead, not far now, was the sea. She could nearly smell it. After the meseta, it should have moved her to tears of gratitude, and instead she walked through it hollow-eyed and short-tempered and hating it a little. It was a particular cruelty to be starving in a garden, to be footsore and filthy and frightened in the loveliest country God ever made, and to have no strength left over to feel the beauty with.

They had not eaten since the bread at dawn, and that had been little. The farm's charity was three days behind them, and the last few nights had gone hard — a wet clearing, a shepherd's empty hut, and once under a tree, with no fire at any of them. Darcy was flagging; she could see it and would not say it, because saying it started a quarrel about who should ride, and she had not the strength for that quarrel today. So they took the mule in turns, and every mile felt like three.

“You should ride,” he said, for the third time since noon.

“I rode this morning.”

“You are white as a sheet.”

“So are you, and you were half dead a fortnight since, so if we are ranking claims to the animal, yours is the better one and I am tired of arguing it. Walk or ride, Fitzwilliam, but for the love of heaven stop offering.”

“Then ride with me.”

She stopped and stared up at him. “The mule cannot manage it.”

“He can. The road is smooth, running downhill, and he had a good bait at noon, with all that fresh grass by the road. I daresay, he is eating the best of any of us just now.”

She kept walking, looking ahead now. “We are too much for him.”

“Not in the shape we are in. We cannot weigh more than twenty stone between us, and the pack mules out of Calahorra were carrying more than twenty-five for days, up hill. Besides, we will be in Santander tomorrow, provided we can all stay on our feet. I have no confidence that either of us can.”

She stopped and turned back. He had the right of it. The mule was walking easily, and had been all the while. And they could cover ground twice as fast if they did not have to wait on one stumbling person. “Oh, very well. For an hour.”

“Two will see us to dusk, and hopefully a place to sleep.”

She swallowed at that word, but gave Darcy her hand. He took his foot from the stirrup so she could put hers in it, and he pulled her up into his arms.

There could be no sitting modestly, with both of them in the saddle. Before, she had found a way to rest her right knee on the pommel, though it was not a proper lady’s saddle. But now, she had to swing her leg over the side, her backside wedged against the front of him, her skirt bunched up above her knees, and her dignity lying beside the road.

“I should not have let you talk me into this.”

“Are you cold?” One hand was on her hip, but it had began the slide down over her thigh, as if he could warm her leg with his palm.

“No.” She straightened.

His hand came back up to her hip. “There is no one to see. If anyone should approach, we will have time for me to set down and you may order your skirts.”

She sat a little taller still, and said nothing. One of his arms was wrapped about her waist, his hand reaching forward to hold the reins, but the other… the other fell from her hip and rested on his own thigh.

They stopped at dusk in the lee of a broken wall, because there was nowhere better and it was too dark to go further. No fire — the wood was all wet, and Darcy's hands, when he tried the flint, were shaking too badly to raise a spark. He failed at it three times, and then he flung the flint down with an oath she had never heard him use and put his face in his hands.

That made her watch him. There was something grown brittle in the last few days, something set to snap that she had never seen so close to the surface of him. And she had no right to ask what it was, but she had a fair guess.

They shared the last of the bread. It was not enough for one person, let alone two. And afterwards, in the wet blue dark, with the one blanket around them because there was no choosing otherwise, he reached for her. He had no temper tonight for any gentle seduction. This was something wearier and more desperate as he came down beside her and over her, his mouth finding hers in the dark, his hands sweeping and claiming her. He was not forcing, not taking what she had no mind to offer, but neither was he waiting and coaxing like he had done before. This was more like that first night, drowning in his drunken need for her as if a few moments of spent physical strength might give back enough to make tomorrow bearable.

And she wanted it. That was the miserable truth of it, she wanted it as badly as he did, wanted to be held and warmed and taken out of herself, wanted to stop being cold and frightened and stop thinking for one blessed stretch of dark — and it was precisely because she wanted it so much that she put her hands on his chest and pushed him back.

“No.”

“Elizabeth —”

“I said no. We cannot. I have told you and told you. We cannot keep —”