Page 49 of Homeless

She put her hand on the mattress, or, rather, the stained parcel of cloth and bound feathers that served as one. It was suspended on a rope frame and only buckled a little in the middle when she leaned on it. Capital, just capital. She sat on it and unlaced her boots.

“There is hot water,” Darcy said, as his head reached the top of the ladder, “for a sum I decline to repeat in a lady’s hearing.”

She put her stockinged feet on the floor and stood. “Then I shall be a fishwife again, and we may have it for half.”

“It is already bought.” He turned and hefted a clay jug from the ladder rung and set it on the loft floor.

Elizabeth set her hands on her hips and blew out a weary sigh. “You are a ruinous husband. You will beggar us in small comforts and leave the war nothing to do.”

“It is cheaper than a physician. Take a fever to spare my purse, and you will cost me a great deal more than a jug of water.”

“Then I shall endeavour to sicken frugally, that your ledger may not suffer.” She picked up the clay jug before he could answer, and walked it over to the shelf and basin.

The water was not hot so much as lately warm, and little of it. She poured a little over her hands and splashed her face.

She pushed her sleeves past the elbow and reached for the fastening at her neck, and some instinct made her glance over her shoulder. He cleared his throat.

“I shall see how the mules fare,” he said to the ladder. “A quarter hour should serve you.”

The mules would be deep in their feed bags by now, with nothing they could want from him. He had invented that silly errand rather than stay while she washed. Nevertheless, down the ladder he went, leaving her with the cloudy water and the small, unworthy satisfaction of having routed the immovable Mr Darcy with nothing more dangerous than an unbuttoned collar.

She washed in haste, the cloth coarse enough to flay, scrubbing the day from her throat and wrists and the backs of her knees where the wet hem had ground grit into the skin. Then there was the necessity of a more personal sort of cleaning, a bother that had shamed and irritated her for three days already. She had precious few clouts left, and what she did have, she hesitated to salvage with water that cost more than wine. In the end, she chose the best of them to clean, draining the soiled water out a window when nobody happened to be passing by.

But the thing she had truly been wanting was to do something about her hair.

It had not been properly washed since before the church — since before any of this — and the road had worked itself into it, dust and smoke and the grease of poor lodgings, until it sat against her scalp like a dead hide. She unpinned it, bent over the basin, and poured the last of the warm water through it; it ran off her brown. She did it again with the cold, because there was no more warm, and her teeth had set to chattering before she finished. There was nothing to comb it with, and nothing to dry it but a stable loft that had no warmth to lend.

She wrung it out like washing and twisted it up wet, but a damp strand caught in the buttons at the back of her chemise as she fastened them. She tugged, but there was little help for it. She would have to entirely disrobe — a thing she was not willing to do — or pull until either the button popped off or her hair ripped out. She had no brush, and the road and rough soap had wrought a disaster of her hair that she could not reach behind herself to repair.

When the quarter hour was out, and she had set herself as much to rights as the time allowed, he came back to take his turn with the jug and basin.

“Before you…” She cleared her throat. “Perhaps you have a knife?”

He set his hat near the basin with a furrow in his brow. “I have not the pleasure of understanding you. You wish to cut something?”

She sighed and turned her back to him. She had not been able to fully fasten the front of her gown again, with her hair still caught in her chemise, but it was only her back. The chemise covered her shoulders, all her skin. “I am afraid I cannot get my hair out of this button.”

There was no sound for several seconds. She glanced over her shoulder. “Mr Darcy?”

His face had gone blank. Not haughty or suspicious or even displeased. Just… empty.

“Mr Darcy, I assure you, I am not asking for a criminal act. I only need your fingers for a moment, and I promise I will not even cry if you should accidentally pull my hair.”

He stirred to life, mumbling something she could not catch as his eyes shifted to the ladder.

“What was that?”

“Perhaps the woman of the house might be better to assist you,” he repeated.

“And charge me for the privilege, I am sure. Come, I am not made of deadly nightshade. Two seconds, and you will have me free. I cannot reach it myself.”

He sighed heavily and stepped closer. She felt his fingers, the heat of them, brushing the back of her neck.

“The button, Mr Darcy, the button is the trouble.”

“I am aware.” It sounded as if he were speaking through gritted teeth. “But if you would have me not rip the hair from your head, I must grasp some of it while I —”

“All you have to do is unhook the snarl.” She twisted to try to point. “See?”