Page 32 of Mr. Darcy’s Fiery Passion

The gravel crunched under the crutch, and nobody followed her.

Elizabeth went down the Netherfield drive in the thin November sun. Swing and step, swing and step. The air was cold and smelled of wet leaves. Behind her, the front door had shut on Mr. Collins and his passage on the garden.

She had escaped. She had not known how badly she wanted to until she heard that door close.

For a fortnight, someone had been watching her. Someone had been fetching her shawl, or her footstool, or her mother's opinion. Someone had been carrying her in to dinner on a chair. And today she had stood in the hall and waited for one particular arm. She had been handed to a footman.

Your arm for Miss Elizabeth, if you please.

Elizabeth set the crutch down harder than she needed to. It jarred her ankle, and she welcomed the pain. It was easier to think about than his face.

She would go as far as the lodge gates, she decided. She would turn round there and come back. Nobody would need to help her. Nobody would need to be thanked.

The drive was longer than it looked from the house. But the crutch went better on the gravel than on the marble. She found a rhythm. By the time she reached the bend by the beech trees, her cheeks were warm and she was almost happy.

The gates came sooner than she expected.

The keeper's wife was hanging out linen by the lodge door. She looked up and waved, and Elizabeth waved back. She leaned on the gatepost and caught her breath.

Beyond the gates, the carriage road ran on toward Meryton. And just past the lodge, on the left, the old lane opened between its hedges.

She had not walked it since October. It looked exactly the same. The ruts were dried hard, and the brambles had gone bare and red. The sun lay along it in a long gold strip. Nobody was in it. Nobody was ever in it.

Only to the bend, she told herself. Only to see it.

She went to the bend.

It was easy. The lane was flat here, and she knew every rut of it. A robin followed her along the hedge, hopping when she hopped. She laughed at it aloud. It was the first time she had laughed all day.

At the bend she could see the next bend. It was not far. The stile was there, the one where she always sat to take off her bonnet in summer. She would rest at the stile, and then turn back.

She reached the stile. She sat down on the step.

Her ankle had begun to throb. It was not bad yet, only a warm, steady ache inside the bandage. Her arm hurt more. The farmer's crutch was made for a tall man, and the crosspiece had rubbed the inside of her arm raw. She rubbed it through her sleeve and looked back the way she had come.

The lodge was out of sight.

She was surprised. She had not thought she had come so far.

You should go back now, said the sensible voice in her head.

In a moment, she answered it.

She thought of the house. She thought of Mr. Collins waiting with Cowper, and her mother waiting with Mr. Collins. She thought of Miss Bingley's eyes following her crutch across every room. She thought of her mother's wail on the very first day. She heard it again every time a footman lifted her chair.

And she thought of Mr. Darcy at the hall window, watching her go. She had felt him there. He had not followed.

She got up.

She hauled on the crutch to do it, and the old ash creaked under her weight. She was looking up the lane, toward the rise.

From the top of the rise, you could see Longbourn.

She went up the rise. It was slower going, and the ruts were deeper. Twice the crutch caught in them and she had to wrench it free. Her ankle had stopped aching. Now it hurt in earnest. She told herself it was only the cold.

At the top she stopped and leaned on the crutch and looked.

The fields ran away below her, brown and gray in the afternoon light. Far off, where the lane ended, she could see the dark line of Longbourn's home wood. The house lay behind it, too far away to see.